No new delights to our desireThe singers of the past can yield.I lift mine eyes to hill and field,And see in them your yet dumb lyre,Poets unborn and unrevealed.
Singers to come, what thoughts will startTo song? What words of yours be sentThrough man's soul, and with earth be blent?These worlds of nature and the heartAwait you like an instrument.
Who knows what musical flocks of wordsUpon these pine-tree tops will light,And crown these towers in circling flight,And cross these seas like summer birds,And give a voice to the day and night?
Something of you already is ours;Some mystic part of you belongsTo us whose dreams your future throngs,Who look on hills, and trees, and flowers,Which will mean so much in your songs.
I wonder, like the maid who found,And knelt to lift, the lyre supremeOf Orpheus from the Thracian stream.She dreams on its sealed past profound;On a deep future sealed I dream.
She bears it in her wanderingsWithin her arms, and has not pressedHer unskilled fingers but her breastUpon those silent sacred strings;I, too, clasp mystic strings at rest.
For I, i' the world of lands and seas,The sky of wind and rain and fire,And in man's world of long desire—In all that is yet dumb in these—Have found a more mysterious lyre.
If I should quit thee, sacrifice, forswear,To what, my art, shall I give thee in keeping?To the long winds of heaven? Shall these come sweepingMy songs forgone against my face and hair?
Or shall the mountain streams my lost joys bear,My past poetic in rain be weeping?No, I shall live a poet waking, sleeping,And I shall die a poet unaware.
From me, my art, thou canst not pass away;And I, a singer though I cease to sing,Shall own thee without joy in thee or woe.
Through my indifferent words of every day,Scattered and all unlinked the rhymes shall ring,And make my poem; and I shall not know.
She walks—the lady of my delight—A shepherdess of sheep.Her flocks are thoughts. She keeps them white;She guards them from the steep;She feeds them on the fragrant height,And folds them in for sleep.
She roams maternal hills and bright,Dark valleys safe and deep.Into that tender breast at nightThe chastest stars may peep.She walks—the lady of my delight—A shepherdess of sheep.
She holds her little thoughts in sight,Though gay they run and leap.She is so circumspect and right;She has her soul to keep.She walks—the lady of my delight—A shepherdess of sheep.
Whose is the speechThat moves the voices of this lonely beech?Out of the long west did this wild wind come—O strong and silent! And the tree was dumb,Ready and dumb, untilThe dumb gale struck it on the darkened hill.
Two memories,Two powers, two promises, two silencesClosed in this cry, closed in these thousand leavesArticulate. This sudden hour retrievesThe purpose of the past,Separate, apart—embraced, embraced at last.
"Whose is the word?Is it I that spake? Is it thou? Is it I that heard?""Thine earth was solitary, yet I found thee!""Thy sky was pathless, but I caught, I bound thee,Thou visitant divine.""O thou my Voice, the word was thine." "Was thine."
The Lady Poverty was fair:But she lost her looks of late,With change of times and change of air.Ah slattern! she neglects her hair,Her gown; her shoes; she keeps no stateAs once when her pure feet were bare.
Or—almost worse, if worse can be—She scolds in parlours, dusts and trims,Watches and counts. O is this sheWhom Francis met, whose step was free,Who with Obedience carolled hymns,In Umbria walked with Chastity?
Where is her ladyhood? Not here,Not among modern kinds of men;But in the stony fields, where clearThrough the thin trees the skies appear,In delicate spare soil and fen,And slender landscape and austere.
The golden tints of the electric lights seems to give a complementary colour to the air in the early evening.—ESSAY ON LONDON.
O heavenly colour, London townHas blurred it from her skies;And, hooded in an earthly brown,Unheaven'd the city lies.No longer, standard-like, this hueAbove the broad road flies;Nor does the narrow street the blueWear, slender pennon-wise.
But when the gold and silver lampsColour the London dew,And, misted by the winter damps,The shops shine bright anew—Blue comes to earth, it walks the street,It dyes the wide air through;A mimic sky about their feet,The throng go crowned with blue.
IN KENSINGTON GARDENS.
Along the graceless grass of townThey rake the rows of red and brown,—Dead leaves, unlike the rows of hayDelicate, touched with gold and grey,Raked long ago and far away.
A narrow silence in the park,Between the lights a narrow dark,One street rolls on the north; and one,Muffled, upon the south doth run;Amid the mist the work is done.
A futile crop!—for it the fireSmoulders, and, for a stack, a pyre.So go the town's lives on the breeze,Even as the sheddings of the trees;Bosom nor barn is filled with these.
Lines written between Munich and Verona
Black mountains pricked with pointed pineA melancholy sky.Out-distanced was the German vine,The sterile fields lay high.From swarthy Alps I travelled forthAloft; it was the north, the north;Bound for the Noon was I.
I seemed to breast the streams that day;I met, opposed, withstoodThe northward rivers on their way,My heart against the flood—My heart that pressed to rise and reach,And felt the love of altering speech,Of frontiers, in its blood.
But O the unfolding South! the burstOf summer! O to seeOf all the southward brooks the first!The travelling heart went freeWith endless streams; that strife was stopped;And down a thousand vales I dropped,I flowed to Italy.
Translated from M. Catulle Mendès
I go by road, I go by street—Lira, la, la!O white highways, ye know my feet!A loaf I carry and, all told,Three broad bits of lucky gold—Lira, la, la!And O within my flowering heart,(Sing, dear nightingale!) is my Sweet.
A poor man met me and begged for bread—Lira, la, la!"Brother, take all the loaf," I said,I shall but go with lighter cheer—Lira, la, la!And O within my flowering heart(Sing, sweet nightingale!) is my Dear.
A thief I met on the lonely way—Lira, la, la!He took my gold; I cried to him, "Stay!And take my pocket and make an end."Lira, la, la!And O within my flowering heart(Sing, soft nightingale!) is my Friend.
Now on the plain I have met with death—Lira, la, la!My bread is gone, my gold, my breath.But O this heart is not afraid—Lira, la, la!For O within this lonely heart(Sing, sad nightingale!) is my Maid.
There's much afoot in heaven and earth this year;The winds hunt up the sun, hunt up the moon,Trouble the dubious dawn, hasten the drearHeight of a threatening noon.
No breath of boughs, no breath of leaves, of fronds,May linger or grow warm; the trees are loud;The forest, rooted, tosses in her bonds,And strains against the cloud.
No scents may pause within the garden-fold;The rifled flowers are cold as ocean-shells;Bees, humming in the storm, carry their coldWild honey to cold cells.
A flock of winds came winging from the North,Strong birds with fighting pinions driving forthWith a resounding call:—
Where will they close their wings and cease their cries—Between what warming seas and conquering skies—And fold, and fall?
Another day awakes. And who—Changing the world—is this?He comes at whiles, the winter through,West Wind! I would not missHis sudden tryst: the long, the newSurprises of his kiss.
Vigilant, I make haste to closeWith him who comes my way,I go to meet him as he goes;I know his note, his lay,His colour and his morning-rose,And I confess his day.
My window waits; at dawn I harkHis call; at morn I meetHis haste around the tossing parkAnd down the softened street;The gentler light is his: the dark,The grey—he turns it sweet.
So too, so too, do I confessMy poet when he sings.He rushes on my mortal guessWith his immortal things.I feel, I know, him. On I press—He finds me 'twixt his wings.
Behold,The time is now! Bring back, bring backThy flocks of fancies, wild of whim.O lead them from the mountain-trackThy frolic thoughts untold,O bring them in—the fields grow dim—And let me be the fold!
Behold,The time is now! Call in, O callThy pasturing kisses gone astrayFor scattered sweets; gather them allTo shelter from the cold.Throng them together, close and gay,And let me be the fold!
Why wilt thou chide,Who has attained to be denied?O learn, aboveAll price is my refusal, Love.My sacred NayWas never cheapened by the way.Thy single sorrow crowns thee lordOf an unpurchasable word.
O strong, O pure!As Yea makes happier loves secure,I vow thee thisUnique rejection of a kiss.I guard for theeThis jealous sad monopoly.I seal this honour thine; none dareHope for a part in thy despair.
Thou man, first-comer, whose wide arms entreat,Gather, clasp, welcome, bind,Lack, or remember; whose warm pulses beatWith love of thine own kind:—
Unlifted for a blessing on yon sea,Unshrined on this highway,O flesh, O grief, thou too shalt have our knee,Thou rood of every day!
Thou art the Way.Hadst Thou been nothing but the goal,I cannot sayIf Thou hadst ever met my soul.
I cannot see—I, child of process—if there liesAn end for me,Full of repose, full of replies.
I'll not reproachThe road that winds, my feet that err,Access, ApproachArt Thou, Time, Way, and Wayfarer.
"You never attained to Him?" "If to attainBe to abide, then that may be.""Endless the way, followed with how much pain!""The way was He."
"When Augustus Cæsar legislated against the unmarried citizens of Rome, he declared them to be, in some sort, slayers of the people."
Ah! no, not these!These, who were childless, are not they who gaveSo many dead unto the journeying wave,The helpless nurselings of the cradling seas;Not they who doomed by infallible decreesUnnumbered man to the innumerable grave.
But those who slayAre fathers. Theirs are armies. Death is theirs—The death of innocences and despairs;The dying of the golden and the grey.The sentence, when these speak it, has no Nay.And she who slays is she who bears, who bears.
Oh, what a kissWith filial passion overcharged is this!To this misgiving breastThis child runs, as a child ne'er ran to restUpon the light heart and the unoppressed.
Unhoped, unsought!A little tenderness, this mother thoughtThe utmost of her meed.She looked for gratitude; content indeedWith thus much that her nine years' love had bought.
Nay, even with less.This mother, giver of life, death, peace, distress,Desired ah! not so muchThanks as forgiveness; and the passing touchExpected, and the slight, the brief caress.
O filial lightStrong in these childish eyes, these new, these brightIntelligible stars! Their raysAre near the constant earth, guides in the maze,Natural, true, keen in this dusk of days.
Given, not lent,And not withdrawn—once sent,This Infant of mankind, this One,Is still the little welcome Son.
New every year,New born and newly dear,He comes with tidings and a song,The ages long, the ages long;
Even as the coldKeen winter grows not old,As childhood is so fresh, foreseen,And spring in the familiar green—
Sudden as sweetCome the expected feet.All joy is young, and new all art,And He, too, Whom we have by heart.
So humble things Thou hast born for us, O God,Left'st Thou a path of lowliness untrod?Yes, one, till now; another Olive-Garden.For we endure the tender pain of pardon,—One with another we forbear. Give heed,Look at the mournful world thou hast decreed.The time has come. At last we hapless menKnow all our haplessness all through. Come, then,Endure undreamed humility: Lord of Heaven,Come to our ignorant hearts and be forgiven.
Luminous passions reignHigh in the soul of man; and they are twain.Of these he hath made the poetry of earth—Hath made his nobler tears, his magic mirth.
Fair love is one of these,The visiting vision of seven centuries;And one is love of Nature—love to tears—The modern passion of this hundred years.
O never to such height,O never to such spiritual light—The light of lonely visions, and the gleamOf secret splendid sombre suns in dream—
O never to such longGlory in life, supremacy in song,Had either of these loves attained in joy,But for the ministration of a boy.
Dante was one who bareLove in his deep heart, apprehended thereWhen he was yet a child; and from that dayThe radiant love has never passed away.
And one was Wordsworth; heConceived the love of Nature childishlyAs no adult heart might; old poets singThat exaltation by remembering.
For no divineIntelligence, or art, or fire, or wine,Is high-delirious as that rising lark—The child's soul and its daybreak in the dark.
And Letters keep these twoHeavenly treasures safe the ages through,Safe from ignoble benison or ban—These two high childhoods in the heart of man.
TWO YEARS OLD
Long life to thee, long virtue, long delight,A flowering early and late!Long beauty, grave to thought and gay to sight,A distant date!
Yet, as so many poets love to sing(When young the child will die),"No autumn will destroy this lovely spring,"So, Sylvia, I.
I'll write thee dapper verse and touching rhyme;"Our eyes shall not behold—"The commonplace shall serve for thee this time:"Never grow old."
For there's another way to stop thy clockWithin my cherishing heart,To carry thee unalterable, and lockThy youth apart:
Thy flower, for me, shall evermore be hidIn this close bud of thine,Not, Sylvia, by thy death—O God forbid!Merely by mine.
Written for Strephon, who said that a woman must lean, or she should not have his chivalry.
The light young man who was to die,Stopped in his frolic by the State,Aghast, beheld the world go by;But Catherine crossed his dungeon gate.
She found his lyric courage dumb,His stripling beauties strewn in wrecks,His modish bravery overcome;Small profit had he of his sex.
On any old wife's level he,For once—for all. But he alone—Man—must not fear the mystery,The pang, the passage, the unknown:
Death. He did fear it, in his cell,Darkling amid the Tuscan sun;And, weeping, at her feet he fell,The sacred, young, provincial nun.
She prayed, she preached him innocent;She gave him to the Sacrificed;On her courageous breast he leant,The breast where beat the heart of Christ.
He left it for the block, with criesOf victory on his severed breath.That crimson head she clasped, her eyesBlind with the splendour of his death.
And will the man of modern years—Stern on the Vote—withhold from thee,Thou prop, thou cross, erect, in tears,Catherine, the service of his knee?
Brief, on a flying night,From the shaken tower,A flock of bells take flight.And go with the hour.
Like birds from the cote to the gales,Abrupt—O hark!A fleet of bells set sails,And go to the dark.
Sudden the cold airs swing.Alone, aloud,A verse of bells takes wingAnd flies with the cloud.
I saw a tract of ocean locked inland,Within a field's embrace—The very sea! Afar it fled the strand,And gave the seasons chase,And met the night alone, the tempest spanned,Saw sunrise face to face.
O Poet, more than ocean, lonelier!In inaccessible restAnd storm remote, thou, sea of thoughts, dost errScattered through east to west,—Now, while thou closest with the kiss of herWho locks thee to her breast.
Lord, Thou hast crushed Thy tender ones, o'erthrownThy strong, Thy fair; Thy man thou hast unmanned,Thy elaborate works unwrought, Thy deeds undone,Thy lovely sentiment human plan unplanned;Destroyer, we have cowered beneath Thine ownImmediate, unintelligible hand.
Lord, thou hast hastened to retrieve, to heal,To feed, to bind, to clothe, to quench the brand,To prop the ruin, to bless, and to anneal;Hast sped Thy ships by sea, Thy trains by land,Shed pity and tears:—our shattered fingers feelThy mediate and intelligible hand.
One of the crowd went up,And knelt before the Paten and the Cup,Received the Lord, returned in peace, and prayedClose to my side. Then in my heart I said:
"O Christ, in this man's life!—This stranger who is Thine—in all his strife,All his felicity, his good and ill,In the assaulted stronghold of his will,
"I do confess Thee here,Alive within this life; I know Thee nearWithin this lonely conscience, closed awayWithin this brother's solitary day.
"Christ in his unknown heart,His intellect unknown—this love, this art,This battle and this peace, this destinyThat I shall never know, look upon me!
"Christ in his numbered breath,Christ in his beating heart and in his death,Christ in his mystery! From that secret placeAnd from that separate dwelling, give me grace!"
I saw the throng, so deeply separate,Fed at one only board—The devout people, moved, intent, elate,And the devoted Lord.
O struck apart! not side from human side,But soul from human soul,As each asunder absorbed the multiplied,The ever unparted, whole.
I saw this people as a field of flowers,Each grown at such a priceThe sum of unimaginable powersDid no more than suffice.
A thousand single central daisies they,A thousand of the one;For each, the entire monopoly of day;For each, the whole of the devoted sun.
"Nous avons chassé ce Jésus Christ."—FRENCH PUBLICIST.
Yes, from the ingrate heart, the streetOf garrulous tongue, the warm retreatWithin the village and the town;Not from the lands where ripen brownA thousand thousand hills of wheat;
Not from the long Burgundian line,The Southward, sunward range of vine.Hunted, He never will escapeThe flesh, the blood, the sheaf, the grape,That feed His man—the bread, the wine.
And will they cast the altars down,Scatter the chalice, crush the bread?In field, in village, and in townHe hides an unregarded head;
Waits in the corn-lands far and near,Bright in His sun, dark in His frost,Sweet in the vine, ripe in the ear—Lonely unconsecrated Host.
In ambush at the merry boardThe Victim lurks unsacrificed;The mill conceals the harvest's Lord,The wine-press holds the unbidden Christ.
"A Paltry Sacrifice."—PREFACE TO A PLAY
Oh, man's capacityFor spiritual sorrow, corporal pain!Who has explored the deepmost of that sea,With heavy links of a far-fathoming chain?
That melancholy lead,Let down in guilty and in innocent hold,Yea into childish hands delivered,Leaves the sequestered floor unreached, untold.
One only has exploredThe deepmost; but He did not die of it.Not yet, not yet He died. Man's human LordTouched the extreme; it is not infinite.
But over the abyssOf God's capacity for woe He stayedOne hesitating hour; what gulf was this?Forsaken He went down, and was afraid.
Two men went up to pray; and one gave thanks,Not with himself—aloud,With proclamation, calling on the ranksOf an attentive crowd.
"Thank God, I clap not my own humble breast,But other ruffians' backs,Imputing crime—such is my tolerant haste—To any man that lacks.
"For I am tolerant, generous, keep no rules,And the age honours me.Thank God, I am not as these rigid fools,Even as this Pharisee."
(In MemoriamT.H.)
The paralytic man has dropped in deathThe crossing-sweeper's brush to which he clung,One-handed, twisted, dwarfed, scanted of breath,Although his hair was young.
I saw this year the winter vines of France,Dwarfed, twisted, goblins in the frosty drouth—Gnarled, crippled, blackened little stems askanceOn long hills to the South.
Great green and golden hands of leaves ere longShall proffer clusters in that vineyard wide.And O his might, his sweet, his wine, his song,His stature, since he died!
One wept whose only child was dead,New-born, ten years ago."Weep not; he is in bliss," they said.She answered, "Even so,
"Ten years ago was born in painA child, not now forlorn.But oh, ten years ago, in vain,A mother, a mother was born."
Not yet was winter come to earth's soft floor,The tideless wave, the warm white road, the shore,The serried town whose small street tortuouslyLed darkling to the dazzling sea.
Not yet to breathing man, not to his song,Not to his comforted heart; nor to the longClose-cultivated lands beneath the hill.Summer was gently with them still.
But on the Apennine mustered the cloud;The grappling storm shut down. Aloft, aloud,Ruled secret tempest one long day and night,Until another morning's light.
O tender mountain-tops and delicate,Where summer-long the westering sunlight sate!Within that fastness darkened from the sun,What solitary things were done?
The clouds let go, they rose, they winged away;Snow-white the altered mountains faced the day,As saints who keep their counsel sealed and fast,Their anguish over-past.
A FIGURE OF THE EPIPHANY
The poet's imageries are noble ways,Approaches to a plot, an open shrine.Their splendours, colours, avenues, arrays,Their courts that run with wine;
Beautiful similes, "fair and flagrant things,"Enriched, enamouring,—raptures, metaphorsEnhancing life, are paths for pilgrim kingsMade free of golden doors.
And yet the open heavenward plot, with dew,Ultimate poetry, enclosed, enskied(Albeit such ceremonies lead thereto)Stands on the yonder side.
Plain, behind oracles, it is; and pastAll symbols, simple; perfect, heavenly-wild,The song some loaded poets reach at last—The kings that found a Child.
Forth, to the alien gravity,Forth, to the laws of ocean, weBuilders on earth by laws of landEntrust this creature of our handUpon the calculated sea.
Fast bound to shore we cling, we creep,And make our ship ready to leapLight to the flood, equipped to rideThe strange conditions of the tide—New weight, new force, new world: the Deep.
Ah thus—not thus—the Dying, kissed,Cherished, exhorted, shriven, dismissed;By all the eager means we holdWe, warm, prepare him for the cold,To keep the incalculable tryst.
Thou inmost, ultimateCouncil of judgment, palace of decrees,Where the high senses hold their spiritual state,Sued by earth's embassies,And sign, approve, accept, conceive, create;
Create—thy senses closeWith the world's pleas. The random odours reachTheir sweetness in the place of thy repose,Upon thy tongue the peach,And in thy nostrils breathes the breathing rose.
To thee, secluded one,The dark vibrations of the sightless skies,The lovely inexplicit colours run;The light gropes for those eyesO thou august! thou dost command the sun.
Music, all dumb, hath trodInto thine ear her one effectual way;And fire and cold approach to gain thy nod,Where thou call'st up the day,Where thou awaitest the appeal of God.
Unlike the youth that all men sayThey prize—youth of abounding blood,In love with the sufficient day,And gay in growth, and strong in bud;
Unlike was mine! Then my first slumberNightly rehearsed my last; each breathKnew itself one of the unknown number.But Life was urgent with me as Death.
My shroud was in the flocks; the hillWithin its quarry locked my stone;My bier grew in the woods; and stillLife spurred me where I paused alone.
"Begin!" Life called. Again her shout,"Make haste while it is called to-day!"Her exhortations plucked me out,Hunted me, turned me, held me at bay.
But if my youth is thus hard pressed(I thought) what of a later year?If the end so threats this tender breast,What of the days when it draws near?
Draws near, and little done? yet lo,Dread has forborne, and haste lies by.I was beleaguered; now the foeHas raised the siege, I know not why.
I see them troop away; I askWere they in sooth mine enemies—Terror, the doubt, the lash, the task?What heart has my new housemate, Ease?
How am I left, at last, alive,To make a stranger of a tear?What did I do one day to driveFrom me the vigilant angel, Fear?
The diligent angel, Labour? Ay,The inexorable angel, Pain?Menace me, lest indeed I die,Sloth! Turn; crush, teach me fear again!
With this ambiguous earthHis dealings have been told us. These abide:The signal to a maid, the human birth,The lesson, and the young Man crucified.
But not a star of allThe innumerable host of stars has heardHow He administered this terrestrial ball.Our race have kept their Lord's entrusted Word.
Of His earth-visiting feetNone knows the secret, cherished, perilous,The terrible, shame fast, frightened, whispered, sweet,Heart-shattering secret of His way with us.
No planet knows that thisOur wayside planet, carrying land and wave,Love and life multiplied, and pain and bliss,Bears, as chief treasure, one forsaken grave.
Nor, in our little day,May His devices with the heavens be guessed,His pilgrimage to thread the Milky Way,Or His bestowals there be manifest.
But, in the eternities,Doubtless we shall compare together, hearA million alien Gospels, in what guiseHe trod the Pleiades, the Lyre, the Bear.
O, be prepared, my soul!To read the inconceivable, to scanThe million forms of God those stars unrollWhen, in our turn, we show to them a Man.
"Your sins ... shall be white as snow."
Into the rescued world newcomer,The newly-dead stepped up, and cried,"O what is that, sweeter than summerWas to my heart before I died?Sir (to an angel), what is yonderMore bright than the remembered skies,A lovelier sight, a softer splendourThan when the moon was wont to rise?Surely no sinner wears such seemingEven the Rescued World within?"
"O the success of His redeeming!O child, it is a rescued sin!"
All night had shout of men and cryOf woeful women filled His way;Until that noon of sombre skyOn Friday, clamour and displaySmote Him; no solitude had He,No silence, since Gethsemane.
Public was Death; but Power, but Might,But Life again, but Victory,Were hushed within the dead of night,The shutter'd dark, the secrecy.And all alone, alone, aloneHe rose again behind the stone.
AD SOROREM E. B.
"Thy father was transfused into thy blood."Dryden: Ode to Mrs. Anne Killigrew.
Our father works in us,The daughters of his manhood. Not undoneIs he, not wasted, though transmuted thus,And though he left no son.
Therefore on him I cryTo arm me: "For my delicate mind a casque,A breastplate for my heart, courage to die,Of thee, captain, I ask.
"Nor strengthen only; pressA finger on this violent blood and pale,Over this rash will let thy tendernessA while pause, and prevail.
"And shepherd-father, thouWhose staff folded my thoughts before my birth,Control them now I am of earth, and nowThou art no more of earth.
"O liberal, constant, dear!Crush in my nature the ungenerous artOf the inferior; set me high, and here,Here garner up thy heart."
Like to him now are they,The million living fathers of the War—Mourning the crippled world, the bitter day—Whose striplings are no more.
The crippled world! Come then,Fathers of women with your honour in trust;Approve, accept, know them daughters of men,Now that your sons are dust.
TO THE EARLY DEAD IN BATTLE
There is no length of daysBut yours, boys who were children once.Of oldThe Past beset you in your childish ways,With sense of Time untold.
What have you then forgone?A history? This you had. Or memories?These, too, you had of your far-distant dawn.No further dawn seems his,
The old man who shares with you,But has no more, no more. Time's mysteryDid once for him the most that it can do;He has had infancy.
And all his dreams, and allHis loves for mighty Nature, sweet and few,Are but the dwindling past he can recallOf what his childhood knew.
He counts not any moreHis brief, his present years. But O he knowsHow far apart the summers were of yore,How far apart the snows.
Therefore be satisfied;Long life is in your treasury ere you fall;Yes, and first love, like Dante's. O a brideFor ever mystical!
Irrevocable good,—You dead, and now about, so young, to die,—Your childhood was; there Space, there Multitude,There dwelt Antiquity.
Two o'clock, the morning of October12th, 1915
To her accustomed eyesThe midnight-morning brought not such a dreadAs thrills the chance-awakened head that liesIn trivial sleep on the habitual bed.
'Twas yet some hours ere light;And many, many, many a break of dayHad she outwatched the dying; but this nightShortened her vigil was, briefer the way.
By dial of the clock'Twas day in the dark above her lonely head."This day thou shalt be with Me." Ere the cockAnnounced that day she met the Immortal Dead.
On London fell a clearer light;Caressing pencils of the sunDefined the distances, the whiteHouses transfigured one by one,The "long, unlovely street" impearled.O what a sky has walked the world!
Most happy year! And out of townThe hay was prosperous, and the wheat;The silken harvest climbed the down:Moon after moon was heavenly-sweetStroking the bread within the sheaves,Looking 'twixt apples and their leaves.
And while this rose made round her cup,The armies died convulsed. And whenThis chaste young silver sun went upSoftly, a thousand shattered men,One wet corruption, heaped the plain,After a league-long throb of pain.
Flower following tender flower; and birds,And berries; and benignant skiesMade thrive the serried flocks and herds.—Yonder are men shot through the eyes.Love, hide thy faceFrom man's unpardonable race.
* * *
Who said "No man hath greater love than this,To die to serve his friend"?So these have loved us all unto the end.Chide thou no more, O thou unsacrificed!The soldier dying dies upon a kiss,The very kiss of Christ.
The Art of Painting had in the Primitive years looked with the light, not towards it. Before Tintoretto's date, however, many painters practised shadows and lights, and turned more or less sunwards; but he set the figure between himself and a full sun. His work is to be known in Venice by the splendid trick of an occluded sun and a shadow thrown straight at the spectator.
Master, thy enterprise,Magnificent, magnanimous, was well done,Which seized the head of Art, and turned her eyes—The simpleton—and made her front the sun.
Long had she sat content,Her young unlessoned back to a morning gay,To a solemn noon, to a cloudy firmament,And looked upon a world in gentle day.
But thy imperial callBade her to stand with thee and breast the light,And therefore face the shadows, mystical,Sombre, translucent, vestiges of night,
Yet glories of the day.Eagle! we know thee by thy undaunted eyesSky-ward, and by thy glooms; we know thy wayAmbiguous, and those halo-misted dyes.
Thou Cloud, the bridegroom's friend(The bridegroom sun)! Master, we know thy sign:A mystery of hues world-without-end;And hide-and-seek of gamesome and divine;
Shade of the noble headCast hitherward upon the noble breast;Human solemnities thrice hallowed;The haste to Calvary, the Cross at rest.
Look sunward, Angel, then!Carry the fortress-heavens by that hand;Still be the interpreter of suns to men;And shadow us, O thou Tower! for thou shalt stand.
A voice peals in this end of nightA phrase of notes resembling stars,Single and spiritual notes of light.What call they at my window-bars?The South, the past, the day to be,An ancient infelicity.
Darkling, deliberate, what singsThis wonderful one, alone, at peace?What wilder things than song, what thingsSweeter than youth, clearer than Greece,Dearer than Italy, untoldDelight, and freshness centuries old?
And first first-loves, a multitude,The exaltation of their pain;Ancestral childhood long renewed;And midnights of invisible rain;And gardens, gardens, night and day,Gardens and childhood all the way.
What Middle Ages passionate,O passionless voice! What distant bellsLodged in the hills, what palace stateIllyrian! For it speaks, it tells,Without desire, without dismay,Some morrow and some yesterday.
All-natural things! But more—Whence cameThis yet remoter mystery?How do these starry notes proclaimA graver still divinity?This hope, this sanctity of fear?O innocent throat! O human ear!
OF BIRTH, 1864; OF DEATH, 1916
TO SHAKESPEARE
Longer than thine, than thine,Is now my time of life; and thus thy yearsSeem to be clasped and harboured within mine.O how ignoble this my clasp appears!
Thy unprophetic birth,Thy darkling death; living I might have seenThat cradle, marked those labours, closed that earth.O first, O last, O infinite between!
Now that my life has sharedThy dedicated date, O mortal, twice,To what all-vain embrace shall be comparedMy lean enclosure of thy paradise:
To ignorant arms that foldA poet to a foolish breast? The Line,That is not, with the world within its hold?So, days with days, my days encompass thine.
Child, Stripling, Man—the sod.Might I talk little language to thee, poreOn thy last silence? O thou city of God,My waste lies after thee, and lies before.
Across what calm of tropic seas,'Neath alien clusters of the nights,Looked, in the past, such eyes as these!Long-quenched, relumed, ancestral lights!
The generations fostered them;And steadfast Nature, secretwise—Thou seedling child of that old stem—Kindled anew thy dark-bright eyes.
Was it a century or twoThis lovely darkness rose and set,Occluded by grey eyes and blue,And Nature feigning to forget?
Some grandam gave a hint of it—So cherished was it in thy race,So fine a treasure to transmitIn its perfection to thy face.
Some father to some mother's breastEntrusted it, unknowing. TimeImplied, or made it manifest,Bequest of a forgotten clime.
Hereditary eyes! But thisIs single, singular, apart:—New-made thy love, new-made thy kiss,New-made thy errand to my heart.
Three times have I beheldFear leap in a babe's face, and take his breath,Fear, like the fear of eldThat knows the price of life, the name of death.
What is it justifiesThis thing, this dread, this fright that has no tongue,The terror in those eyesWhen only eyes can speak—they are so young?
Not yet those eyes had wept.What does fear cherish that it locks so well?What fortress is thus kept?Of what is ignorant terror sentinel?
And pain in the poor child,Monstrously disproportionate, and dumbIn the poor beast, and wildIn the old decorous man, caught, overcome?
Of what the outposts these?Of what the fighting guardians? What demandsThat sense of menaces,And then such flying feet, imploring hands?
Life: There's nought else to seek;Life only, little prized; but by designOf nature prized. How weak,How sad, how brief! O how divine, divine!
O what a miracle wind is thisHas crossed the English land to-dayWith an unprecedented kiss,And wonderfully found a way!
Unsmirched incredibly and clean,Between the towns and factories,Avoiding, has his long flight been,Bringing a sky like Sicily's.
O fine escape, horizon pureAs Rome's! Black chimneys left and right,But not for him, the straight, the sure,His luminous day, his spacious night.
How keen his choice, how swift his feet!Narrow the way and hard to find!This delicate stepper and discreetWalked not like any worldly wind.
Most like a man in man's own day,One of the few, a perfect one:His open earth—the single way;His narrow road—the open sun.
I dreamt (no "dream" awake—a dream indeed)A wrathful man was talking in the park:"Where are the Higher Powers, who know our needAnd leave us in the dark?
"There are no Higher Powers; there is no heartIn God, no love"—his oratory here,Taking the paupers' and the cripples' part,Was broken by a tear.
And then it seemed that One who did createCompassion, who alone invented pity,Walked, as though called, in at that north-east gate,Out from the muttering city;
Threaded the little crowd, trod the brown grass,Bent o'er the speaker close, saw the tear rise,And saw Himself, as one looks in a glass,In those impassioned eyes.
Lord, where are Thy prerogatives?Why, men have more than Thou hast kept;The king rewards, remits, forgives,The poet to a throne has stept.
And Thou, despoiled, hast given awayWorship to men, success to strife,Thy glory to the heavenly day,And made Thy sun the lord of life.
Is one too precious to impart,One property reserved to Christ,One, cherished, grappled to that heart?—To be alone the Sacrificed?
O Thou who lovest to redeem!—One whom I know lies sore oppressed,Thou wilt not suffer me to dreamThat I can bargain for her rest.
Seven hours I swiftly sleep, while sheMeasures the leagues of dark, awake.O that my dewy eyes might beParched by a vigil for her sake!
But O rejected! O in vain!I cannot give who would not keep.I cannot buy, I cannot gain,I cannot give her half my sleep.
Dear are some hidden thingsMy soul has sealed in silence; past delights;Hope unconfessed; desires with hampered wings,Remembered in the nights.
But my best treasures areIgnoble, undelightful, abject, cold;Yet O! profounder hoards oracularNo reliquaries hold.
There lie my trespasses,Abjured but not disowned. I'll not accuseDeterminism, nor, as the Master* says,Charge even "the poor Deuce."
Under my hand they lie,My very own, my proved iniquities;And though the glory of my life go byI hold and garner these.
How else, how otherwhere,How otherwise, shall I discern and gropeFor lowliness? How hate, how love, how dare,How weep, how hope?
*George Meredith
"A riddling world!" one cried."If pangs must be, would God that they were sentTo the impure, the cruel, and passed asideThe holy innocent!"
But I, "Ah no, no, no!Not the clean heart transpierced; not tears that fallFor a child's agony; nor a martyr's woe;Not these, not these appal.
"Not docile motherhood,Dutiful, frequent, closed in all distress;Not shedding of the unoffending blood;Not little joy grown less;
"Not all-benign old ageWith dotage mocked; not gallantry that faintsAnd still pursues; not the vile heritageOf sin's disease in saints;
"Not these defeat the mind.For great is that abjection, and augustThat irony. Submissive we shall findA splendour in that dust.
"Not these puzzle the will;Not these the yet unanswered question urge.But the unjust stricken; but the hands that killLopped; but the merited scourge;
"The sensualist at fast;The merciless felled; the liar in his snares.The cowardice of my judgment sees, aghast,The flail, the chaff, the tares."