1889–1892
Something is dead. . .The grace of sunset solitudes,the marchOf the solitary moon,the pomp and powerOf round on round of shining soldier-starsPatrolling space,the bounties of the sun—Sovran,tremendous,unimaginable—The multitudinous friendliness of the sea,Possess no more—no more.
Something is dead. . .The Autumn rain-rot deeper and wider soaksAnd spreads,the burden of Winter heavier weighs,His melancholy close and closer yetCleaves,and those incantations of the SpringThat made the heart a centre of miraclesGrow formal,and the wonder-working boursArise no more—no more.
Something is dead. . .’Tis time to creep in close about the fireAnd tell grey tales of what we were,and dreamOld dreams and faded,and as we may rejoiceIn the young life that round us leaps and laughs,A fountain in the sunshine,in the prideOf God’s best gift that to us twain returns,Dear Heart,no more—no more.
Whereforlorn sunsets flare and fadeOn desolate sea and lonely sand,Out of the silence and the shadeWhat is the voice of strange commandCalling you still, as friend calls friendWith love that cannot brook delay,To rise and follow the ways that wendOver the hills and far away?
Hark in the city, street on streetA roaring reach of death and life,Of vortices that clash and fleetAnd ruin in appointed strife,Hark to it calling, calling clear,Calling until you cannot stayFrom dearer things than your own most dearOver the hills and far away.
Out of the sound of the ebb-and-flow,Out of the sight of lamp and star,It calls you where the good winds blow,And the unchanging meadows are:From faded hopes and hopes agleam,It calls you, calls you night and dayBeyond the dark into the dreamOver the hills and far away
Weare the Choice of the Will: God, when He gave the wordThat called us into line, set in our hand a sword;
Set us a sword to wield none else could lift and draw,And bade us forth to the sound of the trumpet of the Law.
East and west and north, wherever the battle grew,As men to a feast we fared, the work of the Will to do.
Bent upon vast beginnings, bidding anarchy cease—(Had we hacked it to the Pit, we had left it a place of peace!)—
Marching, building, sailing, pillar of cloud or fire,Sons of the Will, we fought the fight of the Will, our sire.
Road was never so rough that we left its purpose dark;Stark was ever the sea, but our ships were yet more stark;
We tracked the winds of the world to the steps of their very thrones;The secret parts of the world were salted with our bones;
Till now the name of names, England, the name of might,Flames from the austral fires to the bounds of the boreal night;
And the call of her morning drum goes in a girdle of sound,Like the voice of the sun in song, the great globe round and round;
And the shadow of her flag, when it shouts to the mother-breeze,Floats from shore to shore of the universal seas;
And the loneliest death is fair with a memory of her flowers,And the end of the road to Hell with the sense of her dews and showers!
Who says that we shall pass, or the fame of us fade and die,While the living stars fulfil their round in the living sky?
For the sire lives in his sons, and they pay their father’s debt,And the Lion has left a whelp wherever his claw was set;
And the Lion in his whelps, his whelps that none shall brave,Is but less strong than Time and the great, all-whelming Grave.
Adesolateshore,The sinister seduction of the Moon,The menace of the irreclaimable Sea.
Flaunting, tawdry and grim,From cloud to cloud along her beat,Leering her battered and inveterate leer,She signals where he prowls in the dark alone,Her horrible old man,Mumbling old oaths and warmingHis villainous old bones with villainous talk—The secrets of their grisly housekeepingSince they went out upon the padIn the first twilight of self-conscious Time:Growling, hideous and hoarse,Tales of unnumbered Ships,Goodly and strong, Companions of the Advance,In some vile alley of the nightWaylaid and bludgeoned—Dead.
Deep cellared in primeval ooze,Ruined, dishonoured, spoiled,They lie where the lean water-wormCrawls free of their secrets, and their broken sidesBulge with the slime of life. Thus they abide,Thus fouled and desecrate,The summons of the Trumpet, and the whileThese Twain, their murderers,Unravined, imperturbable, unsubdued,Hang at the heels of their children—She aloftAs in the shining streets,He as in ambush at some accomplice door.
The stalwart Ships,The beautiful and bold adventurers!Stationed out yonder in the isle,The tall Policeman,Flashing his bull’s-eye, as he peersAbout him in the ancient vacancy,Tells them this way is safety—this way home.
Itcame with the threat of a waning moonAnd the wail of an ebbing tide,But many a woman has lived for less,And many a man has died;For life upon life took hold and passed,Strong in a fate set free,Out of the deep into the darkOn for the years to be.
Between the gloom of a waning moonAnd the song of an ebbing tide,Chance upon chance of love and deathTook wing for the world so wide.O, leaf out of leaf is the way of the land,Wave out of wave of the seaAnd who shall reckon what lives may liveIn the life that we bade to be?
Why, my heart, do we love her so?(Geraldine, Geraldine!)Why does the great sea ebb and flow?—Why does the round world spin?Geraldine, Geraldine,Bid me my life renew:What is it worth unless I win,Love—love and you?
Why, my heart, when we speak her name(Geraldine, Geraldine!)Throbs the word like a flinging flame?—Why does the Spring begin?Geraldine, Geraldine,Bid me indeed to be:Open your heart, and take us in,Love—love and me.
Onewith the ruined sunset,The strange forsaken sands,What is it waits, and wanders,And signs with desparate hands?
What is it calls in the twilight—Calls as its chance were vain?The cry of a gull sent seawardOr the voice of an ancient pain?
The red ghost of the sunset,It walks them as its own,These dreary and desolate reaches . . .But O, that it walked alone!
There’sa regretSo grinding, so immitigably sad,Remorse thereby feels tolerant, even glad . . .Do you not know it yet?
For deeds undoneRankle and snarl and hunger for their due,Till there seems naught so despicable as youIn all the grin o’ the sun.
Like an old shoeThe sea spurns and the land abhors, you lieAbout the beach of Time, till by and byDeath, that derides you too—
Death, as he goesHis ragman’s round, espies you, where you stray,With half-an-eye, and kicks you out of his way;And then—and then, who knows
But the kind GraveTurns on you, and you feel the convict Worm,In that black bridewell working out his term,Hanker and grope and crave?
‘Poor fool that might—That might, yet would not, dared not, let this be,Think of it, here and thus made over to meIn the implacable night!’
And writhing, fainAnd like a triumphing lover, he shall takeHis fill where no high memory lives to makeHis obscene victory vain.
Timeand the Earth—The old Father and Mother—Their teeming accomplished,Their purpose fulfilled,Close with a smileFor a moment of kindness,Ere for the winterThey settle to sleep.
Failing yet gracious,Slow pacing, soon homing,A patriarch that strollsThrough the tents of his children,The Sun, as he journeysHis round on the lowerAscents of the blue,Washes the roofsAnd the hillsides with clarity;Charms the dark poolsTill they break into pictures;Scatters magnificentAlms to the beggar trees;Touches the mist-folk,That crowd to his escort,Into translucenciesRadiant and ravishing:As with the visibleSpirit of SummerGloriously vaporised,Visioned in gold!
Love, though the fallen leafMark, and the fleeting lightAnd the loud, loiteringFootfall of darknessSign to the heartOf the passage of destiny,Here is the ghostOf a summer that lived for us,Here is a promiseOf summers to be.
‘Aslike the Woman as you can’—(Thus the New Adam was beguiled)—‘So shall you touch the Perfect Man’—(God in the Garden heard and smiled).‘Your father perished with his day:‘A clot of passions fierce and blind,‘He fought, he hacked, he crushed his way:‘Your muscles, Child, must be of mind.
‘The Brute that lurks and irks within,‘How, till you have him gagged and bound,‘Escape the foullest form of Sin?’(God in the Garden laughed and frowned).‘So vile, so rank, the bestial mood‘In which the race is bid to be,‘It wrecks the Rarer Womanhood:‘Live, therefore, you, for Purity!
‘Take for your mate no gallant croup,‘No girl all grace and natural will:‘To work her mission were to stoop,‘Maybe to lapse, from Well to Ill.‘Choose one of whom your grosser make’—(God in the Garden laughed outright)—‘The true refining touch may take,‘Till both attain to Life’s last height.
‘There, equal, purged of soul and sense.‘Beneficent, high-thinking, just,‘Beyond the appeal of Violence,‘Incapable of common Lust,‘In mental Marriage still prevail’—(God in the Garden hid His face)—‘Till you achieve that Female-Male‘In Which shall culminate the race.’
Midsummermidnight skies,Midsummer midnight influences and airs,The shining, sensitive silver of the seaTouched with the strange-hued blazonings of dawn;And all so solemnly still I seem to hearThe breathing of Life and Death,The secular Accomplices,Renewing the visible miracle of the world.
The wistful starsShine like good memories. The young morning windBlows full of unforgotten hoursAs over a region of roses. Life and DeathSound on—sound on . . . And the night magical,Troubled yet comforting, thrillsAs if the Enchanted Castle at the heartOf the wood’s dark wondermentSwung wide his valves, and filled the dim sea-banksWith exquisite visitants:Words fiery-hearted yet, dreams and desiresWith living looks intolerable, regretsWhose voice comes as the voice of an only childHeard from the grave: shapes of a Might-Have-Been—Beautiful, miserable, distraught—The Law no man may baffle denied and slew.
The spell-bound ships stand as at gazeTo let the marvel by. The grey road glooms . . .Glimmers . . . goes out . . . and there, O, there where it fades,What grace, what glamour, what wild will,Transfigure the shadows? Whose,Heart of my heart, Soul of my soul, but yours?
Ghosts—ghosts—the sapphirine airTeems with them even to the gleaming endsOf the wild day-spring! Ghosts,Everywhere—everywhere—till I and youAt last—dear love, at last!—Are in the dreaming, even as Life and Death,Twin-ministers of the unoriginal Will.
Gullsin an aëry morriceGleam and vanish and gleam . . .The full sea, sleepily basking,Dreams under skies of dream.
Gulls in an aëry morriceCircle and swoop and close . . .Fuller and ever fullerThe rose of the morning blows.
Gulls, in an aëry morriceFrolicking, float and fade . . .O, the way of a bird in the sunshine,The way of a man with a maid!
Somestarlit garden grey with dew,Some chamber flushed with wine and fire,What matters where, so I and youAre worthy our desire?
Behind, a past that scolds and jeersFor ungirt loins and lamps unlit;In front, the unmanageable years,The trap upon the Pit;
Think on the shame of dreams for deeds,The scandal of unnatural strife,The slur upon immortal needs,The treason done to life:
Arise! no more a living lie,And with me quicken and controlSome memory that shall magnifyThe universal Soul.
Undera stagnant sky,Gloom out of gloom uncoiling into gloom,The River, jaded and forlorn,Welters and wanders wearily—wretchedly—on;Yet in and out among the ribsOf the old skeleton bridge, as in the pilesOf some dead lake-built city, full of skulls,Worm-worn, rat-riddled, mouldy with memories,Lingers to babble to a broken tune(Once, O, the unvoiced music of my heart!)So melancholy a soliloquyIt sounds as it might tellThe secret of the unending grief-in-grain,The terror of Time and Change and Death,That wastes this floating, transitory world.
What of the incantationThat forced the huddled shapes on yonder shoreTo take and wear the nightLike a material majesty?That touched the shafts of wavering fireAbout this miserable welter and wash—(River, O River of Journeys, River of Dreams!)—Into long, shining signals from the panesOf an enchanted pleasure-house,Where life and life might live life lost in lifeFor ever and evermore?
O Death! O Change! O Time!Without you, O, the insuperable eyesOf these poor Might-Have-Beens,These fatuous, ineffectual Yesterdays!
Freshfrom his fastnessesWholesome and spacious,The North Wind, the mad huntsman,Halloas on his white houndsOver the grey, roaringReaches and ridges,The forest of ocean,The chace of the world.Hark to the pealOf the pack in full cry,As he thongs them before him,Swarming voluminous,Weltering, wide-wallowing,Till in a ruiningChaos of energy,Hurled on their quarry,They crash into foam!
Old Indefatigable,Time’s right-hand man, the seaLaughs as in joyFrom his millions of wrinkles:Laughs that his destiny,Great with the greatnessOf triumphing order,Shows as a dwarfBy the strength of his heartAnd the might of his hands.
Master of masters,O maker of heroes,Thunder the brave,Irresistible message:—‘Life is worth LivingThrough every grain of it,From the foundationsTo the last edgeOf the cornerstone, death.’
Youplayed and sang a snatch of song,A song that all-too well we knew;But whither had flown the ancient wrong;And was it really I and you?O, since the end of life’s to liveAnd pay in pence the common debt,What should it cost us to forgiveWhose daily task is to forget?
You babbled in the well-known voice—Not new, not new the words you said.You touched me off that famous poise,That old effect, of neck and head.Dear, was it really you and I?In truth the riddle’s ill to read,So many are the deaths we dieBefore we can be dead indeed.
Spaceand dread and the dark—Over a livid stretch of skyCloud-monsters crawling, like a funeral trainOf huge, primeval presencesStooping beneath the weightOf some enormous, rudimentary grief;While in the haunting lonelinessThe far sea waits and wanders with a soundAs of the trailing skirts of Destiny,Passing unseenTo some immitigable endWith her grey henchman, Death.
What larve, what spectre is thisThrilling the wilderness to lifeAs with the bodily shape of Fear?What but a desperate sense,A strong foreboding of those dimInterminable continents, forlornAnd many-silenced, in a duskInviolable utterly, and deadAs the poor dead it huddles and swarms and styesIn hugger-mugger through eternity?
Life—life—let there be life!Better a thousand times the roaring hoursWhen wave and wind,Like the Arch-Murderer in flightFrom the Avenger at his heel,Storm through the desolate fastnessesAnd wild waste places of the world!
Life—give me life until the end,That at the very top of being,The battle-spirit shouting in my blood,Out of the reddest hell of the fightI may be snatched and flungInto the everlasting lull,The immortal, incommunicable dream.
Tree, Old Tree of the Triple CrookAnd the rope of the Black Election,’Tis the faith of the Fool that a race you ruleCan never achieve perfection:So ‘It’s O, for the time of the new SublimeAnd the better than human way,When the Rat (poor beast) shall come to his ownAnd the Wolf shall have his day!’
For Tree, Old Tree of the Triple BeamAnd the power of provocation,You have cockered the Brute with your dreadful fruitTill your fruit is mere stupration:And ‘It’s how should we rise to be pure and wise,And how can we choose but fall,So long as the Hangman makes us dread,And the Noose floats free for all?’
So Tree, Old Tree of the Triple CoignAnd the trick there’s no recalling,They will haggle and hew till they hack you throughAnd at last they lay you sprawling:When ‘Hey! for the hour of the race in flowerAnd the long good-bye to sin!’And for the lack the fires of Hell gone outOf the fuel to keep them in!’
But Tree, Old Tree of the Triple BoughAnd the ghastly Dreams that tend you,Your growth began with the life of Man,And only his death can end you.They may tug in line at your hempen twine,They may flourish with axe and saw;But your taproot drinks of the Sacred SpringsIn the living rock of Law.
And Tree, Old Tree of the Triple Fork,When the spent sun reels and blundersDown a welkin lit with the flare of the PitAs it seethes in spate and thunders,Stern on the glare of the tortured airYour lines august shall gloom,And your master-beam be the last thing whelmedIn the ruining roar of Doom.
Whenyou wake in your crib,You, an inch of experience—Vaulted aboutWith the wonder of darkness;Wailing and strivingTo reach from your feeblenessSomething you feelWill be good to and cherish you,Something you knowAnd can rest upon blindly:O, then a hand(Your mother’s, your mother’s!)By the fall of its fingersAll knowledge, all power to you,Out of the dreary,Discouraging strangenessesComes to and masters you,Takes you, and lovinglyWoos you and soothes youBack, as you cling to it,Back to some comfortingCorner of sleep.
So you wake in your bed,Having lived, having loved;But the shadows are there,And the world and its kingdomsIncredibly faded;And you group through the TerrorAbove you and underFor the light, for the warmth,The assurance of life;But the blasts are ice-born,And your heart is nigh burstWith the weight of the gloomAnd the stress of your strangledAnd desperate endeavour:Sudden a hand—Mother, O Mother!—God at His best to you,Out of the roaring,Impossible silences,Falls on and urges you,Mightily, tenderly,Forth, as you clutch at it,Forth to the infinitePeace of the Grave.
October1891
O,Timeand Change, they range and rangeFrom sunshine round to thunder!—They glance and go as the great winds blow,And the best of our dreams drive under:For Time and Change estrange, estrange—And, now they have looked and seen us,O, we that were dear, we are all-too nearWith the thick of the world between us.
O, Death and Time, they chime and chimeLike bells at sunset falling!—They end the song, they right the wrong,They set the old echoes calling:For Death and Time bring on the primeOf God’s own chosen weather,And we lie in the peace of the Great ReleaseAs once in the grass together.
February1891
Theshadow of Dawn;Stillness and stars and over-mastering dreamsOf Life and Death and Sleep;Heard over gleaming flats, the old, unchanging soundOf the old, unchanging Sea.
My soul and yours—O, hand in hand let us fare forth, two ghosts,Into the ghostliness,The infinite and abounding solitudes,Beyond—O, beyond!—beyond . . .
Here in the porchUpon the multitudinous silencesOf the kingdoms of the grave,We twain are you and I—two ghosts OmnipotenceCan touch no more . . . no more!
Whenthe wind storms by with a shout, and the stern sea-cavesRejoice in the tramp and the roar of onsetting waves,Then, then, it comes home to the heart that the top of lifeIs the passion that burns the blood in the act of strife—Till you pity the dead down there in their quiet graves.
But to drowse with the fen behind and the fog before,When the rain-rot spreads and a tame sea mumbles the shore,Not to adventure, none to fight, no right and no wrong,Sons of the Sword heart-sick for a stave of your sire’s old song—O, you envy the blesséd death that can live no more!
Treesand the menace of night;Then a long, lonely, leaden mereBacked by a desolate fell,As by a spectral battlement; and then,Low-brooding, interpenetrating all,A vast, gray, listless, inexpressive sky,So beggared, so incredibly bereftOf starlight and the song of racing worlds,It might have bellied down upon the VoidWhere as in terror Light was beginning to be.
Hist! In the trees fulfilled of night(Night and the wretchedness of the sky)Is it the hurry of the rain?Or the noise of a drive of the Dead,Streaming before the irresistible WillThrough the strange dusk of this, the Debateable LandBetween their place and ours?
Like the forgetfulnessOf the work-a-day world made visible,A mist falls from the melancholy sky.A messenger from some lost and loving soul,Hopeless, far wandered, dazedHere in the provinces of life,A great white moth fades miserably past.
Thro’ the trees in the strange dead night,Under the vast dead sky,Forgetting and forgot, a drift of DeadSets to the mystic mere, the phantom fell,And the unimagined vastitudes beyond.
Herethey trysted, here they strayed,In the leafage dewy and boon,Many a man and many a maid,And the morn was merry June.‘Death is fleet, Life is sweet,’Sang the blackbird in the may;And the hour with flying feet,While they dreamed, was yesterday.
Many a maid and many a manFound the leafage close and boon;Many a destiny began—O, the morn was merry June!Dead and gone, dead and gone,(Hark the blackbird in the may!),Life and Death went hurrying on,Cheek on cheek—and where were they?
Dust on dust engendering dustIn the leafage fresh and boon,Man and maid fulfil their trust—Still the morn turns merry June.Mother Life, Father Death(O, the blackbird in the may!),Each the other’s breath for breath,Fleet the times of the world away.
Notto the staring Day,For all the importunate questionings he pursuesIn his big, violent voice,Shall those mild things of bulk and multitude,The Trees—God’s sentinelsOver His gift of live, life-giving air,Yield of their huge, unutterable selves.Midsummer-manifold, each oneVoluminous, a labyrinth of life,They keep their greenest musings, and the dim dreamsThat haunt their leafier privacies,Dissembled, baffling the random gapeseed stillWith blank full-faces, or the innocent guileOf laughter flickering back from shine to shade,And disappearances of homing birds,And frolicsome freaksOf little boughs that frisk with little boughs.
But at the wordOf the ancient, sacerdotal Night,Night of the many secrets, whose effect—Transfiguring, hierophantic, dread—Themselves alone may fully apprehend,They tremble and are changed.In each, the uncouth individual soulLooms forth and gloomsEssential, and, their bodily presencesTouched with inordinate significance,Wearing the darkness like the liveryOf some mysterious and tremendous guild,They brood—they menace—they appal;Or the anguish of prophecy tears them, and they wringWild hands of warning in the faceOf some inevitable advance of the doom;Or, each to the other bending, beckoning, signingAs in some monstrous market-place,They pass the news, these Gossips of the Prime,In that old speech their forefathersLearned on the lawns of Eden, ere they heardThe troubled voice of EveNaming the wondering folk of Paradise.
Your sense is sealed, or you should hear them tellThe tale of their dim life, with allIts compost of experience: how the SunSpreads them their daily feast,Sumptuous, of light, firing them as with wine;Of the old Moon’s fitful solicitudeAnd those mild messages the StarsDescend in silver silences and dews;Or what the sweet-breathing West,Wanton with wading in the swirl of the wheat,Said, and their leafage laughed;And how the wet-winged Angel of the RainCame whispering . . . whispering; and the gifts of the Year—The sting of the stirring sapUnder the wizardry of the young-eyed Spring,Their summer amplitudes of pomp,Their rich autumnal melancholy, and the shrill,Embittered housewiferyOf the lean Winter: all such things,And with them all the goodness of the Master,Whose right hand blesses with increase and life,Whose left hand honours with decay and death.
Thus under the constraint of NightThese gross and simple creatures,Each in his scores of rings, which rings are years,A servant of the Will!And God, the Craftsman, as He walksThe floor of His workshop, hearkens, full of cheerIn thus accomplishingThe aims of His miraculous artistry.
Whathave I done for you,England, my England?What is there I would not do,England, my own?With your glorious eyes austere,As the Lord were walking near,Whispering terrible things and dearAs the Song on your bugles blown,England—Round the world on your bugles blown!
Where shall the watchful Sun,England, my England,Match the master-work you’ve done,England, my own?When shall he rejoice agenSuch a breed of mighty menAs come forward, one to ten,To the Song on your bugles blown,England—Down the years on your bugles blown?
Ever the faith endures,England, my England:—‘Take and break us: we are yours,‘England, my own!‘Life is good, and joy runs high‘Between English earth and sky:‘Death is death; but we shall die‘To the Song on your bugles blown,‘England—‘To the stars on your bugles blown!
They call you proud and hard,England, my England:You with worlds to watch and ward,England, my own!You whose mailed hand keeps the keysOf such teeming destiniesYou could know nor dread nor easeWere the Song on your bugles blown,England,Round the Pit on your bugles blown!
Mother of Ships whose might,England, my England,Is the fierce old Sea’s delight,England, my own,Chosen daughter of the Lord,Spouse-in-Chief of the ancient sword,There’s the menace of the WordIn the Song on your bugles blown,England—Out of heaven on your bugles blown!
These,to you now,O,more than ever now—Now that the Ancient EnemyHas passed,and we,we two that are one,have seenA piece of perfect LifeTurn to so ravishing a shape of DeathThe Arch-Discomforter might well have smiledIn pity and pride,Even as he bore his lovely and innocent spoilFrom those home-kingdoms he left desolate!
Poor windlestrawsOn the great,sullen,roaring pool of TimeAnd Chance and Change,I know!But they are yours,as I am,till we attainThat end for which me make,we two that are one:A little,exquisite GhostBetween us,smiling with the serenest eyesSeen in this world,and calling,calling stillIn that clear voice whose infinite subtletiesOf sweetness,thrilling back across the grave,Break the poor heart to hear:—‘Come, Dadsie, come!Mama, how long—how long!’
July1897.