Herlittle face is like a walnut shellWith wrinkling lines; her soft, white hair adornsHer withered brows in quaint, straight curls, like horns;And all about her clings an old, sweet smell.Prim is her gown and quakerlike her shawl.Well might her bonnets have been born on her.Can you conceive a Fairy GodmotherThe subject of a strong religious call?In snow or shine, from bed to bed she runs,All twinkling smiles and texts and pious tales,Her mittened hands, that ever give or pray,Bearing a sheaf of tracts, a bag of buns:A wee old maid that sweeps the Bridegroom’s way,Strong in a cheerful trust that never fails.
‘Talkof pluck!’ pursued the Sailor,Set at euchre on his elbow,‘I was on the wharf at Charleston,Just ashore from off the runner.
‘It was grey and dirty weather,And I heard a drum go rolling,Rub-a-dubbing in the distance,Awful dour-like and defiant.
‘In and out among the cotton,Mud, and chains, and stores, and anchors,Tramped a squad of battered scarecrows—Poor old Dixie’s bottom dollar!
‘Some had shoes, but all had rifles,Them that wasn’t bald was beardless,And the drum was rollingDixie,And they stepped to it like men, sir!
‘Rags and tatters, belts and bayonets,On they swung, the drum a-rolling,Mum and sour. It looked like fighting,And they meant it too, by thunder!’
It’sthe Spring.Earth has conceived, and her bosom,Teeming with summer, is glad.
Vistas of change and adventure,Thro’ the green landThe grey roads go beckoning and winding,Peopled with wains, and melodiousWith harness-bells jangling:Jangling and twangling rough rhythmsTo the slow march of the stately, great horsesWhistled and shouted along.
White fleets of cloud,Argosies heavy with fruitfulness,Sail the blue peacefully. Green flame the hedgerows.Blackbirds are bugling, and white in wet windsSway the tall poplars.Pageants of colour and fragrance,Pass the sweet meadows, and viewlessWalks the mild spirit of May,Visibly blessing the world.
O, the brilliance of blossoming orchards!O, the savour and thrill of the woods,When their leafage is stirredBy the flight of the Angel of Rain!Loud lows the steer; in the fallowsRooks are alert; and the brooksGurgle and tinkle and trill. Thro’ the gloamings,Under the rare, shy stars,Boy and girl wander,Dreaming in darkness and dew.
It’s the Spring.A sprightliness feeble and squalidWakes in the ward, and I sicken,Impotent, winter at heart.
Downthe quiet eve,Thro’ my window with the sunsetPipes to me a distant organFoolish ditties;
And, as when you changePictures in a magic lantern,Books, beds, bottles, floor, and ceilingFade and vanish,
And I’m well once more . . .August flares adust and torrid,But my heart is full of AprilSap and sweetness.
In the quiet eveI am loitering, longing, dreaming . . .Dreaming, and a distant organPipes me ditties.
I can see the shop,I can smell the sprinkled pavement,Where she serves—her chestnut chignonThrills my senses!
O, the sight and scent,Wistful eve and perfumed pavement!In the distance pipes an organ . . .The sensation
Comes to me anew,And my spirit for a momentThro’ the music breathes the blessèdAirs of London.
Staringcorpselike at the ceiling,See his harsh, unrazored features,Ghastly brown against the pillow,And his throat—so strangely bandaged!
Lack of work and lack of victuals,A debauch of smuggled whisky,And his children in the workhouseMade the world so black a riddle
That he plunged for a solution;And, although his knife was edgeless,He was sinking fast towards one,When they came, and found, and saved him.
Stupid now with shame and sorrow,In the night I hear him sobbing.But sometimes he talks a little.He has told me all his troubles.
In his broad face, tanned and bloodless,White and wild his eyeballs glisten;And his smile, occult and tragic,Yet so slavish, makes you shudder!
Thin-legged, thin-chested, slight unspeakably,Neat-footed and weak-fingered: in his face—Lean, large-boned, curved of beak, and touched with race,Bold-lipped, rich-tinted, mutable as the sea,The brown eyes radiant with vivacity—There shines a brilliant and romantic grace,A spirit intense and rare, with trace on traceOf passion and impudence and energy.Valiant in velvet, light in ragged luck,Most vain, most generous, sternly critical,Buffoon and poet, lover and sensualist:A deal of Ariel, just a streak of Puck,Much Antony, of Hamlet most of all,And something of the Shorter-Catechist.
Laughsthe happy April mornThro’ my grimy, little window,And a shaft of sunshine pushesThro’ the shadows in the square.
Dogs are tracing thro’ the grass,Crows are cawing round the chimneys,In and out among the washingGoes the West at hide-and-seek.
Loud and cheerful clangs the bell.Here the nurses troop to breakfast.Handsome, ugly, all are women . . .O, the Spring—the Spring—the Spring!
Atthe barren heart of midnight,When the shadow shuts and opensAs the loud flames pulse and flutter,I can hear a cistern leaking.
Dripping, dropping, in a rhythm,Rough, unequal, half-melodious,Like the measures aped from natureIn the infancy of music;
Like the buzzing of an insect,Still, irrational, persistent . . .I must listen, listen, listenIn a passion of attention;
Till it taps upon my heartstrings,And my very life goes dripping,Dropping, dripping, drip-drip-dropping,In the drip-drop of the cistern.
Carryme outInto the wind and the sunshine,Into the beautiful world.
O, the wonder, the spell of the streets!The stature and strength of the horses,The rustle and echo of footfalls,The flat roar and rattle of wheels!A swift tram floats huge on us . . .It’s a dream?The smell of the mud in my nostrilsBlows brave—like a breath of the sea!
As of old,Ambulant, undulant drapery,Vaguery and strangely provocative,Fluttersd and beckons. O, yonder—Is it?—the gleam of a stocking!Sudden, a spireWedged in the mist! O, the houses,The long lines of lofty, grey houses,Cross-hatched with shadow and light!These are the streets . . .Each is an avenue leadingWhither I will!
Free . . . !Dizzy, hysterical, faint,I sit, and the carriage rolls on with meInto the wonderful world.
The Old Infirmary,Edinburgh, 1873–75
Doyou rememberThat afternoon—that Sunday afternoon!—When, as the kirks were ringing in,And the grey city teemedWith Sabbath feelings and aspects,Lewis—ourLewisthen,Now the whole world’s—and you,Young, yet in shape most like an elder, came,Laden withBalzacs(Big, yellow books, quite impudently French),The first of many timesTo that transformed back-kitchen where I laySo long, so many centuries—Or years is it!—ago?
DearCharles, since thenWe have been friends,Lewisand you and I,(How good it sounds, ‘Lewisand you and I!’):Such friends, I like to think,That in us three,Lewisand me and you,Is something of that gallant dreamWhich oldDumas—the generous, the humane,The seven-and-seventy times to be forgiven!—Dreamed for a blessing to the race,The immortalMusketeers.
OurAthosrests—the wise, the kind,The liberal and august, his fault atoned,Rests in the crowded yardThere at the west of Princes Street. We three—You, I, andLewis!—still afoot,Are still together, and our lives,In chime so long, may keep(God bless the thought!)Unjangled till the end.
W. E. H.
Chiswick,March1888
(ToRudyard Kipling)
1890
The SwordSinging—The voice of the Sword from the heart of the SwordClanging imperiousForth from Time’s battlementsHis ancient and triumphing Song.
In the beginning,Ere God inspired HimselfInto the clay thingThumbed to His image,The vacant, the naked shellSoon to be Man:Thoughtful He pondered it,Prone there and impotent,Fragile, invitingAttack and discomfiture;Then, with a smile—As He heard in the ThunderThat laughed over EdenThe voice of the Trumpet,The iron Beneficence,Calling his doomsTo the Winds of the world—Stooping, He drewOn the sand with His fingerA shape for a signOf his way to the eyesThat in wonder should waken,For a proof of His willTo the breaking intelligence.That was the birth of me:I am the Sword.
Bleak and lean, grey and cruel,Short-hilted, long shafted,I froze into steel;And the blood of my elder,His hand on the hafts of me,Sprang like a waveIn the wind, as the senseOf his strength grew to ecstasy;Glowed like a coalIn the throat of the furnace;As he knew me and named meThe War-Thing, the Comrade,Father of honourAnd giver of kingship,The fame-smith, the song-master,Bringer of womenOn fire at his handsFor the pride of fulfilment,Priest(saith the Lord)Of his marriage with victoryHo! then, the Trumpet,Handmaid of heroes,Calling the peersTo the place of espousals!Ho! then, the splendourAnd glare of my ministry,Clothing the earthWith a livery of lightnings!Ho! then, the musicOf battles in onset,And ruining armours,And God’s gift returningIn fury to God!Thrilling and keenAs the song of the winter stars,Ho! then, the soundOf my voice, the implacableAngel of Destiny!—I am the Sword.
Heroes, my children,Follow, O, follow me!Follow, exultingIn the great light that breaksFrom the sacred Companionship!Thrust through the fatuous,Thrust through the fungous brood,Spawned in my shadowAnd gross with my gift!Thrust through, and hearkenO, hark, to the Trumpet,The Virgin of Battles,Calling, still calling youInto the Presence,Sons of the Judgment,Pure wafts of the Will!Edged to annihilate,Hilted with government,Follow, O, follow me,Till the waste placesAll the grey globe overOoze, as the honeycombDrips, with the sweetnessDistilled of my strength,And, teeming in peaceThrough the wrath of my coming,They give back in beautyThe dread and the anguishThey had of me visitant!Follow, O follow, then,Heroes, my harvesters!Where the tall grain is ripeThrust in your sickles!Stripped and adustIn a stubble of empire,Scything and bindingThe full sheaves of sovranty:Thus, O, thus gloriously,Shall you fulfil yourselves!Thus, O, thus mightily,Show yourselves sons of mine—Yea, and win grace of me:I am the Sword!
I am the feast-maker:Hark, through a noiseOf the screaming of eagles,Hark how the Trumpet,The mistress of mistresses,Calls, silver-throatedAnd stern, where the tablesAre spread, and the mealOf the Lord is in hand!Driving the darkness,Even as the bannersAnd spears of the Morning;Sifting the nations,The slag from the metal,The waste and the weakFrom the fit and the strong;Fighting the brute,The abysmal Fecundity;Checking the gross,Multitudinous blunders,The groping, the purblindExcesses in serviceOf the Womb universal,The absolute drudge;Firing the charactryCarved on the World,The miraculous gemIn the seal-ring that burnsOn the hand of the Master—Yea! and authorityFlames through the dim,Unappeasable GrislinessProne down the nethermostChasms of the Void!—Clear singing, clean slicing;Sweet spoken, soft finishing;Making death beautiful,Life but a coinTo be staked in the pastimeWhose playing is moreThan the transfer of being;Arch-anarch, chief builder,Prince and evangelist,I am the Will of God:I am the Sword.
The SwordSinging—The voice of the Sword from the heart of the SwordClanging majestical,As from the starry-stairedCourts of the primal Supremacy,His high,irresistible song.
(ToElizabeth Robins Pennell)
1893
‘O mes chèresMille et Une Nuits!’—Fantasio.
‘O mes chèresMille et Une Nuits!’—Fantasio.
Onceon a timeThere was a little boy: a master-mageBy virtue of a BookOf magic—O, so magical it filledHis life with visionary pompsProcessional! And PowersPassed with him where he passed. And ThronesAnd Dominations, glaived and plumed and mailed,Thronged in the criss-cross streets,The palaces pell-mell with playing-fields,Domes, cloisters, dungeons, caverns, tents, arcades,Of the unseen, silent City, in his soulPavilioned jealously, and hidAs in the dusk, profound,Green stillnesses of some enchanted mere.—
I shut mine eyes . . . And lo!A flickering snatch of memory that floatsUpon the face of a pool of darkness fiveAnd thirty dead years deep,Antic in girlish broideriesAnd skirts and silly shoes with strapsAnd a broad-ribanded leghorn, he walksPlain in the shadow of a church(St. Michael’s: in whose brazen callTo curfew his first wails of wrath were whelmed),Sedate for all his hasteTo be at home; and, nestled in his arm,Inciting still to quiet and solitude,Boarded in sober drab,With small, square, agitating cutsLet in a-top of the double-columned, close,Quakerlike print, a Book! . . .What but that blessed briefOf what is gallantest and bestIn all the full-shelved Libraries of Romance?The Book of rocs,Sandalwood, ivory, turbans, ambergris,Cream-tarts, and lettered apes, and calendars,And ghouls, and genies—O, so hugeThey might have overed the tall Minster TowerHands down, as schoolboys take a post!In truth, the Book of Camaralzaman,Schemselnihar and Sindbad, ScheherezadeThe peerless, Bedreddin, Badroulbadour,Cairo and Serendib and Candahar,And Caspian, and the dim, terrific bulk—Ice-ribbed, fiend-visited, isled in spells and storms—Of Kaf! . . . That centre of miracles,The sole, unparalleled Arabian Nights!
Old friends I had a-many—kindly and grimFamiliars, cronies quaintAnd goblin! Never a Wood but housedSome morrice of dainty dapperlings. No BrookBut had his nunneryOf green-haired, silvry-curving sprites,To cabin in his grots, and paceHis lilied margents. Every lone HillsideMight open upon Elf-Land. Every StalkThat curled about a Bean-stick was of the breedOf that live ladder by whose delicate rungsYou climbed beyond the clouds, and foundThe Farm-House where the Ogre, gorgedAnd drowsy, from his great oak chair,Among the flitches and pewters at the fire,Called for his Faëry Harp. And in it flew,And, perching on the kitchen table, sangJocund and jubilant, with a soundOf those gay, golden-vowered madrigalsThe shy thrush at mid-MayFlutes from wet orchards flushed with the triumphing dawn;Or blackbirds rioting as they listened still,In old-world woodlands rapt with an old-world spring,For Pan’s own whistle, savage and rich and lewd,And mocked him call for call!
I could not passThe half-door where the cobbler sat in viewNor figure me the wizen Leprechaun,In square-cut, faded reds and buckle-shoes,Bent at his work in the hedge-side, and knowJust how he tapped his brogue, and twitchedHis wax-end this and that way, both with wristsAnd elbows. In the rich June fields,Where the ripe clover drew the bees,And the tall quakers trembled, and the West WindLolled his half-holiday awayBeside me lolling and lounging through my own,’Twas good to follow the Miller’s Youngest SonOn his white horse along the leafy lanes;For at his stirrup linked and ran,Not cynical and trapesing, as he lopedFrom wall to wall above the espaliers,But in the bravest topsThat market-town, a town of tops, could show:Bold, subtle, adventurous, his tailA banner flaunted in disdainOf human stratagems and shifts:King over All the Catlands, present and pastAnd future, that moustachedArtificer of fortunes, Puss-in-Boots!Or Bluebeard’s Closet, with its plenishingOf meat-hooks, sawdust, blood,And wives that hung like fresh-dressed carcases—Odd-fangled, most a butcher’s, partA faëry chamber hazily seenAnd hazily figured—on dark afternoonsAnd windy nights was visiting of the best.Then, too, the pelt of hoofsOut in the roaring darkness toldOf Herne the Hunter in his antlered helmGalloping, as with despatches from the Pit,Between his hell-born Hounds.And Rip Van Winkle . . . often I lurked to hear,Outside the long, low timbered, tarry wall,The mutter and rumble of the trolling bowlsDown the lean plank, before they fluttered the pins;For, listening, I could help him playHis wonderful game,In those blue, booming hills, with MarinersRefreshed from kegs not coopered in this our world.
But what were these so near,So neighbourly fancies to the spell that broughtThe run of Ali Baba’s CaveJust for the saying ‘Open Sesame,’With gold to measure, peck by peck,In round, brown wooden stoupsYou borrowed at the chandler’s? . . . Or one timeMade you Aladdin’s friend at school,Free of his Garden of Jewels, Ring and LampIn perfect trim? . . . Or Ladies, fairFor all the embrowning scars in their white breastsWent labouring under some dread ordinance,Which made them whip, and bitterly cry the while,Strange Curs that cried as they,Till there was never a Black Bitch of allYour consorting but might have goneSpell-driven miserably for crimesDone in the pride of womanhood and desire . . .Or at the ghostliest altitudes of night,While you lay wondering and acold,Your sense was fearfully purged; and soonQueen Labé, abominable and dear,Rose from your side, opened the Box of Doom,Scattered the yellow powder (which I sawLike sulphur at the Docks in bulk),And muttered certain words you could not hear;And there! a living stream,The brook you bathed in, with its weeds and flagsAnd cresses, glittered and sangOut of the hearthrug over the nakedness,Fair-scrubbed and decent, of your bedroom floor! . . .
I was—how many a time!—That Second Calendar, Son of a King,On whom ’twas vehemently enjoined,Pausing at one mysterious door,To pry no closer, but content his soulWith his kind Forty. Yet I could not restFor idleness and ungovernable Fate.And the Black Horse, which fed on sesame(That wonder-working word!),Vouchsafed his back to me, and spread his vans,And soaring, soaring onFrom air to air, came charging to the groundSheer, like a lark from the midsummer clouds,And, shaking me out of the saddle, where I sprawledFlicked at me with his tail,And left me blinded, miserable, distraught(Even as I was in deed,When doctors came, and odious things were doneOn my poor tortured eyesWith lancets; or some evil acid stungAnd wrung them like hot sand,And desperately from room to roomFumble I must my dark, disconsolate way),To get to Bagdad how I might. But thereI met with Merry Ladies. O you three—Safie, Amine, Zobëidé—when my heartForgets you all shall be forgot!And so we supped, we and the rest,On wine and roasted lamb, rose-water, dates,Almonds, pistachios, citrons. And HarounLaughed out of his lordly beardOn Giaffar and Mesrour (Iknew the ThreeFor all their Mossoul habits). And outsideThe Tigris, flowing swiftLike Severn bend for bend, twinkled and gleamedWith broken and wavering shapes of stranger stars;The vast, blue nightWas murmurous with peris’ plumesAnd the leathern wings of genies; words of powerWere whispering; and old fishermen,Casting their nets with prayer, might draw to shoreDead loveliness: or a prodigy in scalesWorth in the Caliph’s Kitchen pieces of gold:Or copper vessels, stopped with lead,Wherein some Squire of Eblis watched and railed,In durance under potent charactryGraven by the seal of Solomon the King . . .
Then, as the Book was glassedIn Life as in some olden mirror’s quaint,Bewildering angles, so would LifeFlash light on light back on the Book; and bothWere changed. Once in a house decayedFrom better days, harbouring an errant show(For all its stories of dry-rotWere filled with gruesome visitants in wax,Inhuman, hushed, ghastly with Painted Eyes),I wandered; and no living soulWas nearer than the pay-box; and I staredUpon them staring—staring. Till at last,Three sets of rafters from the streets,I strayed upon a mildewed, rat-run room,With the two Dancers, horrible and obscene,Guarding the door: and there, in a bedroom-set,Behind a fence of faded crimson cords,With an aspect of frillsAnd dimities and dishonoured privacyThat made you hanker and hesitate to look,A Woman with her litter of Babes—all slain,All in their nightgowns, all with Painted EyesStaring—still staring; so that I turned and ranAs for my neck, but in the streetTook breath. The same, it seemed,And yet not all the same, I was to find,As I went up! For afterwards,Whenas I went my round alone—All day alone—in long, stern, silent streets,Where I might stretch my hand and takeWhatever I would: still there were Shapes of Stone,Motionless, lifelike, frightening—for the WrathHad smitten them; but they watched,This by her melons and figs, that by his ringsAnd chains and watches, with the hideous gaze,The Painted Eyes insufferable,Now, of those grisly images; and IPursued my best-belovéd quest,Thrilled with a novel and delicious fear.So the night fell—with never a lamplighter;And through the Palace of the KingI groped among the echoes, and I feltThat they were there,Dreadfully there, the Painted staring Eyes,Hall after hall . . . Till lo! from farA Voice! And in a little whileTwo tapers burning! And the Voice,Heard in the wondrous Word of God, was—whose?Whose but Zobëidé’s,The lady of my heart, like meA True Believer, and like meAn outcast thousands of leagues beyond the pale! . . .
Or, sailing to the IslesOf Khaledan, I spied one evenfallA black blotch in the sunset; and it grewSwiftly . . . and grew. Tearing their beards,The sailors wept and prayed; but the grave ship,Deep laden with spiceries and pearls, went mad,Wrenched the long tiller out of the steersman’s hand,And, turning broadside on,As the most iron would, was haled and suckedNearer, and nearer yet;And, all awash, with horrible lurching leapsRushed at that Portent, casting a shadow nowThat swallowed sea and sky; and then,Anchors and nails and boltsFlew screaming out of her, and with clang on clang,A noise of fifty stithies, caught at the sidesOf the Magnetic Mountain; and she lay,A broken bundle of firewood, strown piecemealAbout the waters; and her crewPassed shrieking, one by one; and I was leftTo drown. All the long night I swam;But in the morning, O, the smiling coastTufted with date-trees, meadowlike,Skirted with shelving sands! And a great waveCast me ashore; and I was saved alive.So, giving thanks to God, I dried my clothes,And, faring inland, in a desert placeI stumbled on an iron ring—The fellow of fifty built into the Quays:When, scenting a trap-door,I dug, and dug; until my biggest bladeStuck into wood. And then,The flight of smooth-hewn, easy-falling stairs,Sunk in the naked rock! The cool, clean vault,So neat with niche on niche it might have beenOur beer-cellar but for the rowsOf brazen urns (like monstrous chemist’s jars)Full to the wide, squat throatsWith gold-dust, but a-topA layer of pickled-walnut-looking thingsI knew for olives! And far, O, far away,The Princess of China languished! Far awayWas marriage, with a Vizier and a ChiefOf Eunuchs and the privilegeOf going out at nightTo play—unkenned, majestical, secure—Where the old, brown, friendly river shapedLike Tigris shore for shore! Haply a GhoulSat in the churchyard under a frightened moon,A thighbone in his fist, and glaredAt supper with a Lady: she who tookHer rice with tweezers grain by grain.Or you might stumble—there by the iron gatesOf the Pump Room—underneath the limes—Upon Bedreddin in his shirt and drawers,Just as the civil Genie laid him down.Or those red-curtained panes,Whence a tame cornet tenored it throatilyOf beer-pots and spittoons and new long pipes,Might turn a caravansery’s, whereinYou found Noureddin Ali, loftily drunk,And that fair Persian, bathed in tears,You’d not have given awayFor all the diamonds in the Vale PerilousYou had that dark and disleaved afternoonEscaped on a roc’s claw,Disguised like Sindbad—but in Christmas beef!And all the blissful whileThe schoolboy satchel at your hipWas such a bulse of gems as should amazeGrey-whiskered chapmen drawnFrom over Caspian: yea, the Chief JewellersOf Tartary and the bazaars,Seething with traffic, of enormous Ind.—
Thus cried, thus called aloud, to the child heartThe magian East: thus the child eyesSpelled out the wizard message by the lightOf the sober, workaday hoursThey saw, week in week out, pass, and still passIn the sleepy Minster City, folded kindIn ancient Severn’s arm,Amongst her water-meadows and her docks,Whose floating populace of ships—Galliots and luggers, light-heeled brigantines,Bluff barques and rake-hell fore-and-afters—broughtTo her very doorsteps and geraniumsThe scents of the World’s End; the callsThat may not be gainsaid to rise and rideLike fire on some high errand of the race;The irresistible appealsFor comradeship that soundSteadily from the irresistible sea.Thus the East laughed and whispered, and the tale,Telling itself anewIn terms of living, labouring life,Took on the colours, busked it in the wearOf life that lived and laboured; and Romance,The Angel-Playmate, raining downHis golden influencesOn all I saw, and all I dreamed and did,Walked with me arm in arm,Or left me, as one bediademed with strawsAnd bits of glass, to gladden at my heartWho had the gift to seek and feel and findHis fiery-hearted presence everywhere.Even so dear Hesper, bringer of all good things,Sends the same silver dewsOf happiness down her dim, delighted skiesOn some poor collier-hamlet—(mound on moundOf sifted squalor; here a soot-throated stalkSullenly smoking over a rowOf flat-faced hovels; black in the gritty airA web of rails and wheels and beams; with stringsOf hurtling, tipping trams)—As on the amorous nightingalesAnd roses of Shíraz, or the walls and towersOf Samarcand—the Ineffable—whence you espyThe splendour of Ginnistan’s embattled spears,Like listed lightnings.Samarcand!That name of names! That star-vaned belvedereBuilded against the Chambers of the South!That outpost on the Infinite!And behold!Questing therefrom, you knew not what wild tideMight overtake you: for one fringe,One suburb, is stablished on firm earth; but oneFloats founded vagueIn lubberlands delectable—isles of palmAnd lotus, fortunate mains, far-shimmering seas,The promise of wistful hills—The shining, shifting Sovranties of Dream.
1877–1888
‘The tune of the time.’—Hamlet,concerningOsric
‘The tune of the time.’—Hamlet,concerningOsric
ToW. A.
WasI a Samurai renowned,Two-sworded, fierce, immense of bow?A histrion angular and profound?A priest? a porter?—Child, althoughI have forgotten clean, I knowThat in the shade of Fujisan,What time the cherry-orchards blow,I loved you once in old Japan.
As here you loiter, flowing-gownedAnd hugely sashed, with pins a-rowYour quaint head as with flamelets crowned,Demure, inviting—even so,When merry maids in MiyakoTo feel the sweet o’ the year began,And green gardens to overflow,I loved you once in old Japan.
Clear shine the hills; the rice-fields roundTwo cranes are circling; sleepy and slow,A blue canal the lake’s blue boundBreaks at the bamboo bridge; and lo!Touched with the sundown’s spirit and glow,I see you turn, with flirted fan,Against the plum-tree’s bloomy snow . . .I loved you once in old Japan!
Envoy
Dear, ’twas a dozen lives ago;But that I was a lucky manThe Toyokuni here will show:I loved you—once—in old Japan.
I. M.Thomas Edward Brown(1829–1896)
Springat her height on a morn at prime,Sails that laugh from a flying squall,Pomp of harmony, rapture of rhyme—Youth is the sign of them, one and all.Winter sunsets and leaves that fall,An empty flagon, a folded page,A tumble-down wheel, a tattered ball—These are a type of the world of Age.
Bells that clash in a gaudy chime,Swords that clatter in onsets tall,The words that ring and the fames that climb—Youth is the sign of them, one and all.Hymnals old in a dusty stall,A bald, blind bird in a crazy cage,The scene of a faded festival—These are a type of the world of Age.
Hours that strut as the heirs of time,Deeds whose rumour’s a clarion-call,Songs where the singers their souls sublime—Youth is the sign of them, one and all.A staff that rests in a nook of wall,A reeling battle, a rusted gage,The chant of a nearing funeral—These are a type of the world of Age.
Envoy
Struggle and turmoil, revel and brawl—Youth is the sign of them, one and all.A smouldering hearth and a silent stage—These are a type of the world of Age.
ToW. H.
Witha ripple of leaves and a tinkle of streamsThe full world rolls in a rhythm of praise,And the winds are one with the clouds and beams—Midsummer days! Midsummer days!The dusk grows vast; in a purple haze,While the West from a rapture of sunset rights,Faint stars their exquisite lamps upraise—Midsummer nights! O midsummer nights!
The wood’s green heart is a nest of dreams,The lush grass thickens and springs and sways,The rathe wheat rustles, the landscape gleams—Midsummer days! Midsummer days!In the stilly fields, in the stilly ways,All secret shadows and mystic lights,Late lovers murmur and linger and gaze—Midsummer nights! O midsummer nights!
There’s a music of bells from the trampling teams,Wild skylarks hover, the gorses blaze,The rich, ripe rose as with incense steams—Midsummer days! Midsummer days!A soul from the honeysuckle strays,And the nightingale as from prophet heightsSings to the Earth of her million Mays—Midsummer nights! O midsummer nights!
Envoy
And it’s O, for my dear and the charm that stays—Midsummer days! Midsummer days!It’s O, for my Love and the dark that plights—Midsummer nights! O midsummer nights!
I. M.Edward John Henley(1861–1898)
Whereare the passions they essayed,And where the tears they made to flow?Where the wild humours they portrayedFor laughing worlds to see and know?Othello’s wrath and Juliet’s woe?Sir Peter’s whims and Timon’s gall?And Millamant and Romeo?Into the night go one and all.
Where are the braveries, fresh or frayed?The plumes, the armours—friend and foe?The cloth of gold, the rare brocade,The mantles glittering to and fro?The pomp, the pride, the royal show?The cries of war and festival?The youth, the grace, the charm, the glow?Into the night go one and all.
The curtain falls, the play is played:The Beggar packs beside the Beau;The Monarch troops, and troops the Maid;The Thunder huddles with the Snow.Where are the revellers high and low?The clashing swords? The lover’s call?The dancers gleaming row on row?Into the night go one and all.
Envoy
Prince, in one common overthrowThe Hero tumbles with the Thrall:As dust that drives, as straws that blow,Into the night go one and all.
ToC. M.
Fountainsthat frisk and sprinkleThe moss they overspill;Pools that the breezes crinkle;The wheel beside the mill,With its wet, weedy frill;Wind-shadows in the wheat;A water-cart in the street;The fringe of foam that girdsAn islet’s ferneries;A green sky’s minor thirds—To live, I think of these!
Of ice and glass the tinkle,Pellucid, silver-shrill;Peaches without a wrinkle;Cherries and snow at will,From china bowls that fillThe senses with a sweetIncuriousness of heat;A melon’s dripping sherds;Cream-clotted strawberries;Dusk dairies set with curds—To live, I think of these!
Vale-lily and periwinkle;Wet stone-crop on the sill;The look of leaves a-twinkleWith windlets clear and still;The feel of a forest rillThat wimples fresh and fleetAbout one’s naked feet;The muzzles of drinking herds;Lush flags and bulrushes;The chirp of rain-bound birds—To live, I think of these!
Envoy
Dark aisles, new packs of cards,Mermaidens’ tails, cool swards,Dawn dews and starlit seas,White marbles, whiter words—To live, I think of these!
Goldor silver, every day,Dies to gray.There are knots in every skein.Hours of work and hours of playFade awayInto one immense Inane.Shadow and substance, chaff and grain,Are as vainAs the foam or as the spray.Life goes crooning, faint and fain,One refrain:‘If it could be always May!’
Though the earth be green and gay,Though, they say,Man the cup of heaven may drain;Though, his little world to sway,He displayHoard on hoard of pith and brain:Autumn brings a mist and rainThat constrainHim and his to know decay,Where undimmed the lights that waneWould remain,If it could be always May.
Yea, alas, must turn toNay,Flesh to clay.Chance and Time are ever twain.Men may scoff, and men may pray,But they payEvery pleasure with a pain.Life may soar, and Fortune deignTo explainWhere her prizes hide and stay;But we lack the lusty trainWe should gain,If it could be always May.
Envoy
Time, the pedagogue, his caneMight retain,But his charges all would strayTruanting in every lane—Jack with Jane—If it could be always May.
Foolsmay pine, and sots may swill,Cynics gibe, and prophets rail,Moralists may scourge and drill,Preachers prose, and fainthearts quail.Let them whine, or threat, or wail!Till the touch of CircumstanceDown to darkness sink the scale,Fate’s a fiddler, Life’s a dance.
What if skies be wan and chill?What if winds be harsh and stale?Presently the east will thrill,And the sad and shrunken sail,Bellying with a kindly gale,Bear you sunwards, while your chanceSends you back the hopeful hail:—‘Fate’s a fiddler, Life’s a dance.’
Idle shot or coming bill,Hapless love or broken bail,Gulp it (never chew your pill!),And, if Burgundy should fail,Try the humbler pot of ale!Over all is heaven’s expanse.Gold’s to find among the shale.Fate’s a fiddler, Life’s a dance.
Dull Sir Joskin sleeps his fill,Good Sir Galahad seeks the Grail,Proud Sir Pertinax flaunts his frill,Hard Sir Æger dints his mail;And the while by hill and daleTristram’s braveries gleam and glance,And his blithe horn tells its tale:—‘Fate’s a fiddler, Life’s a dance.’
Araminta’s grand and shrill,Delia’s passionate and frail,Doris drives an earnest quill,Athanasia takes the veil:Wiser Phyllis o’er her pail,At the heart of all romanceReading, sings to Strephon’s flail:—‘Fate’s a fiddler, Life’s a dance.’
Every Jack must have his Jill(Even Johnson had his Thrale!):Forward, couples—with a will!This, the world, is not a jail.Hear the music, sprat and whale!Hands across, retire, advance!Though the doomsman’s on your trail,Fate’s a fiddler, Life’s a dance.
Envoy
Boys and girls, at slug and snailAnd their kindred look askance.Pay your footing on the nail:Fate’s a fiddler, Life’s a dance.
Thebig teetotum twirls,And epochs wax and waneAs chance subsides or swirls;But of the loss and gainThe sum is always plain.Read on the mighty pall,The weed of funeralThat covers praise and blame,The —isms and the —anities,Magnificence and shame:—‘O Vanity of Vanities!’
The Fates are subtile girls!They give us chaff for grain.And Time, the Thunderer, hurls,Like bolted death, disdainAt all that heart and brainConceive, or great or small,Upon this earthly ball.Would you be knight and dame?Or woo the sweet humanities?Or illustrate a name?O Vanity of Vanities!
We sound the sea for pearls,Or drown them in a drain;We flute it with the merles,Or tug and sweat and strain;We grovel, or we reign;We saunter, or we brawl;We answer, or we call;We search the stars for Fame,Or sink her subterranities;The legend’s still the same:—‘O Vanity of Vanities!’
Here at the wine one birls,There some one clanks a chain.The flag that this man furlsThat man to float is fain.Pleasure gives place to pain:These in the kennel crawl,While others take the wall.Shehas a glorious aim,Helives for the inanities.What comes of every claim?O Vanity of Vanities!
Alike are clods and earls.For sot, and seer, and swain,For emperors and for churls,For antidote and bane,There is but one refrain:But one for king and thrall,For David and for Saul,For fleet of foot and lame,For pieties and profanities,The picture and the frame:—‘O Vanity of Vanities!’
Life is a smoke that curls—Curls in a flickering skein,That winds and whisks and whirlsA figment thin and vain,Into the vast Inane.One end for hut and hall!One end for cell and stall!Burned in one common flameAre wisdoms and insanities.For this alone we came:—‘O Vanity of Vanities!’
Envoy
Prince, pride must have a fall.What is the worth of allYour state’s supreme urbanities?Bad at the best’s the game.Well might the Sage exclaim:—‘O Vanity of Vanities!’
ToW. G. S.
Theblackbird sang, the skies were clear and cleanWe bowled along a road that curved a spineSuperbly sinuous and serpentineThro’ silent symphonies of summer green.Sudden the Forth came on us—sad of mien,No cloud to colour it, no breeze to line:A sheet of dark, dull glass, without a signOf life or death, two spits of sand between.Water and sky merged blank in mist together,The Fort loomed spectral, and the Guardship’s sparsTraced vague, black shadows on the shimmery glaze:We felt the dim, strange years, the grey, strange weather,The still, strange land, unvexed of sun or stars,Where Lancelot rides clanking thro’ the haze.
She’san enchanting little Israelite,A world of hidden dimples!—Dusky-eyed,A starry-glancing daughter of the Bride,With hair escaped from some Arabian Night,Her lip is red, her cheek is golden-white,Her nose a scimitar; and, set asideThe bamboo hat she cocks with so much pride,Her dress a dream of daintiness and delight.And when she passes with the dreadful boysAnd romping girls, the cockneys loud and crude,My thought, to the Minories tied yet moved to rangeThe Land o’ the Sun, commingles with the noiseOf magian drums and scents of sandalwoodA touch Sidonian—modern—taking—strange!
Ahardnorth-easter fifty winters longHas bronzed and shrivelled sere her face and neck;Her locks are wild and grey, her teeth a wreck;Her foot is vast, her bowed leg spare and strong.A wide blue cloak, a squat and sturdy throngOf curt blue coats, a mutch without a speck,A white vest broidered black, her person deck,Nor seems their picked, stern, old-world quaintness wrong.Her great creel forehead-slung, she wanders nigh,Easing the heavy strap with gnarled, brown fingers,The spirit of traffic watchful in her eye,Ever and anon imploring you to buy,As looking down the street she onward lingers,Reproachful, with a strange and doleful cry.
ToD. F.
Iwatchedyou saunter down the sand:Serene and large, the golden weatherFlowed radiant round your peacock feather,And glistered from your jewelled hand.Your tawny hair, turned strand on strandAnd bound with blue ribands together,Streaked the rough tartan, green like heather,That round your lissome shoulder spanned.Your grace was quick my sense to seize:The quaint looped hat, the twisted tresses,The close-drawn scarf, and under theseThe flowing, flapping draperies—My thought an outline still caresses,Enchanting, comic, Japanese!
ToG. W.
Thebeach was crowded. Pausing now and then,He groped and fiddled doggedly along,His worn face glaring on the thoughtless throngThe stony peevishness of sightless men.He seemed scarce older than his clothes. Again,Grotesquing thinly many an old sweet song,So cracked his fiddle, his hand so frail and wrong,You hardly could distinguish one in ten.He stopped at last, and sat him on the sand,And, grasping wearily his bread-winner,Stared dim towards the blue immensity,Then leaned his head upon his poor old hand.He may have slept: he did not speak nor stir:His gesture spoke a vast despondency.
ToA. J.
Ablackand glassy float, opaque and still,The loch, at furthest ebb supine in sleep,Reversing, mirrored in its luminous deepThe calm grey skies; the solemn spurs of hill;Heather, and corn, and wisps of loitering haze;The wee white cots, black-hatted, plumed with smoke;The braes beyond—and when the ripple awoke,They wavered with the jarred and wavering glaze.The air was hushed and dreamy. EvermoreA noise of running water whispered near.A straggling crow called high and thin. A birdTrilled from the birch-leaves. Round the shingled shore,Yellow with weed, there wandered, vague and clear,Strange vowels, mysterious gutturals, idly heard.
ToM. M. M‘B.
Abovethe Crags that fade and gloomStarts the bare knee of Arthur’s Seat;Ridged high against the evening bloom,The Old Town rises, street on street;With lamps bejewelled, straight ahead,Like rampired walls the houses lean,All spired and domed and turreted,Sheer to the valley’s darkling green;Ranged in mysterious disarray,The Castle, menacing and austere,Looms through the lingering last of day;And in the silver dusk you hear,Reverberated from crag and scar,Bold bugles blowing points of war.
ToGarryowenupon an organ groundTwo girls are jigging. Riotously they trip,With eyes aflame, quick bosoms, hand on hip,As in the tumult of a witches’ round.Youngsters and youngsters round them prance and bound.Two solemn babes twirl ponderously, and skip.The artist’s teeth gleam from his bearded lip.High from the kennel howls a tortured hound.The music reels and hurtles, and the nightIs full of stinks and cries; a naphtha-lightFlares from a barrow; battered and obtusedWith vices, wrinkles, life and work and rags,Each with her inch of clay, two loitering hagsLook on dispassionate—critical—something ’mused.
Thegods are dead? Perhaps they are! Who knows?Living at least in Lemprière undeleted,The wise, the fair, the awful, the jocose,Are one and all, I like to think, retreatedIn some still land of lilacs and the rose.
Once higeh they sat, and high o’er earthly showsWith sacrificial dance and song were greeted.Once . . . long ago. But now, the story goes,The gods are dead.
It must be true. The world, a world of prose,Full-crammed with facts, in science swathed and sheeted,Nods in a stertorous after-dinner doze!Plangent and sad, in every wind that blowsWho will may hear the sorry words repeated:—‘The Gods are Dead!’
Letus be drunk, and for a while forget,Forget, and, ceasing even from regret,Live without reason and despite of rhyme,As in a dream preposterous and sublime,Where place and hour and means for once are met.
Where is the use of effort? Love and debtAnd disappointment have us in a net.Let us break out, and taste the morning prime . . .Let us be drunk.
In vain our little hour we strut and fret,And mouth our wretched parts as for a bet:We cannot please the tragicaster Time.To gain the crystal sphere, the silver dime,Where Sympathy sits dimpling on us yet,Let us be drunk!
Whenyou are old, and I am passed away—Passed, and your face, your golden face, is gray—I think, whate’er the end, this dream of mine,Comforting you, a friendly star will shineDown the dim slope where still you stumble and stray.
So may it be: that so dead Yesterday,No sad-eyed ghost but generous and gay,May serve you memories like almighty wine,When you are old!
Dear Heart, it shall be so. Under the swayOf death the past’s enormous disarrayLies hushed and dark. Yet though there come no sign,Live on well pleased: immortal and divineLove shall still tend you, as God’s angels may,When you are old.
Besidethe idle summer seaAnd in the vacant summer days,Light Love came fluting down the ways,Where you were loitering with me.
Who has not welcomed, even as we,That jocund minstrel and his laysBeside the idle summer seaAnd in the vacant summer days?
We listened, we were fancy-free;And lo! in terror and amazeWe stood alone—alone at gazeWith an implacable memoryBeside the idle summer sea.
Theways of Death are soothing and serene,And all the words of Death are grave and sweet.From camp and church, the fireside and the street,She beckons forth—and strife and song have been.
A summer night descending cool and greenAnd dark on daytime’s dust and stress and heat,The ways of Death are soothing and serene,And all the words of Death are grave and sweet.
O glad and sorrowful, with triumphant mienAnd radiant faces look upon, and greetThis last of all your lovers, and to meetHer kiss, the Comforter’s, your spirit lean . . .The ways of Death are soothing and serene.
Weshall surely die:Must we needs grow old?Grow old and cold,And we know not why?
O, the By-and-By,And the tale that’s told!We shall surely die:Must we needs grow old?
Grow old and sigh,Grudge and withhold,Resent and scold? . . .Not you and I?We shall surely die!
Whatis to come we know not. But we knowThat what has been was good—was good to show,Better to hide, and best of all to bear.We are the masters of the days that were:We have lived, we have loved, we have suffered . . . even so.
Shall we not take the ebb who had the flow?Life was our friend. Now, if it be our foe—Dear, though it spoil and break us!—need we careWhat is to come?
Let the great winds their worst and wildest blow,Or the gold weather round us mellow slow:We have fulfilled ourselves, and we can dareAnd we can conquer, though we may not shareIn the rich quiet of the afterglowWhat is to come.