JAMES THOMSON

SINCE all that I can ever do for theeIs to do nothing, this my prayer must be:That thou mayst never guess nor ever seeThe all-endured this nothing-done costs me.

1834-1882

796.

AS we rush, as we rush in the Train,The trees and the houses go wheeling back,But the starry heavens above the plainCome flying on our track.All the beautiful stars of the sky,The silver doves of the forest of Night,Over the dull earth swarm and fly,Companions of our flight.We will rush ever on without fear;Let the goal be far, the flight be fleet!For we carry the Heavens with us, dear,While the Earth slips from our feet!

AS we rush, as we rush in the Train,The trees and the houses go wheeling back,But the starry heavens above the plainCome flying on our track.

All the beautiful stars of the sky,The silver doves of the forest of Night,Over the dull earth swarm and fly,Companions of our flight.

We will rush ever on without fear;Let the goal be far, the flight be fleet!For we carry the Heavens with us, dear,While the Earth slips from our feet!

797.

MY love o’er the water bends dreaming;It glideth and glideth away:She sees there her own beauty, gleamingThrough shadow and ripple and spray.O tell her, thou murmuring river,As past her your light wavelets roll,How steadfast that image for everShines pure in pure depths of my soul.

MY love o’er the water bends dreaming;It glideth and glideth away:She sees there her own beauty, gleamingThrough shadow and ripple and spray.

O tell her, thou murmuring river,As past her your light wavelets roll,How steadfast that image for everShines pure in pure depths of my soul.

798.

GIVE a man a horse he can ride,Give a man a boat he can sail;And his rank and wealth, his strength and health,On sea nor shore shall fail.Give a man a pipe he can smoke,Give a man a book he can read:And his home is bright with a calm delight,Though the room be poor indeed.Give a man a girl he can love,As I, O my love, love thee;And his heart is great with the pulse of Fate,At home, on land, on sea.

GIVE a man a horse he can ride,Give a man a boat he can sail;And his rank and wealth, his strength and health,On sea nor shore shall fail.

Give a man a pipe he can smoke,Give a man a book he can read:And his home is bright with a calm delight,Though the room be poor indeed.

Give a man a girl he can love,As I, O my love, love thee;And his heart is great with the pulse of Fate,At home, on land, on sea.

799.

THE wine of Love is music,And the feast of Love is song:And when Love sits down to the banquet,Love sits long:Sits long and arises drunken,But not with the feast and the wine;He reeleth with his own heart,That great, rich Vine.

THE wine of Love is music,And the feast of Love is song:And when Love sits down to the banquet,Love sits long:

Sits long and arises drunken,But not with the feast and the wine;He reeleth with his own heart,That great, rich Vine.

1834-1896

800.

PRAY but one prayer for me ’twixt thy closed lips,Think but one thought of me up in the stars.The summer night waneth, the morning light slipsFaint and gray ’twixt the leaves of the aspen, betwixt the cloud-bars,That are patiently waiting there for the dawn:Patient and colourless, though Heaven’s goldWaits to float through them along with the sun.Far out in the meadows, above the young corn,The heavy elms wait, and restless and coldThe uneasy wind rises; the roses are dun;Through the long twilight they pray for the dawnRound the lone house in the midst of the corn.Speak but one word to me over the corn,Over the tender, bow’d locks of the corn.

801.

LOVE is enough: though the World be a-waning,And the woods have no voice but the voice of complaining,Though the sky be too dark for dim eyes to discoverThe gold-cups and daisies fair blooming thereunder,Though the hills be held shadows, and the sea a dark wonder,And this day draw a veil over all deeds pass’d over,Yet their hands shall not tremble, their feet shall not falter;The void shall not weary, the fear shall not alterThese lips and these eyes of the loved and the lover.

802.

IKNOW a little garden-closeSet thick with lily and red rose,Where I would wander if I mightFrom dewy dawn to dewy night,And have one with me wandering.And though within it no birds sing,And though no pillar’d house is there,And though the apple boughs are bareOf fruit and blossom, would to God,Her feet upon the green grass trod,And I beheld them as before!There comes a murmur from the shore,And in the place two fair streams are,Drawn from the purple hills afar,Drawn down unto the restless sea;The hills whose flowers ne’er fed the bee,The shore no ship has ever seen,Still beaten by the billows green,Whose murmur comes unceasinglyUnto the place for which I cry.For which I cry both day and night,For which I let slip all delight,That maketh me both deaf and blind,Careless to win, unskill’d to find,And quick to lose what all men seek.Yet tottering as I am, and weak,Still have I left a little breathTo seek within the jaws of deathAn entrance to that happy place;To seek the unforgotten faceOnce seen, once kiss’d, once reft from meAnigh the murmuring of the sea.

IKNOW a little garden-closeSet thick with lily and red rose,Where I would wander if I mightFrom dewy dawn to dewy night,And have one with me wandering.

And though within it no birds sing,And though no pillar’d house is there,And though the apple boughs are bareOf fruit and blossom, would to God,Her feet upon the green grass trod,And I beheld them as before!

There comes a murmur from the shore,And in the place two fair streams are,Drawn from the purple hills afar,Drawn down unto the restless sea;The hills whose flowers ne’er fed the bee,The shore no ship has ever seen,Still beaten by the billows green,Whose murmur comes unceasinglyUnto the place for which I cry.

For which I cry both day and night,For which I let slip all delight,That maketh me both deaf and blind,Careless to win, unskill’d to find,And quick to lose what all men seek.

Yet tottering as I am, and weak,Still have I left a little breathTo seek within the jaws of deathAn entrance to that happy place;To seek the unforgotten faceOnce seen, once kiss’d, once reft from meAnigh the murmuring of the sea.

1834-1894

803.

IFLUNG me round him,I drew him under;I clung, I drown’d him,My own white wonder!...Father and mother,Weeping and wild,Came to the forest,Calling the child,Came from the palace,Down to the pool,Calling my darling,My beautiful!Under the water,Cold and so pale!Could it be love madeBeauty to fail?Ah me for mortals!In a few moons,If I had left him,After some JunesHe would have faded,Faded away,He, the young monarch, whomAll would obey,Fairer than day;Alien to springtime,Joyless and gray,He would have faded,Faded away,Moving a mockery,Scorn’d of the day!Now I have taken himAll in his prime,Saved from slow poisoningPitiless Time,Fill’d with his happiness,One with the prime,Saved from the cruelDishonour of Time.Laid him, my beautiful,Laid him to rest,Loving, adorable,Softly to rest,Here in my crystalline,Here in my breast!

IFLUNG me round him,I drew him under;I clung, I drown’d him,My own white wonder!...

Father and mother,Weeping and wild,Came to the forest,Calling the child,Came from the palace,Down to the pool,Calling my darling,My beautiful!Under the water,Cold and so pale!Could it be love madeBeauty to fail?

Ah me for mortals!In a few moons,If I had left him,After some JunesHe would have faded,Faded away,He, the young monarch, whomAll would obey,Fairer than day;Alien to springtime,Joyless and gray,He would have faded,Faded away,Moving a mockery,Scorn’d of the day!Now I have taken himAll in his prime,Saved from slow poisoningPitiless Time,Fill’d with his happiness,One with the prime,Saved from the cruelDishonour of Time.Laid him, my beautiful,Laid him to rest,Loving, adorable,Softly to rest,Here in my crystalline,Here in my breast!

804.

THEY are waiting on the shoreFor the bark to take them home:They will toil and grieve no more;The hour for release hath come.All their long life lies behindLike a dimly blending dream:There is nothing left to bindTo the realms that only seem.They are waiting for the boat;There is nothing left to do:What was near them grows remote,Happy silence falls like dew;Now the shadowy bark is come,And the weary may go home.By still water they would restIn the shadow of the tree:After battle sleep is best,After noise, tranquillity.

THEY are waiting on the shoreFor the bark to take them home:They will toil and grieve no more;The hour for release hath come.

All their long life lies behindLike a dimly blending dream:There is nothing left to bindTo the realms that only seem.

They are waiting for the boat;There is nothing left to do:What was near them grows remote,Happy silence falls like dew;Now the shadowy bark is come,And the weary may go home.

By still water they would restIn the shadow of the tree:After battle sleep is best,After noise, tranquillity.

1836-1889

805.

CAME, on a Sabbath noon, my sweet,In white, to find her lover;The grass grew proud beneath her feet,The green elm-leaves above her:—Meet we no angels, Pansie?She said, ‘We meet no angels now’;And soft lights stream’d upon her;And with white hand she touch’d a bough;She did it that great honour:—What! meet no angels, Pansie?O sweet brown hat, brown hair, brown eyes,Down-dropp’d brown eyes, so tender!Then what said I? Gallant repliesSeem flattery, and offend her:—But—meet no angels, Pansie?

CAME, on a Sabbath noon, my sweet,In white, to find her lover;The grass grew proud beneath her feet,The green elm-leaves above her:—Meet we no angels, Pansie?

She said, ‘We meet no angels now’;And soft lights stream’d upon her;And with white hand she touch’d a bough;She did it that great honour:—What! meet no angels, Pansie?

O sweet brown hat, brown hair, brown eyes,Down-dropp’d brown eyes, so tender!Then what said I? Gallant repliesSeem flattery, and offend her:—But—meet no angels, Pansie?

806.

YOU must be sad; for though it is to Heaven,’Tis hard to yield a little girl of seven.Alas, for me ’tis hard my grief to rule,Who only met her as she went to school;Who never heard the little lips so sweetSay even ‘Good-morning,’ though our eyes would meetAs whose would fain be friends! How must you sigh,Sick for your loss, when even so sad am I,Who never clasp’d the small hands any day!Fair flowers thrive round the little grave, I pray.

1836-1914

807.

CHRISTMAS knows a merry, merry place,Where he goes with fondest face,Brightest eye, brightest hair:Tell the Mermaid where is that one place,Where?Raleigh.’Tis by Devon’s glorious halls,Whence, dear Ben, I come again:Bright of golden roofs and walls—El Dorado’s rare domain—Seem those halls when sunlight launchesShafts of gold thro’ leafless branches,Where the winter’s feathery mantle blanchesField and farm and lane.Chorus.Christmas knows a merry, merry place, &c.Drayton.’Tis where Avon’s wood-sprites weaveThrough the boughs a lace of rime,While the bells of Christmas EveFling for Will the Stratford-chimeO’er the river-flags emboss’dRich with flowery runes of frost—O’er the meads where snowy tufts are toss’d—Strains of olden time.Chorus.Christmas knows a merry, merry place, &c.Shakespeare’s Friend.’Tis, methinks, on any groundWhere our Shakespeare’s feet are set.There smiles Christmas, holly-crown’dWith his blithest coronet:Friendship’s face he loveth well:’Tis a countenance whose spellSheds a balm o’er every mead and dellWhere we used to fret.Chorus.Christmas knows a merry, merry place, &c.Heywood.More than all the pictures, Ben,Winter weaves by wood or stream,Christmas loves our London, whenRise thy clouds of wassail-steam—Clouds like these, that, curling, takeForms of faces gone, and wakeMany a lay from lips we loved, and makeLondon like a dream.Chorus.Christmas knows a merry, merry place, &c.Ben Jonson.Love’s old songs shall never die,Yet the new shall suffer proof:Love’s old drink of Yule brew IWassail for new love’s behoof.Drink the drink I brew, and singTill the berried branches swing,Till our song make all the Mermaid ring—Yea, from rush to roof.Finale.Christmas loves this merry, merry place;Christmas saith with fondest face,Brightest eye, brightest hair:‘Ben, the drink tastes rare of sack and mace;Rare!’

CHRISTMAS knows a merry, merry place,Where he goes with fondest face,Brightest eye, brightest hair:Tell the Mermaid where is that one place,Where?

Raleigh.

’Tis by Devon’s glorious halls,Whence, dear Ben, I come again:Bright of golden roofs and walls—El Dorado’s rare domain—Seem those halls when sunlight launchesShafts of gold thro’ leafless branches,Where the winter’s feathery mantle blanchesField and farm and lane.

Chorus.Christmas knows a merry, merry place, &c.

Drayton.

’Tis where Avon’s wood-sprites weaveThrough the boughs a lace of rime,While the bells of Christmas EveFling for Will the Stratford-chimeO’er the river-flags emboss’dRich with flowery runes of frost—O’er the meads where snowy tufts are toss’d—Strains of olden time.

Chorus.Christmas knows a merry, merry place, &c.

Shakespeare’s Friend.

’Tis, methinks, on any groundWhere our Shakespeare’s feet are set.There smiles Christmas, holly-crown’dWith his blithest coronet:Friendship’s face he loveth well:’Tis a countenance whose spellSheds a balm o’er every mead and dellWhere we used to fret.

Chorus.Christmas knows a merry, merry place, &c.

Heywood.

More than all the pictures, Ben,Winter weaves by wood or stream,Christmas loves our London, whenRise thy clouds of wassail-steam—Clouds like these, that, curling, takeForms of faces gone, and wakeMany a lay from lips we loved, and makeLondon like a dream.

Chorus.Christmas knows a merry, merry place, &c.

Ben Jonson.

Love’s old songs shall never die,Yet the new shall suffer proof:Love’s old drink of Yule brew IWassail for new love’s behoof.Drink the drink I brew, and singTill the berried branches swing,Till our song make all the Mermaid ring—Yea, from rush to roof.

Finale.

Christmas loves this merry, merry place;Christmas saith with fondest face,Brightest eye, brightest hair:‘Ben, the drink tastes rare of sack and mace;Rare!’

1837-1909

808.

WHEN the hounds of spring are on winter’s traces,The mother of months in meadow or plainFills the shadows and windy placesWith lisp of leaves and ripple of rain;And the brown bright nightingale amorousIs half assuaged for Itylus,For the Thracian ships and the foreign faces.The tongueless vigil, and all the pain.Come with bows bent and with emptying of quivers,Maiden most perfect, lady of light,With a noise of winds and many rivers,With a clamour of waters, and with might;Bind on thy sandals, O thou most fleet,Over the splendour and speed of thy feet;For the faint east quickens, the wan west shivers,Round the feet of the day and the feet of the night.Where shall we find her, how shall we sing to her,Fold our hands round her knees, and cling?O that man’s heart were as fire and could spring to her,Fire, or the strength of the streams that spring!For the stars and the winds are unto herAs raiment, as songs of the harp-player;For the risen stars and the fallen cling to her,And the southwest-wind and the west-wind sing.For winter’s rains and ruins are over,And all the season of snows and sins;The days dividing lover and lover,The light that loses, the night that wins;And time remember’d is grief forgotten,And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,And in green underwood and coverBlossom by blossom the spring begins.The full streams feed on flower of rushes,Ripe grasses trammel a travelling foot,The faint fresh flame of the young year flushesFrom leaf to flower and flower to fruit;And fruit and leaf are as gold and fire,And the oat is heard above the lyre,And the hoofèd heel of a satyr crushesThe chestnut-husk at the chestnut-root.And Pan by noon and Bacchus by night,Fleeter of foot than the fleet-foot kid,Follows with dancing and fills with delightThe Mænad and the Bassarid;And soft as lips that laugh and hideThe laughing leaves of the trees divide,And screen from seeing and leave in sightThe god pursuing, the maiden hid.The ivy falls with the Bacchanal’s hairOver her eyebrows hiding her eyes;The wild vine slipping down leaves bareHer bright breast shortening into sighs;The wild vine slips with the weight of its leaves,But the berried ivy catches and cleavesTo the limbs that glitter, the feet that scareThe wolf that follows, the fawn that flies.

Come with bows bent and with emptying of quivers,Maiden most perfect, lady of light,With a noise of winds and many rivers,With a clamour of waters, and with might;Bind on thy sandals, O thou most fleet,Over the splendour and speed of thy feet;For the faint east quickens, the wan west shivers,Round the feet of the day and the feet of the night.

Where shall we find her, how shall we sing to her,Fold our hands round her knees, and cling?O that man’s heart were as fire and could spring to her,Fire, or the strength of the streams that spring!For the stars and the winds are unto herAs raiment, as songs of the harp-player;For the risen stars and the fallen cling to her,And the southwest-wind and the west-wind sing.

For winter’s rains and ruins are over,And all the season of snows and sins;The days dividing lover and lover,The light that loses, the night that wins;And time remember’d is grief forgotten,And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,And in green underwood and coverBlossom by blossom the spring begins.

The full streams feed on flower of rushes,Ripe grasses trammel a travelling foot,The faint fresh flame of the young year flushesFrom leaf to flower and flower to fruit;And fruit and leaf are as gold and fire,And the oat is heard above the lyre,And the hoofèd heel of a satyr crushesThe chestnut-husk at the chestnut-root.

And Pan by noon and Bacchus by night,Fleeter of foot than the fleet-foot kid,Follows with dancing and fills with delightThe Mænad and the Bassarid;And soft as lips that laugh and hideThe laughing leaves of the trees divide,And screen from seeing and leave in sightThe god pursuing, the maiden hid.

The ivy falls with the Bacchanal’s hairOver her eyebrows hiding her eyes;The wild vine slipping down leaves bareHer bright breast shortening into sighs;The wild vine slips with the weight of its leaves,But the berried ivy catches and cleavesTo the limbs that glitter, the feet that scareThe wolf that follows, the fawn that flies.

809.

IAM that which began;Out of me the years roll;Out of me God and man;I am equal and whole;God changes, and man, and the form of them bodily; I am the soul.Before ever land was,Before ever the sea,Or soft hair of the grass,Or fair limbs of the tree,Or the flesh-colour’d fruit of my branches, I was, and thy soul was in me.First life on my sourcesFirst drifted and swam;Out of me are the forcesThat save it or damn;Out of me man and woman, and wild-beast and bird: before God was, I am.Beside or above meNaught is there to go;Love or unlove me,Unknow me or know,I am that which unloves me and loves; I am stricken, and I am the blow.I the mark that is miss’dAnd the arrows that miss,I the mouth that is kiss’dAnd the breath in the kiss,The search, and the sought, and the seeker, the soul and the body that is.I am that thing which blessesMy spirit elate;That which caressesWith hands uncreateMy limbs unbegotten that measure the length of the measure of fate.But what thing dost thou now,Looking Godward, to cry,‘I am I, thou art thou,I am low, thou art high’?I am thou, whom thou seekest to find him; find thou but thyself, thou art I.I the grain and the furrow,The plough-cloven clodAnd the ploughshare drawn thorough,The germ and the sod,The deed and the doer, the seed and the sower, the dust which is God.Hast thou known how I fashion’d thee,Child, underground?Fire that impassion’d thee,Iron that bound,Dim changes of water, what thing of all these hast thou known of or found?Canst thou say in thine heartThou hast seen with thine eyesWith what cunning of artThou wast wrought in what wise,By what force of what stuff thou wast shapen, and shown on my breast to the skies?Who hath given, who hath sold it thee,Knowledge of me?Has the wilderness told it thee?Hast thou learnt of the sea?Hast thou communed in spirit with night? have the winds taken counsel with thee?Have I set such a starTo show light on thy browThat thou sawest from afarWhat I show to thee now?Have ye spoken as brethren together, the sun and the mountains and thou?What is here, dost thou know it?What was, hast thou known?Prophet nor poetNor tripod nor throneNor spirit nor flesh can make answer, but only thy mother alone.Mother, not maker,Born, and not made;Though her children forsake her,Allured or afraid,Praying prayers to the God of their fashion, she stirs not for all that have pray’d.A creed is a rod,And a crown is of night;But this thing is God,To be man with thy might,To grow straight in the strength of thy spirit, and live out thy life as the light.I am in thee to save thee,As my soul in thee saith;Give thou as I gave thee,Thy life-blood and breath,Green leaves of thy labour, white flowers of thy thought, and red fruit of thy death.Be the ways of thy givingAs mine were to thee;The free life of thy living,Be the gift of it free;Not as servant to lord, nor as master to slave, shalt thou give thee to me.O children of banishment,Souls overcast,Were the lights ye see vanish meantAlway to last,Ye would know not the sun overshining the shadows and stars overpast.I that saw where ye trodThe dim paths of the nightSet the shadow call’d GodIn your skies to give light;But the morning of manhood is risen, and the shadowless soul is in sight.The tree many-rootedThat swells to the skyWith frondage red-fruited,The life-tree am I;In the buds of your lives is the sap of my leaves: ye shall live and not die.But the Gods of your fashionThat take and that give,In their pity and passionThat scourge and forgive,They are worms that are bred in the bark that falls off; they shall die and not live.My own blood is what stanchesThe wounds in my bark;Stars caught in my branchesMake day of the dark,And are worshipp’d as suns till the sunrise shall tread out their fires as a spark.Where dead ages hide underThe live roots of the tree,In my darkness the thunderMakes utterance of me;In the clash of my boughs with each other ye hear the waves sound of the sea.That noise is of Time,As his feathers are spreadAnd his feet set to climbThrough the boughs overhead,And my foliage rings round him and rustles, and branches are bent with his tread.The storm-winds of agesBlow through me and cease,The war-wind that rages,The spring-wind of peace,Ere the breath of them roughen my tresses, ere one of my blossoms increase.All sounds of all changes,All shadows and lightsOn the world’s mountain-rangesAnd stream-riven heights,Whose tongue is the wind’s tongue and language of storm-clouds on earth-shaking nights;All forms of all faces,All works of all handsIn unsearchable placesOf time-stricken lands,All death and all life, and all reigns and all ruins, drop through me as sands.Though sore be my burdenAnd more than ye know,And my growth have no guerdonBut only to grow,Yet I fail not of growing for lightnings above me or deathworms below.These too have their part in me,As I too in these;Such fire is at heart in me,Such sap is this tree’s,Which hath in it all sounds and all secrets of infinite lands and of seas.In the spring-colour’d hoursWhen my mind was as May’sThere brake forth of me flowersBy centuries of days,Strong blossoms with perfume of manhood, shot out from my spirit as rays.And the sound of them springingAnd smell of their shootsWere as warmth and sweet singingAnd strength to my roots;And the lives of my children made perfect with freedom of soul were my fruits.I bid you but be;I have need not of prayer;I have need of you freeAs your mouths of mine air;That my heart may be greater within me, beholding the fruits of me fair.More fair than strange fruit isOf faiths ye espouse;In me only the root isThat blooms in your boughs;Behold now your God that ye made you, to feed him with faith of your vows.In the darkening and whiteningAbysses adored,With dayspring and lightningFor lamp and for sword,God thunders in heaven, and his angels are red with the wrath of the Lord.O my sons, O too dutifulToward Gods not of me,Was not I enough beautiful?Was it hard to be free?For behold, I am with you, am in you and of you; look forth now and see.Lo, wing’d with world’s wonders,With miracles shod,With the fires of his thundersFor raiment and rod,God trembles in heaven, and his angels are white with the terror of God.For his twilight is come on him,His anguish is here;And his spirits gaze dumb on him,Grown gray from his fear;And his hour taketh hold on him stricken, the last of his infinite year.Thought made him and breaks him,Truth slays and forgives;But to you, as time takes him,This new thing it gives,Even love, the belovèd Republic, that feeds upon freedom and lives.For truth only is living,Truth only is whole,And the love of his givingMan’s polestar and pole;Man, pulse of my centre, and fruit of my body, and seed of my soul.One birth of my bosom;One beam of mine eye;One topmost blossomThat scales the sky;Man, equal and one with me, man that is made of me, man that is I.

IAM that which began;Out of me the years roll;Out of me God and man;I am equal and whole;God changes, and man, and the form of them bodily; I am the soul.

Before ever land was,Before ever the sea,Or soft hair of the grass,Or fair limbs of the tree,Or the flesh-colour’d fruit of my branches, I was, and thy soul was in me.

First life on my sourcesFirst drifted and swam;Out of me are the forcesThat save it or damn;Out of me man and woman, and wild-beast and bird: before God was, I am.

Beside or above meNaught is there to go;Love or unlove me,Unknow me or know,I am that which unloves me and loves; I am stricken, and I am the blow.

I the mark that is miss’dAnd the arrows that miss,I the mouth that is kiss’dAnd the breath in the kiss,The search, and the sought, and the seeker, the soul and the body that is.

I am that thing which blessesMy spirit elate;That which caressesWith hands uncreateMy limbs unbegotten that measure the length of the measure of fate.

But what thing dost thou now,Looking Godward, to cry,‘I am I, thou art thou,I am low, thou art high’?I am thou, whom thou seekest to find him; find thou but thyself, thou art I.

I the grain and the furrow,The plough-cloven clodAnd the ploughshare drawn thorough,The germ and the sod,The deed and the doer, the seed and the sower, the dust which is God.

Hast thou known how I fashion’d thee,Child, underground?Fire that impassion’d thee,Iron that bound,Dim changes of water, what thing of all these hast thou known of or found?

Canst thou say in thine heartThou hast seen with thine eyesWith what cunning of artThou wast wrought in what wise,By what force of what stuff thou wast shapen, and shown on my breast to the skies?

Who hath given, who hath sold it thee,Knowledge of me?Has the wilderness told it thee?Hast thou learnt of the sea?Hast thou communed in spirit with night? have the winds taken counsel with thee?

Have I set such a starTo show light on thy browThat thou sawest from afarWhat I show to thee now?Have ye spoken as brethren together, the sun and the mountains and thou?

What is here, dost thou know it?What was, hast thou known?Prophet nor poetNor tripod nor throneNor spirit nor flesh can make answer, but only thy mother alone.

Mother, not maker,Born, and not made;Though her children forsake her,Allured or afraid,Praying prayers to the God of their fashion, she stirs not for all that have pray’d.

A creed is a rod,And a crown is of night;But this thing is God,To be man with thy might,To grow straight in the strength of thy spirit, and live out thy life as the light.

I am in thee to save thee,As my soul in thee saith;Give thou as I gave thee,Thy life-blood and breath,Green leaves of thy labour, white flowers of thy thought, and red fruit of thy death.

Be the ways of thy givingAs mine were to thee;The free life of thy living,Be the gift of it free;Not as servant to lord, nor as master to slave, shalt thou give thee to me.

O children of banishment,Souls overcast,Were the lights ye see vanish meantAlway to last,Ye would know not the sun overshining the shadows and stars overpast.

I that saw where ye trodThe dim paths of the nightSet the shadow call’d GodIn your skies to give light;But the morning of manhood is risen, and the shadowless soul is in sight.

The tree many-rootedThat swells to the skyWith frondage red-fruited,The life-tree am I;In the buds of your lives is the sap of my leaves: ye shall live and not die.

But the Gods of your fashionThat take and that give,In their pity and passionThat scourge and forgive,They are worms that are bred in the bark that falls off; they shall die and not live.

My own blood is what stanchesThe wounds in my bark;Stars caught in my branchesMake day of the dark,And are worshipp’d as suns till the sunrise shall tread out their fires as a spark.

Where dead ages hide underThe live roots of the tree,In my darkness the thunderMakes utterance of me;In the clash of my boughs with each other ye hear the waves sound of the sea.

That noise is of Time,As his feathers are spreadAnd his feet set to climbThrough the boughs overhead,And my foliage rings round him and rustles, and branches are bent with his tread.

The storm-winds of agesBlow through me and cease,The war-wind that rages,The spring-wind of peace,Ere the breath of them roughen my tresses, ere one of my blossoms increase.

All sounds of all changes,All shadows and lightsOn the world’s mountain-rangesAnd stream-riven heights,Whose tongue is the wind’s tongue and language of storm-clouds on earth-shaking nights;

All forms of all faces,All works of all handsIn unsearchable placesOf time-stricken lands,All death and all life, and all reigns and all ruins, drop through me as sands.

Though sore be my burdenAnd more than ye know,And my growth have no guerdonBut only to grow,Yet I fail not of growing for lightnings above me or deathworms below.

These too have their part in me,As I too in these;Such fire is at heart in me,Such sap is this tree’s,Which hath in it all sounds and all secrets of infinite lands and of seas.

In the spring-colour’d hoursWhen my mind was as May’sThere brake forth of me flowersBy centuries of days,Strong blossoms with perfume of manhood, shot out from my spirit as rays.

And the sound of them springingAnd smell of their shootsWere as warmth and sweet singingAnd strength to my roots;And the lives of my children made perfect with freedom of soul were my fruits.

I bid you but be;I have need not of prayer;I have need of you freeAs your mouths of mine air;That my heart may be greater within me, beholding the fruits of me fair.

More fair than strange fruit isOf faiths ye espouse;In me only the root isThat blooms in your boughs;Behold now your God that ye made you, to feed him with faith of your vows.

In the darkening and whiteningAbysses adored,With dayspring and lightningFor lamp and for sword,God thunders in heaven, and his angels are red with the wrath of the Lord.

O my sons, O too dutifulToward Gods not of me,Was not I enough beautiful?Was it hard to be free?For behold, I am with you, am in you and of you; look forth now and see.

Lo, wing’d with world’s wonders,With miracles shod,With the fires of his thundersFor raiment and rod,God trembles in heaven, and his angels are white with the terror of God.

For his twilight is come on him,His anguish is here;And his spirits gaze dumb on him,Grown gray from his fear;And his hour taketh hold on him stricken, the last of his infinite year.Thought made him and breaks him,Truth slays and forgives;But to you, as time takes him,This new thing it gives,Even love, the belovèd Republic, that feeds upon freedom and lives.

For truth only is living,Truth only is whole,And the love of his givingMan’s polestar and pole;Man, pulse of my centre, and fruit of my body, and seed of my soul.

One birth of my bosom;One beam of mine eye;One topmost blossomThat scales the sky;Man, equal and one with me, man that is made of me, man that is I.

810.

(IN MEMORY OF CHARLES BAUDELAIRE)

SHALL I strew on thee rose or rue or laurel,Brother, on this that was the veil of thee?Or quiet sea-flower moulded by the sea,Or simplest growth of meadow-sweet or sorrel,Such as the summer-sleepy Dryads weave,Waked up by snow-soft sudden rains at eve?Or wilt thou rather, as on earth before,Half-faded fiery blossoms, pale with heatAnd full of bitter summer, but more sweetTo thee than gleanings of a northern shoreTrod by no tropic feet?For always thee the fervid languid gloriesAllured of heavier suns in mightier skies;Thine ears knew all the wandering watery sighsWhere the sea sobs round Lesbian promontories,The barren kiss of piteous wave to waveThat knows not where is that Leucadian graveWhich hides too deep the supreme head of song.Ah, salt and sterile as her kisses were,The wild sea winds her and the green gulfs bearHither and thither, and vex and work her wrong,Blind gods that cannot spare.Thou sawest, in thine old singing season, brother,Secrets and sorrows unbeheld of us:Fierce loves, and lovely leaf-buds poisonous,Bare to thy subtler eye, but for none otherBlowing by night in some unbreathed-in clime;The hidden harvest of luxurious time,Sin without shape, and pleasure without speech;And where strange dreams in a tumultuous sleepMake the shut eyes of stricken spirits weep;And with each face thou sawest the shadow on each,Seeing as men sow men reap.O sleepless heart and sombre soul unsleeping,That were athirst for sleep and no more lifeAnd no more love, for peace and no more strife!Now the dim gods of death have in their keepingSpirit and body and all the springs of song,Is it well now where love can do no wrong,Where stingless pleasure has no foam or fangBehind the unopening closure of her lips?Is it not well where soul from body slipsAnd flesh from bone divides without a pangAs dew from flower-bell drips?It is enough; the end and the beginningAre one thing to thee, who art past the end.O hand unclasp’d of unbeholden friend,For thee no fruits to pluck, no palms for winning,No triumph and no labour and no lust,Only dead yew-leaves and a little dust.O quiet eyes wherein the light saith naught,Whereto the day is dumb, nor any nightWith obscure finger silences your sight,Nor in your speech the sudden soul speaks thought,Sleep, and have sleep for light.Now all strange hours and all strange loves are over,Dreams and desires and sombre songs and sweet,Hast thou found place at the great knees and feetOf some pale Titan-woman like a lover,Such as thy vision here solicited,Under the shadow of her fair vast head,The deep division of prodigious breasts,The solemn slope of mighty limbs asleep,The weight of awful tresses that still keepThe savour and shade of old-world pine-forestsWhere the wet hill-winds weep?Hast thou found any likeness for thy vision?O gardener of strange flowers, what bud, what bloom,Hast thou found sown, what gather’d in the gloom?What of despair, of rapture, of derision,What of life is there, what of ill or good?Are the fruits gray like dust or bright like blood?Does the dim ground grow any seed of ours,The faint fields quicken any terrene root,In low lands where the sun and moon are muteAnd all the stars keep silence? Are there flowersAt all, or any fruit?Alas, but though my flying song flies after,O sweet strange elder singer, thy more fleetSinging, and footprints of thy fleeter feet,Some dim derision of mysterious laughterFrom the blind tongueless warders of the dead,Some gainless glimpse of Proserpine’s veil’d head,Some little sound of unregarded tearsWept by effaced unprofitable eyes,And from pale mouths some cadence of dead sighs—These only, these the hearkening spirit hears,Sees only such things rise.Thou art far too far for wings of words to follow,Far too far off for thought or any prayer.What ails us with thee, who art wind and air?What ails us gazing where all seen is hollow?Yet with some fancy, yet with some desire,Dreams pursue death as winds a flying fire,Our dreams pursue our dead and do not find.Still, and more swift than they, the thin flame flies,The low light fails us in elusive skies,Still the foil’d earnest ear is deaf, and blindAre still the eluded eyes.Not thee, O never thee, in all time’s changes,Not thee, but this the sound of thy sad soul,The shadow of thy swift spirit, this shut scrollI lay my hand on, and not death estrangesMy spirit from communion of thy song—These memories and these melodies that throngVeil’d porches of a Muse funereal—These I salute, these touch, these clasp and foldAs though a hand were in my hand to hold,Or through mine ears a mourning musicalOf many mourners roll’d.I among these, I also, in such stationAs when the pyre was charr’d, and piled the sods.And offering to the dead made, and their gods,The old mourners had, standing to make libation,I stand, and to the Gods and to the deadDo reverence without prayer or praise, and shedOffering to these unknown, the gods of gloom,And what of honey and spice my seed-lands bear,And what I may of fruits in this chill’d air,And lay, Orestes-like, across the tombA curl of sever’d hair.But by no hand nor any treason stricken,Not like the low-lying head of Him, the King,The flame that made of Troy a ruinous thing,Thou liest and on this dust no tears could quicken.There fall no tears like theirs that all men hearFall tear by sweet imperishable tearDown the opening leaves of holy poets’ pages.Thee not Orestes, not Electra mourns;But bending us-ward with memorial urnsThe most high Muses that fulfil all agesWeep, and our God’s heart yearns.For, sparing of his sacred strength, not oftenAmong us darkling here the lord of lightMakes manifest his music and his mightIn hearts that open and in lips that softenWith the soft flame and heat of songs that shine.Thy lips indeed he touch’d with bitter wine,And nourish’d them indeed with bitter bread;Yet surely from his hand thy soul’s food came,The fire that scarr’d thy spirit at his flameWas lighted, and thine hungering heart he fedWho feeds our hearts with fame.Therefore he too now at thy soul’s sunsetting,God of all suns and songs, he too bends downTo mix his laurel with thy cypress crown,And save thy dust from blame and from forgetting.Therefore he too, seeing all thou wert and art,Compassionate, with sad and sacred heart,Mourns thee of many his children the last dead,And hallows with strange tears and alien sighsThine unmelodious mouth and sunless eyes,And over thine irrevocable headSheds light from the under skies.And one weeps with him in the ways Lethean,And stains with tears her changing bosom chill;That obscure Venus of the hollow hill,That thing transformed which was the Cytherean,With lips that lost their Grecian laugh divineLong since, and face no more call’d Erycine—A ghost, a bitter and luxurious god.Thee also with fair flesh and singing spellDid she, a sad and second prey, compelInto the footless places once more trod,And shadows hot from hell.And now no sacred staff shall break in blossom,No choral salutation lure to lightA spirit sick with perfume and sweet nightAnd love’s tired eyes and hands and barren bosom.There is no help for these things; none to mend,And none to mar; not all our songs, O friend,Will make death clear or make life durable.Howbeit with rose and ivy and wild vineAnd with wild notes about this dust of thineAt least I fill the place where white dreams dwellAnd wreathe an unseen shrine.Sleep; and if life was bitter to thee, pardon,If sweet, give thanks; thou hast no more to live;And to give thanks is good, and to forgive.Out of the mystic and the mournful gardenWhere all day through thine hands in barren braidWove the sick flowers of secrecy and shade,Green buds of sorrow and sin, and remnants gray,Sweet-smelling, pale with poison, sanguine-hearted,Passions that sprang from sleep and thoughts that started,Shall death not bring us all as thee one dayAmong the days departed?For thee, O now a silent soul, my brother,Take at my hands this garland, and farewell.Thin is the leaf, and chill the wintry smell,And chill the solemn earth, a fatal mother,With sadder than the Niobean womb,And in the hollow of her breasts a tomb.Content thee, howsoe’er, whose days are done;There lies not any troublous thing before,Nor sight nor sound to war against thee more,For whom all winds are quiet as the sun,All waters as the shore.

For always thee the fervid languid gloriesAllured of heavier suns in mightier skies;Thine ears knew all the wandering watery sighsWhere the sea sobs round Lesbian promontories,The barren kiss of piteous wave to waveThat knows not where is that Leucadian graveWhich hides too deep the supreme head of song.Ah, salt and sterile as her kisses were,The wild sea winds her and the green gulfs bearHither and thither, and vex and work her wrong,Blind gods that cannot spare.

Thou sawest, in thine old singing season, brother,Secrets and sorrows unbeheld of us:Fierce loves, and lovely leaf-buds poisonous,Bare to thy subtler eye, but for none otherBlowing by night in some unbreathed-in clime;The hidden harvest of luxurious time,Sin without shape, and pleasure without speech;And where strange dreams in a tumultuous sleepMake the shut eyes of stricken spirits weep;And with each face thou sawest the shadow on each,Seeing as men sow men reap.

O sleepless heart and sombre soul unsleeping,That were athirst for sleep and no more lifeAnd no more love, for peace and no more strife!Now the dim gods of death have in their keepingSpirit and body and all the springs of song,Is it well now where love can do no wrong,Where stingless pleasure has no foam or fangBehind the unopening closure of her lips?Is it not well where soul from body slipsAnd flesh from bone divides without a pangAs dew from flower-bell drips?

It is enough; the end and the beginningAre one thing to thee, who art past the end.O hand unclasp’d of unbeholden friend,For thee no fruits to pluck, no palms for winning,No triumph and no labour and no lust,Only dead yew-leaves and a little dust.O quiet eyes wherein the light saith naught,Whereto the day is dumb, nor any nightWith obscure finger silences your sight,Nor in your speech the sudden soul speaks thought,Sleep, and have sleep for light.

Now all strange hours and all strange loves are over,Dreams and desires and sombre songs and sweet,Hast thou found place at the great knees and feetOf some pale Titan-woman like a lover,Such as thy vision here solicited,Under the shadow of her fair vast head,The deep division of prodigious breasts,The solemn slope of mighty limbs asleep,The weight of awful tresses that still keepThe savour and shade of old-world pine-forestsWhere the wet hill-winds weep?

Hast thou found any likeness for thy vision?O gardener of strange flowers, what bud, what bloom,Hast thou found sown, what gather’d in the gloom?What of despair, of rapture, of derision,What of life is there, what of ill or good?Are the fruits gray like dust or bright like blood?Does the dim ground grow any seed of ours,The faint fields quicken any terrene root,In low lands where the sun and moon are muteAnd all the stars keep silence? Are there flowersAt all, or any fruit?

Alas, but though my flying song flies after,O sweet strange elder singer, thy more fleetSinging, and footprints of thy fleeter feet,Some dim derision of mysterious laughterFrom the blind tongueless warders of the dead,Some gainless glimpse of Proserpine’s veil’d head,Some little sound of unregarded tearsWept by effaced unprofitable eyes,And from pale mouths some cadence of dead sighs—These only, these the hearkening spirit hears,Sees only such things rise.

Thou art far too far for wings of words to follow,Far too far off for thought or any prayer.What ails us with thee, who art wind and air?What ails us gazing where all seen is hollow?Yet with some fancy, yet with some desire,Dreams pursue death as winds a flying fire,Our dreams pursue our dead and do not find.Still, and more swift than they, the thin flame flies,The low light fails us in elusive skies,Still the foil’d earnest ear is deaf, and blindAre still the eluded eyes.

Not thee, O never thee, in all time’s changes,Not thee, but this the sound of thy sad soul,The shadow of thy swift spirit, this shut scrollI lay my hand on, and not death estrangesMy spirit from communion of thy song—These memories and these melodies that throngVeil’d porches of a Muse funereal—These I salute, these touch, these clasp and foldAs though a hand were in my hand to hold,Or through mine ears a mourning musicalOf many mourners roll’d.

I among these, I also, in such stationAs when the pyre was charr’d, and piled the sods.And offering to the dead made, and their gods,The old mourners had, standing to make libation,I stand, and to the Gods and to the deadDo reverence without prayer or praise, and shedOffering to these unknown, the gods of gloom,And what of honey and spice my seed-lands bear,And what I may of fruits in this chill’d air,And lay, Orestes-like, across the tombA curl of sever’d hair.

But by no hand nor any treason stricken,Not like the low-lying head of Him, the King,The flame that made of Troy a ruinous thing,Thou liest and on this dust no tears could quicken.There fall no tears like theirs that all men hearFall tear by sweet imperishable tearDown the opening leaves of holy poets’ pages.Thee not Orestes, not Electra mourns;But bending us-ward with memorial urnsThe most high Muses that fulfil all agesWeep, and our God’s heart yearns.

For, sparing of his sacred strength, not oftenAmong us darkling here the lord of lightMakes manifest his music and his mightIn hearts that open and in lips that softenWith the soft flame and heat of songs that shine.Thy lips indeed he touch’d with bitter wine,And nourish’d them indeed with bitter bread;Yet surely from his hand thy soul’s food came,The fire that scarr’d thy spirit at his flameWas lighted, and thine hungering heart he fedWho feeds our hearts with fame.

Therefore he too now at thy soul’s sunsetting,God of all suns and songs, he too bends downTo mix his laurel with thy cypress crown,And save thy dust from blame and from forgetting.Therefore he too, seeing all thou wert and art,Compassionate, with sad and sacred heart,Mourns thee of many his children the last dead,And hallows with strange tears and alien sighsThine unmelodious mouth and sunless eyes,And over thine irrevocable headSheds light from the under skies.

And one weeps with him in the ways Lethean,And stains with tears her changing bosom chill;That obscure Venus of the hollow hill,That thing transformed which was the Cytherean,With lips that lost their Grecian laugh divineLong since, and face no more call’d Erycine—A ghost, a bitter and luxurious god.Thee also with fair flesh and singing spellDid she, a sad and second prey, compelInto the footless places once more trod,And shadows hot from hell.

And now no sacred staff shall break in blossom,No choral salutation lure to lightA spirit sick with perfume and sweet nightAnd love’s tired eyes and hands and barren bosom.There is no help for these things; none to mend,And none to mar; not all our songs, O friend,Will make death clear or make life durable.Howbeit with rose and ivy and wild vineAnd with wild notes about this dust of thineAt least I fill the place where white dreams dwellAnd wreathe an unseen shrine.

Sleep; and if life was bitter to thee, pardon,If sweet, give thanks; thou hast no more to live;And to give thanks is good, and to forgive.Out of the mystic and the mournful gardenWhere all day through thine hands in barren braidWove the sick flowers of secrecy and shade,Green buds of sorrow and sin, and remnants gray,Sweet-smelling, pale with poison, sanguine-hearted,Passions that sprang from sleep and thoughts that started,Shall death not bring us all as thee one dayAmong the days departed?

For thee, O now a silent soul, my brother,Take at my hands this garland, and farewell.Thin is the leaf, and chill the wintry smell,And chill the solemn earth, a fatal mother,With sadder than the Niobean womb,And in the hollow of her breasts a tomb.Content thee, howsoe’er, whose days are done;There lies not any troublous thing before,Nor sight nor sound to war against thee more,For whom all winds are quiet as the sun,All waters as the shore.

811.

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