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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b13b39d --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #62251 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/62251) diff --git a/old/62251-8.txt b/old/62251-8.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 25d7ce3..0000000 --- a/old/62251-8.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,4251 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Poems of Alice Meynell, by Alice Meynell - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: The Poems of Alice Meynell - -Author: Alice Meynell - -Release Date: May 28, 2020 [EBook #62251] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE POEMS OF ALICE MEYNELL *** - - - - -Produced by Al Haines - - - - - - - - -[Frontispiece: Alice Meynell From a drawing by John S. Sargent, R.A.] - - - - - THE POEMS - - OF - - ALICE MEYNELL - - - - COMPLETE EDITION - - - - MCCLELLAND & STEWART - PUBLISHERS - TORONTO - - - - - Copyright. Canada, 1923 - by McClelland and Stewart, Limited, Toronto - - - - Printed in Canada - - - - - To - W.M. - - - - - BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE - - _This volume contains the whole of Mrs. Meynell's - poetry: the early volume of "Preludes"; the "Poems," - issued in 1893, of which nine impressions were printed - before 1913, when it was incorporated in the - Collected Edition; "Later Poems," issued in 1901, - also incorporated in the edition of 1913; - "Poems: Collected Edition," issued in - 1913, of which the eighth impression - was printed in 1919, and a ninth with - additions in 1921; "A Father of - Women, and other Poems," issued - in 1918, and included in the - Collected Edition in 1919; - and finally "Last Poems," issued in - February, 1923._ - - - - - THE CONTENTS - - EARLY POEMS - - In Early Spring - To the Beloved - An Unmarked Festival - In Autumn - Parted - "Soeur Monique" - Regrets - The Visiting Sea - After a Parting - Builders of Ruins - - - SONNETS - - Thoughts in Separation - The Garden - Your Own Fair Youth - The Young Neophyte - Spring on the Alban Hills - In February - A Shattered Lute - Renouncement - To a Daisy - - - San Lorenzo's Mother - The Lover Urges the Better Thrift - Cradle-Song at Twilight - Song of the Night at Daybreak - A Letter from a Girl to her own Old Age - Advent Meditation - - - A POET'S FANCIES - - The Love of Narcissus - To Any Poet - To One poem in a Silent Time - The Moon to the Sun - The Spring to the Summer - The Day to the Night - A Poet of one Mood - A Song of Derivations - Singers to Come - Unlinked - - - LATER POEMS - - The Shepherdess - The Two Poets - The Lady Poverty - November Blue - A Dead Harvest - The Watershed (_for R. T._) - The Joyous Wanderer - The Rainy Summer - The Roaring Frost - West Wind in Winter - The Fold - "Why wilt thou Chide?" - Veneration of Images - "I am the Way" - Via, et Veritas, et Vita - Parentage - The Modern Mother - Unto us a Son is Given - Veni Creator - Two Boyhoods - To Sylvia - Saint Catherine of Siena - Chimes - A Poet's Wife - Messina, 1908 - The Unknown God - A General Communion - The Fugitive - In Portugal, 1912 - The Crucifixion - The Newer Vainglory - In Manchester Square - Maternity - The First Snow - The Courts - The Launch - To the Body - The Unexpected Peril - Christ in the Universe - Beyond Knowledge - Easter Night - A Father of Women - Length of Days: To the Early Dead in Battle - Nurse Edith Cavell - Summer in England, 1914 - To Tintoretto in Venice - A Thrush before Dawn - The Two Shakespeare Tercentenaries - To O----, of Her Dark Eyes - The Treasure - A Wind of Clear Weather in England - In Sleep - The Divine Privilege - Free Will - The Two Questions - The Lord's Prayer - - - LAST POEMS - - The Poet and His Book - Intimations of Mortality - The Wind is Blind - Time's Reversals - The Threshing Machine - Winter Trees on the Horizon - To Sleep - The Marriage of True Minds - In Honour of America, 1917 - Lord, I owe Thee a Death - Reflexions - To Conscripts - The Voice of a Bird - The Question - The Laws of Verse - "The Return to Nature" - To Silence - The English Metres - "Rivers Unknown to Song" - To the Mother of Christ the Son of Man - A Comparison - Surmise - To Antiquity - Christmas Night - The October Redbreast - To "a Certain Rich Man" - "Everlasting Farewells" - The Poet to the Birds - - - At Night (_to W. M._) - - - - - Early Poems - - - - - IN EARLY SPRING - - O Spring, I know thee! Seek for sweet surprise - In the young children's eyes. - But I have learnt the years, and know the yet - Leaf-folded violet. - Mine ear, awake to silence, can foretell - The cuckoo's fitful bell. - I wander in a grey time that encloses - June and the wild hedge-roses. - A year's procession of the flowers doth pass - My feet, along the grass. - And all you wild birds silent yet, I know - The notes that stir you so, - Your songs yet half devised in the dim dear - Beginnings of the year. - In these young days you meditate your part; - I have it all by heart. - - I know the secrets of the seeds of flowers - Hidden and warm with showers, - And how, in kindling Spring, the cuckoo shall - Alter his interval. - But not a flower or song I ponder is - My own, but memory's. - I shall be silent in those days desired - Before world inspired. - O all brown birds, compose your old song-phrases, - Earth, thy familiar daisies! - - A poet mused upon the dusky height, - Between two stars towards night, - His purpose in his heart. I watched, a space, - The meaning of his face: - There was the secret, fled from earth and skies, - Hid in his grey young eyes. - My heart and all the Summer wait his choice, - And wonder for his voice. - Who shall foretell his songs, and who aspire - But to divine his lyre? - Sweet earth, we know thy dimmest mysteries, - But he is lord of his. - - - - - TO THE BELOVED - - Oh, not more subtly silence strays - Amongst the winds, between the voices, - Mingling alike with pensive lays, - And with the music that rejoices, - Than thou art present in my days. - - My silence, life returns to thee - In all the pauses of her breath. - Hush back to rest the melody - That out of thee awakeneth; - And thou, wake ever, wake for me! - - Thou art like silence all unvexed, - Though wild words part my soul from thee. - Thou art like silence unperplexed, - A secret and a mystery - Between one footfall and the next. - - Most dear pause in a mellow lay! - Thou art inwoven with every air. - With thee the wildest tempests play, - And snatches of thee everywhere - Make little heavens throughout a day. - - Darkness and solitude shine, for me. - For life's fair outward part are rife - The silver noises; let them be. - It is the very soul of life - Listens for thee, listens for thee. - - O pause between the sobs of cares; - O thought within all thought that is; - Trance between laughters unawares: - Thou art the shape of melodies, - And thou the ecstasy of prayers! - - - - - AN UNMARKED FESTIVAL - - There's a feast undated, yet - Both our true lives hold it fast,-- - Even the day when first we met. - What a great day came and passed, - --Unknown then, but known at last. - - And we met: You knew not me, - Mistress of your joys and fears; - Held my hand that held the key - Of the treasure of your years, - Of the fountain of your tears. - - For you knew not it was I, - And I knew not it was you. - We have learnt, as days went by. - But a flower struck root and grew - Underground, and no one knew. - - Day of days! Unmarked it rose, - In whose hours we were to meet; - And forgotten passed. Who knows, - Was earth cold or sunny, Sweet, - At the coming of your feet? - - One mere day, we thought; the measure - Of such days the year fulfils. - Now, how dearly would we treasure - Something from its fields, its rills, - And its memorable hills. - - - - - - IN AUTUMN - - The leaves are many under my feet, - And drift one way. - Their scent of death is weary and sweet. - A flight of them is in the grey - Where sky and forest meet. - - The low winds moan for dead sweet years; - The birds sing all for pain, - Of a common thing, to weary ears,-- - Only a summer's fate of rain, - And a woman's fate of tears. - - I walk to love and life alone - Over these mournful places, - Across the summer overthrown, - The dead joys of these silent faces, - To claim my own. - - I know his heart has beat to bright - Sweet loves gone by; - I know the leaves that die to-night - Once budded to the sky; - And I shall die from his delight. - - O leaves, so quietly ending now, - You heard the cuckoos sing. - And I will grow upon my bough - If only for a Spring, - And fall when the rain is on my brow. - - O tell me, tell me ere you die, - Is it worth the pain? - You bloomed so fair, you waved so high; - Now that the sad days wane, - Are you repenting where you lie? - - I lie amongst you, and I kiss - Your fragrance mouldering. - O dead delights, is it such bliss, - That tuneful Spring? - Is love so sweet, that comes to this? - - Kiss me again as I kiss you; - Kiss me again, - For all your tuneful nights of dew, - In this your time of rain, - For all your kisses when Spring was new. - - You will not, broken hearts; let be. - I pass across your death - To a golden summer you shall not see, - And in your dying breath - There is no benison for me. - - There is an autumn yet to wane, - There are leaves yet to fall, - Which, when I kiss, may kiss again, - And, pitied, pity me all for all, - And love me in mist and rain. - - - - - - PARTED - - Farewell to one now silenced quite, - Sent out of hearing, out of sight,-- - My friend of friends, whom I shall miss. - He is not banished, though, for this,-- - Nor he, nor sadness, nor delight. - - Though I shall talk with him no more, - A low voice sounds upon the shore. - He must not watch my resting-place, - But who shall drive a mournful face - From the sad winds about my door? - - I shall not hear his voice complain, - But who shall stop the patient rain? - His tears must not disturb my heart, - But who shall change the years, and part - The world from every thought of pain? - - Although my life is left so dim, - The morning crowns the mountain-rim; - Joy is not gone from summer skies, - Nor innocence from children's eyes, - And all these things are part of him. - - He is not banished, for the showers - Yet wake this green warm earth of ours. - How can the summer but be sweet? - I shall not have him at my feet, - And yet my feet are on the flowers. - - - - - "SOEUR MONIQUE" - - _A Rondeau by Couperin_ - - Quiet form of silent nun, - What has given you to my inward eyes? - What has marked you, unknown one, - In the throngs of centuries - That mine ears do listen through? - This old master's melody - That expresses you; - This admired simplicity, - Tender, with a serious wit; - And two words, the name of it, - "Soeur Monique." - - And if sad the music is, - It is sad with mysteries - Of a small immortal thing - That the passing ages sing,-- - Simple music making mirth - Of the dying and the birth - Of the people of the earth. - - No, not sad; we are beguiled, - Sad with living as we are; - Ours the sorrow, outpouring - Sad self on a selfless thing, - As our eyes and hearts are mild - With our sympathy for Spring, - With a pity sweet and wild - - For the innocent and far, - With our sadness in a star, - Or our sadness in a child. - But two words, and this sweet air. - Soeur Monique, - Had he more, who set you there? - Was his music-dream of you - Of some perfect nun he knew, - Or of some ideal, as true? - - And I see you where you stand - With your life held in your hand - As a rosary of days. - And your thoughts in calm arrays, - And your innocent prayers are told - On your rosary of days. - And the young days and the old - With their quiet prayers did meet - When the chaplet was complete. - - Did it vex you, the surmise - Of this wind of words, this storm of cries, - Though you kept the silence so - In the storms of long ago, - And you keep it, like a star? - --Of the evils triumphing, - Strong, for all your perfect conquering, - Silenced conqueror that you are? - - And I wonder at your peace, I wonder. - Would it trouble you to know, - Tender soul, the world and sin - By your calm feet trodden under - Long ago, - Living now, mighty to win? - And your feet are vanished like the snow. - - Vanished; but the poet, he - In whose dream your face appears, - He who ranges unknown years - With your music in his heart, - Speaks to you familiarly - Where you keep apart, - And invents you as you were. - And your picture, O my nun! - Is a strangely easy one, - For the holy weed you wear, - For your hidden eyes and hidden hair, - And in picturing you I may - Scarcely go astray. - - O the vague reality, - The mysterious certainty! - O strange truth of these my guesses - In the wide thought-wildernesses! - --Truth of one divined of many flowers; - Of one raindrop in the showers - Of the long ago swift rain; - Of one tear of many tears - In some world-renowned pain; - Of one daisy 'mid the centuries of sun; - Of a little living nun - In the garden of the years. - - Yes, I am not far astray; - But I guess you as might one - Pausing when young March is grey, - In a violet-peopled day; - All his thoughts go out to places that he knew, - To his child-home in the sun, - To the fields of his regret, - To one place i' the innocent March air, - By one olive, and invent - The familiar form and scent - Safely; a white violet - Certainly is there. - - Soeur Monique, remember me. - 'Tis not in the past alone - I am picturing you to be; - But my little friend, my own, - In my moment, pray for me. - For another dream is mine, - And another dream is true, - Sweeter even, - Of the little ones that shine - Lost within the light divine,-- - Of some meekest flower, or you, - In the fields of heaven. - - - - - REGRETS - - As, when the seaward ebbing tide doth pour - Out by the low sand spaces, - The parting waves slip back to clasp the shore - With lingering embraces,-- - - So in the tide of life that carries me - From where thy true heart dwells, - Waves of my thoughts and memories turn to thee - With lessening farewells; - - Waving of hands; dreams, when the day forgets; - A care half lost in cares; - The saddest of my verses; dim regrets; - Thy name among my prayers. - - I would the day might come, so waited for, - So patiently besought, - When I, returning, should fill up once more - Thy desolated thought; - - And fill thy loneliness that lies apart - In still, persistent pain. - Shall I content thee, O thou broken heart, - As the tide comes again, - - And brims the little sea-shore lakes, and sets - Seaweeds afloat, and fills - The silent pools, rivers and rivulets - Among the inland hills? - - - - - THE VISITING SEA - - As the inhastening tide doth roll, - Home from the deep, along the whole - Wide shining strand, and floods the caves, - --Your love comes filling with happy waves - The open sea-shore of my soul. - - But inland from the seaward spaces, - None knows, not even you, the places - Brimmed, at your coming, out of sight, - --The little solitudes of delight - This tide constrains in dim embraces. - - You see the happy shore, wave-rimmed, - But know not of the quiet dimmed - Rivers your coming floods and fills, - The little pools 'mid happier hills, - My silent rivulets, over-brimmed. - - What! I have secrets from you? Yes. - But, visiting Sea, your love doth press - And reach in further than you know, - And fills all these; and, when you go, - There's loneliness in loneliness. - - - - - AFTER A PARTING - - Farewell has long been said; I have foregone thee; - I never name thee even. - But how shall I learn virtues and yet shun thee? - For thou art so near Heaven - That Heavenward meditations pause upon thee. - - Thou dost beset the path to every shrine; - My trembling thoughts discern - Thy goodness in the good for which I pine; - And, if I turn from but one sin, I turn - Unto a smile of thine. - - How shall I thrust thee apart - Since all my growth tends to thee night and day-- - To thee faith, hope, and art? - Swift are the currents setting all one way; - They draw my life, my life, out of my heart. - - - - - BUILDERS OF RUINS - - We build with strength the deep tower wall - That shall be shattered thus and thus. - And fair and great are court and hall, - But how fair--this is not for us, - Who know the lack that lurks in all. - - We know, we know how all too bright - The hues are that our painting wears, - And how the marble gleams too white;-- - We speak in unknown tongues, the years - Interpret everything aright, - - And crown with weeds our pride of towers, - And warm our marble through with sun, - And break our pavements through with flowers, - With an Amen when all is done, - Knowing these perfect things of ours. - - O days, we ponder, left alone, - Like children in their lonely hour, - And in our secrets keep your own, - As seeds the colour of the flower. - To-day they are not all unknown, - - The stars that 'twixt the rise and fall, - Like relic-seers, shall one by one - Stand musing o'er our empty hall; - And setting moons shall brood upon - The frescoes of our inward wall. - - And when some midsummer shall be, - Hither will come some little one - (Dusty with bloom of flowers is he), - Sit on a ruin i' the late long sun, - And think, one foot upon his knee. - - And where they wrought, these lives of ours, - So many-worded, many-souled, - A North-west wind will take the towers, - And dark with colour, sunny and cold, - Will range alone among the flowers. - - And here or there, at our desire, - The little clamorous owl shall sit - Through her still time; and we aspire - To make a law (and know not it) - Unto the life of a wild briar. - - Our purpose is distinct and dear, - Though from our open eyes 'tis hidden. - Thou, Time to come, shalt make it clear, - Undoing our work; we are children chidden - With pity and smiles of many a year. - - Who shall allot the praise, and guess - What part is yours and what is ours?-- - O years that certainly will bless - Our flowers with fruits, our seeds with flowers, - With ruin all our perfectness. - - Be patient, Time, of our delays, - Too happy hopes, and wasted fears, - Our faithful ways, our Wilful ways; - Solace our labours, O our seers - The seasons, and our bards the days; - - And make our pause and silence brim - With the shrill children's play, and sweets - Of those pathetic flowers and dim, - Of those eternal flowers my Keats - Dying felt growing over him! - - - - - THOUGHTS IN SEPARATION - - We never meet; yet we meet day by day - Upon those hills of life, dim and immense-- - The good we love, and sleep, our innocence. - O hills of life, high hills! And, higher than they, - - Our guardian spirits meet at prayer and play. - Beyond pain, joy, and hope, and long suspense, - Above the summits of our souls, far hence, - An angel meets an angel on the way. - - Beyond all good I ever believed of thee, - Or thou of me, these always love and live. - And though I fail of thy ideal of me, - - My angel falls not short. They greet each other. - Who knows, they may exchange the kiss we give, - Thou to thy crucifix, I to my mother. - - - - - THE GARDEN - - My heart shall be thy garden. Come, my own, - Into thy garden; thine be happy hours - Among my fairest thoughts, my tallest flowers, - From root to crowning petal thine alone. - - Thine is the place from where the seeds are sown - Up to the sky enclosed, with all its showers. - But ah, the birds, the birds! Who shall build bowers - To keep these thine? O friend, the birds have flown. - - For as these come and go, and quit our pine - To follow the sweet season, or, new-comers, - Sing one song only from our alder-trees, - - My heart has thoughts, which, though thine eyes hold mine, - Flit to the silent world and other summers, - With wings that dip beyond the silver seas. - - - - - YOUR OWN FAIR YOUTH - - Your own fair youth, you care so little for it-- - Smiling towards Heaven, you would not stay the advances - Of time and change upon your happiest fancies. - I keep your golden hour, and will restore it. - - If ever, in time to come, you would explore it-- - Your old self, whose thoughts went like last year's pansies, - Look unto me; no mirror keeps its glances; - In my unfailing praises now I store it. - - To guard all joys of yours from Time's estranging, - I shall be then a treasury where your gay, - Happy, and pensive past unaltered is. - - I shall be then a garden charmed from changing, - In which your June has never passed away. - Walk there awhile among my memories. - - - - - THE YOUNG NEOPHYTE - - Who knows what days I answer for to-day? - Giving the bud I give the flower. I bow - This yet unfaded and a faded brow; - Bending these knees and feeble knees, I pray. - - Thoughts yet unripe in me I bend one way, - Give one repose to pain I know not now, - One check to joy that comes, I guess not how. - I dedicate my fields when Spring is grey. - - O rash! (I smile) to pledge my hidden wheat. - I fold to-day at altars far apart - Hands trembling with what toils? In their retreat - - I seal my love to-be, my folded art. - I light the tapers at my head and feet, - And lay the crucifix on this silent heart. - - - - - SPRING ON THE ALBAN HILLS - - O'er the Campagna it is dim, warm weather; - The Spring comes with a full heart silently, - And many thoughts; a faint flash of the sea - Divides two mists; straight falls the falling feather. - - With wild Spring meanings hill and plain together - Grow pale, or just flush with a dust of flowers. - Rome in the ages, dimmed with all her towers, - Floats in the midst, a little cloud at tether. - - I fain would put my hands about thy face, - Thou with thy thoughts, who art another Spring, - And draw thee to me like a mournful child. - - Thou lookest on me from another place; - I touch not this day's secret, nor the thing - That in the silence makes thy soft eyes wild. - - - - - IN FEBRUARY - - Rich meanings of the prophet-Spring adorn, - Unseen, this colourless sky of folded showers, - And folded winds; no blossom in the bowers; - A poet's face asleep in this grey morn. - - Now in the midst of the old world forlorn - A mystic child is set in these still hours. - I keep this time, even before the flowers, - Sacred to all the young and the unborn: - - To all the miles and miles of unsprung wheat, - And to the Spring waiting beyond the portal, - And to the future of my own young art, - - And, among all these things, to you, my sweet, - My friend, to your calm face and the immortal - Child tarrying all your life-time in your heart. - - - - - A SHATTERED LUTE - - I touched the heart that loved me as a player - Touches a lyre. Content with my poor skill, - No touch save mine knew my beloved (and still - I thought at times: Is there no sweet lost air - - Old loves could wake in him, I cannot share?) - O he alone, alone could so fulfil - My thoughts in sound to the measure of my will. - He is gone, and silence takes me unaware. - - The songs I knew not he resumes, set free - From my constraining love, alas for me! - His part in our tune goes with him; my part - - Is locked in me for ever; I stand as mute - As one with vigorous music in his heart - Whose fingers stray upon a shattered lute. - - - - - RENOUNCEMENT - - I must not think of thee; and, tired yet strong, - I shun the thought that lurks in all delight-- - The thought of thee--and in the blue Heaven's height, - And in the sweetest passage of a song. - - O just beyond the fairest thoughts that throng - This breast, the thought of thee waits, hidden yet bright; - But it must never, never come in sight; - I must stop short of thee the whole day long. - - But when sleep comes to close each difficult day, - When night gives pause to the long watch I keep, - And all my bonds I needs must loose apart, - - Must doff my will as raiment laid away,-- - With the first dream that comes with the first sleep - I run, I run, I am gathered to thy heart. - - - - - TO A DAISY - - Slight as thou art, thou art enough to hide - Like all created things, secrets from me, - And stand a barrier to eternity. - And I, how can I praise thee well and wide - - From where I dwell--upon the hither side? - Thou little veil for so great mystery, - When shall I penetrate all things and thee, - And then look back? For this I must abide, - - Till thou shalt grow and fold and be unfurled - Literally between me and the world. - Then I shall drink from in beneath a spring, - - And from a poet's side shall read his book. - O daisy mine, what will it be to look - From God's side even of such a simple thing? - - - - - SAN LORENZO'S MOTHER - - I had not seen my son's dear face - (He chose the cloister by God's grace) - Since it had come to full flower-time. - I hardly guessed at its perfect prime, - That folded flower of his dear face. - - Mine eyes were veiled by mists of tears - When on a day in many years - One of his Order came. I thrilled, - Facing, I thought, that face fulfilled. - I doubted, for my mists of tears. - - His blessing be with me for ever! - My hope and doubt were hard to sever. - --That altered face, those holy weeds. - I filled his wallet and kissed his beads, - And lost his echoing feet for ever. - - If to my son my alms were given - I know not, and I wait for Heaven. - He did not plead for child of mine, - But for another Child divine, - And unto Him it was surely given. - - There is One alone who cannot change; - Dreams are we, shadows, visions strange; - And all I give is given to One. - I might mistake my dearest son, - But never the Son who cannot change. - - - - - THE LOVER URGES THE BETTER THRIFT - - My Fair, no beauty of thine will last - Save in my love's eternity. - Thy smiles, that light thee fitfully, - Are lost for ever--their moment past-- - Except the few thou givest to me. - - Thy sweet words vanish day by day, - As all breath of mortality; - Thy laughter, done, must cease to be, - And all thy dear tones pass away, - Except the few that sing to me. - - Hide then within my heart, O hide - All thou art loth should go from thee. - Be kinder to thyself and me. - My cupful from this river's tide - Shall never reach the long sad sea. - - - - - CRADLE-SONG AT TWILIGHT - - The child not yet is lulled to rest. - Too young a nurse, the slender Night - So laxly hold him to her breast - That throbs with flight. - - He plays with her, and will not sleep. - For other playfellows she sighs; - An unmaternal fondness keep - Her alien eyes. - - - - - SONG OF THE NIGHT AT DAYBREAK - - All my stars forsake me. - And the dawn-winds shake me, - Where shall I betake me? - - Whither shall I run - Till the set of sun, - Till the day be done? - - To the mountain-mine, - To the boughs o' the pine, - To the blind man's eyne, - - To a brow that is - Bowed upon the knees, - Sick with memories? - - - - - A LETTER FROM A GIRL TO HER OWN OLD AGE - - Listen, and when thy hand this paper presses, - O time-worn woman, think of her who blesses - What thy thin fingers touch, with her caresses. - - O mother, for the weight of years that break thee! - O daughter, for slow time must yet awake thee. - And from the changes of my heart must make thee! - - O fainting traveller, morn is grey in heaven. - Dost thou remember how the clouds were driven? - And are they calm about the fall of even? - - Pause near the ending of thy long migration, - For this one sudden hour of desolation - Appeals to one hour of thy meditation. - - Suffer, O silent one, that I remind thee - Of the great hills that stormed the sky behind thee, - Of the wild winds of power that have resigned thee. - - Know that the mournful plain where thou must wander - Is but a grey and silent world, but ponder - The misty mountains of the morning yonder. - - Listen:--the mountain winds with rain were fretting, - And sudden gleams the mountain-tops besetting. - I cannot let thee fade to death, forgetting. - - What part of this wild heart of mine I know not - Will follow with thee where the great winds blow not, - And where the young flowers of the mountain grow not. - - Yet let my letter with thy lost thoughts in it - Tell what the way was when thou didst begin it, - And win with thee the goal when thou shalt win it. - - Oh, in some hour of thine thy thoughts shall guide thee. - Suddenly, though time, darkness, silence, hide thee, - This wind from thy lost country flits beside thee,-- - - Telling thee: all thy memories moved the maiden, - With thy regrets was morning over-shaden, - With sorrow, thou hast left, her life was laden. - - But whither shall my thoughts turn to pursue thee? - Life changes, and the years and days renew thee. - Oh, Nature brings my straying heart unto thee. - - Her winds will join us, with their constant kisses - Upon the evening as the morning tresses, - Her summers breathe the same unchanging blisses. - - And we, so altered in our shifting phases, - Track one another 'mid the many mazes - By the eternal child-breath of the daisies. - - I have not writ this letter of divining - To make a glory of thy silent pining, - A triumph of thy mute and strange declining. - - Only one youth, and the bright life was shrouded. - Only one morning, and the day was clouded. - And one old age with all regrets is crowded. - - O hush, O hush! Thy tears my words are steeping. - O hush, hush, hush! So full, the fount of weeping? - Poor eyes, so quickly moved, so near to sleeping? - - Pardon the girl; such strange desires beset her. - Poor woman, lay aside the mournful letter - That breaks thy heart; the one who wrote, forget her: - - The one who now thy faded features guesses, - With filial fingers thy grey hair caresses, - With morning tears thy mournful twilight blesses. - - - - - ADVENT MEDITATION - - _Rorate coeli desuper, et nubes pluant Justum - Aperiatur terra, et germinet Salvatorem._ - - - No sudden thing of glory and fear - Was the Lord's coming; but the dear - Slow Nature's days followed each other - To form the Saviour from his Mother - --One of the children of the year. - - The earth, the rain, received the trust, - --The sun and dews, to frame the Just. - He drew His daily life from these, - According to His own decrees - Who makes man from the fertile dust. - - Sweet summer and the winter wild, - These brought him forth, the Undefiled. - The happy Springs renewed again - His daily bread, the growing grain, - The food and raiment of the Child. - - - - - A POET'S FANCIES - - I - - THE LOVE OF NARCISSUS - - Like him who met his own eyes in the river, - The poet trembles at his own long gaze - That meets him through the changing nights and days - From out great Nature; all her waters quiver - With his fair image facing him for ever; - The music that he listens to betrays - His own heart to his ears; by trackless ways - His wild thoughts tend to him in long endeavour. - - His dreams are far among the silent hills; - His vague voice calls him from the darkened plain - With winds at night; strange recognition thrills - His lonely heart with piercing love and pain; - He knows again his mirth in mountain rills, - His weary tears that touch him with the rain. - - - - II - - TO ANY POET - - Thou who singest through the earth - All the earth's wild creatures fly thee; - Everywhere thou marrest mirth,-- - Dumbly they defy thee; - There is something they deny thee. - - Pines thy fallen nature ever - For the unfallen Nature sweet. - But she shuns thy long endeavour, - Though her flowers and wheat - Throng and press thy pausing feet. - - Though thou tame a bird to love thee, - Press thy face to grass and flowers, - All these things reserve above thee, - Secrets in the bowers, - Secrets in the sun and showers. - - Sing thy sorrow, sing thy gladness, - In thy songs must wind and tree - Bear the fictions of thy sadness, - Thy humanity. - For their truth is not for thee. - - Wait, and many a secret nest, - Many a hoarded winter-store - Will be hidden on thy breast. - Things thou longest for - Will not fear or shun thee more. - - Thou shalt intimately lie - In the roots of flowers that thrust - Upwards from thee to the sky, - With no more distrust - When they blossom from thy dust. - - Silent labours of the rain - Shall be near thee, reconciled; - Little lives of leaves and grain, - All things shy and wild, - Tell thee secrets, quiet child. - - Earth, set free from thy fair fancies - And the art thou shalt resign, - Will bring forth her rue and pansies - Unto more divine - Thoughts than any thoughts of thine. - - Nought will fear thee, humbled creature. - There will lie thy mortal burden - Pressed unto the heart of Nature, - Songless in a garden, - With a long embrace of pardon. - - Then the truth all creatures tell, - And His will Whom thou entreatest, - Shall absorb thee; there shall dwell - Silence, the completest - Of thy poems, last and sweetest. - - - - III - - TO ONE POEM IN A SILENT TIME - - Who looked for thee, thou little song of mine? - This winter of a silent poet's heart - Is suddenly sweet with thee. But what thou art, - Mid-winter flower, I would I could divine. - - Art thou a last one, orphan of thy line? - Did the dead summer's last warmth foster thee? - Or is Spring folded up unguessed in me, - And stirring out of sight,--and thou the sign? - - Where shall I look--backwards or to the morrow - For others of thy fragrance, secret child? - Who knows if last things or if first things claim thee? - - --Whether thou be the last smile of my sorrow, - Or else a joy too sweet, a joy too wild. - How, my December violet, shall I name thee? - - - - IV - - THE MOON TO THE SUN - - _The Poet sings to her Poet_ - - As the full moon shining there - To the sun that lighteth her - Am I unto thee for ever, - O my secret glory-giver! - O my light, I am dark but fair, - Black but fair. - - Shine, Earth loves thee! And then shine - And be loved through thoughts of mine. - All thy secrets that I treasure - I translate them at my pleasure - I am crowned with glory of thine, - Thine, not thine. - - I make pensive thy delight, - And thy strong gold silver-white. - Though all beauty of mine thou makest, - Yet to earth which thou forsakest - I have made thee fair all night, - Day all night. - - - - V - - THE SPRING TO THE SUMMER - - _The Poet sings to her Poet_ - - O poet of the time to be, - My conqueror, I began for thee. - Enter into thy poet's pain, - And take the riches of the rain, - And make the perfect year for me. - - Thou unto whom my lyre shall fall, - Whene'er thou comest, hear my call. - O keep the promise of my lays, - Take thou the parable of my days; - I trust thee with the aim of all. - - And if my thoughts unfold from me, - Know that I too have hints of thee, - Dim hopes that come across my mind - In the rare days of warmer wind, - And tones of summer in the sea. - - And I have set thy paths, I guide - Thy blossoms on the wild hillside. - And I, thy bygone poet, share - The flowers that throng thy feet where'er - I led thy feet before I died. - - - - VI - - THE DAY TO THE NIGHT - - _The Poet sings to his Poet_ - - From dawn to dusk, and from dusk to dawn, - We two are sundered always, Sweet. - A few stars shake o'er the rocky lawn - And the cold sea-shore when we meet. - The twilight comes with thy shadowy feet. - - We are not day and night, my Fair, - But one. It is an hour of hours. - And thoughts that are not otherwhere - Are thought here 'mid the blown sea-flowers, - This meeting and this dusk of ours. - - Delight has taken Pain to her heart, - And there is dusk and stars for these. - O linger, linger! They would not part; - And the wild wind comes from over-seas, - With a new song to the olive trees. - - And when we meet by the sounding pine - Sleep draws near to his dreamless brother. - And when thy sweet eyes answer mine, - Peace nestles close to her mournful mother, - And Hope and Weariness kiss each other. - - - - VII - - A POET OF ONE MOOD - - A poet of one mood in all my lays, - Ranging all life to sing one only love, - Like a west wind across the world I move, - Sweeping my harp of floods mine own wild ways. - - The countries change, but not the west-wind days - Which are my songs. My soft skies shine above, - And on all seas the colours of a dove, - And on all fields a flash of silver greys. - - I make the whole world answer to my art - And sweet monotonous meanings. In your ears - I change not ever, bearing, for my part, - One thought that is the treasure of my years - A small cloud full of rain upon my heart - And in mine arms, clasped, like a child in tears. - - - - VIII - - A SONG OF DERIVATIONS - - I come from nothing; but from where - Come the undying thoughts I bear? - Down, through long links of death and birth, - From the past poets of the earth, - My immortality is there. - - I am like the blossom of an hour, - But long, long vanished sun and shower - Awoke my breath i' the young world's air; - I track the past back everywhere - Through seed and flower and seed and flower. - - Or I am like a stream that flows - Full of the cold springs that arose - In morning lands, in distant hills; - And down the plain my channel fills - With melting of forgotten snows. - - Voices, I have not heard, possessed - My own fresh songs; my thoughts are blessed - With relics of the far unknown. - And mixed with memories not my own - The sweet streams throng into my breast. - - Before this life began to be, - The happy songs that wake in me - Woke long ago and far apart. - Heavily on this little heart - Presses this immortality. - - - - IX - - SINGERS TO COME - - No new delights to our desire - The 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 start - To song? What words of yours be sent - Through man's soul, and with earth be blent? - These worlds of nature and the heart - Await you like an instrument. - - Who knows what musical flocks of words - Upon 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 belongs - To 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 supreme - Of Orpheus from the Thracian stream. - She dreams on its sealed past profound; - On a deep future sealed I dream. - - She bears it in her wanderings - Within her arms, and has not pressed - Her unskilled fingers but her breast - Upon 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. - - - - X - - UNLINKED - - 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 sweeping - My 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. - - - - - Later Poems - - - - - THE SHEPHERDESS - - 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 night - The 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. - - - - - THE TWO POETS - - Whose is the speech - That 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, until - The dumb gale struck it on the darkened hill. - - Two memories, - Two powers, two promises, two silences - Closed in this cry, closed in these thousand leaves - Articulate. This sudden hour retrieves - The 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 - - 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 state - As 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 she - Whom 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 clear - Through the thin trees the skies appear, - In delicate spare soil and fen, - And slender landscape and austere. - - - - - NOVEMBER BLUE - -_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 town - Has blurred it from her skies; - And, hooded in an earthly brown, - Unheaven'd the city lies. - No longer, standard-like, this hue - Above the broad road flies; - Nor does the narrow street the blue - Wear, slender pennon-wise. - - But when the gold and silver lamps - Colour 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. - - - - - A DEAD HARVEST - - IN KENSINGTON GARDENS. - - Along the graceless grass of town - They rake the rows of red and brown,-- - Dead leaves, unlike the rows of hay - Delicate, 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 fire - Smoulders, 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. - - - - - THE WATERSHED - - _Lines written between Munich and Verona_ - - - Black mountains pricked with pointed pine - A melancholy sky. - Out-distanced was the German vine, - The sterile fields lay high. - From swarthy Alps I travelled forth - Aloft; it was the north, the north; - Bound for the Noon was I. - - I seemed to breast the streams that day; - I met, opposed, withstood - The 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 burst - Of summer! O to see - Of all the southward brooks the first! - The travelling heart went free - With endless streams; that strife was stopped; - And down a thousand vales I dropped, - I flowed to Italy. - - - - - THE JOYOUS WANDERER - - _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. - - - - - THE RAINY SUMMER - - 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 drear - Height 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 cold - Wild honey to cold cells. - - - - - THE ROARING FROST - - A flock of winds came winging from the North, - Strong birds with fighting pinions driving forth - With a resounding call:-- - - Where will they close their wings and cease their cries-- - Between what warming seas and conquering skies-- - And fold, and fall? - - - - - WEST WIND IN WINTER - - Another day awakes. And who-- - Changing the world--is this? - He comes at whiles, the winter through, - West Wind! I would not miss - His sudden tryst: the long, the new - Surprises of his kiss. - - Vigilant, I make haste to close - With 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 hark - His call; at morn I meet - His haste around the tossing park - And down the softened street; - The gentler light is his: the dark, - The grey--he turns it sweet. - - So too, so too, do I confess - My poet when he sings. - He rushes on my mortal guess - With his immortal things. - I feel, I know, him. On I press-- - He finds me 'twixt his wings. - - - - - THE FOLD - - Behold, - The time is now! Bring back, bring back - Thy flocks of fancies, wild of whim. - O lead them from the mountain-track - Thy 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 call - Thy pasturing kisses gone astray - For scattered sweets; gather them all - To shelter from the cold. - Throng them together, close and gay, - And let me be the fold! - - - - - "WHY WILT THOU CHIDE?" - - Why wilt thou chide, - Who has attained to be denied? - O learn, above - All price is my refusal, Love. - My sacred Nay - Was never cheapened by the way. - Thy single sorrow crowns thee lord - Of an unpurchasable word. - - O strong, O pure! - As Yea makes happier loves secure, - I vow thee this - Unique rejection of a kiss. - I guard for thee - This jealous sad monopoly. - I seal this honour thine; none dare - Hope for a part in thy despair. - - - - - VENERATION OF IMAGES - - Thou man, first-comer, whose wide arms entreat, - Gather, clasp, welcome, bind, - Lack, or remember; whose warm pulses beat - With 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! - - - - - "I AM THE WAY" - - Thou art the Way. - Hadst Thou been nothing but the goal, - I cannot say - If Thou hadst ever met my soul. - - I cannot see-- - I, child of process--if there lies - An end for me, - Full of repose, full of replies. - - I'll not reproach - The road that winds, my feet that err, - Access, Approach - Art Thou, Time, Way, and Wayfarer. - - - - - VIA, ET VERITAS, ET VITA - - "You never attained to Him?" "If to attain - Be to abide, then that may be." - "Endless the way, followed with how much pain!" - "The way was He." - - - - - PARENTAGE - -"_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 gave - So many dead unto the journeying wave, - The helpless nurselings of the cradling seas; - Not they who doomed by infallible decrees - Unnumbered man to the innumerable grave. - - But those who slay - Are 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. - - - - - THE MODERN MOTHER - - Oh, what a kiss - With filial passion overcharged is this! - To this misgiving breast - This child runs, as a child ne'er ran to rest - Upon the light heart and the unoppressed. - - Unhoped, unsought! - A little tenderness, this mother thought - The utmost of her meed. - She looked for gratitude; content indeed - With 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 much - Thanks as forgiveness; and the passing touch - Expected, and the slight, the brief caress. - - O filial light - Strong in these childish eyes, these new, these bright - Intelligible stars! Their rays - Are near the constant earth, guides in the maze, - Natural, true, keen in this dusk of days. - - - - - UNTO US A SON IS GIVEN - - 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 cold - Keen winter grows not old, - As childhood is so fresh, foreseen, - And spring in the familiar green-- - - Sudden as sweet - Come the expected feet. - All joy is young, and new all art, - And He, too, Whom we have by heart. - - - - - VENI CREATOR - - 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 men - Know all our haplessness all through. Come, then, - Endure undreamed humility: Lord of Heaven, - Come to our ignorant hearts and be forgiven. - - - - - TWO BOYHOODS - - Luminous passions reign - High 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 gleam - Of secret splendid sombre suns in dream-- - - O never to such long - Glory in life, supremacy in song, - Had either of these loves attained in joy, - But for the ministration of a boy. - - Dante was one who bare - Love in his deep heart, apprehended there - When he was yet a child; and from that day - The radiant love has never passed away. - - And one was Wordsworth; he - Conceived the love of Nature childishly - As no adult heart might; old poets sing - That exaltation by remembering. - - For no divine - Intelligence, 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 two - Heavenly treasures safe the ages through, - Safe from ignoble benison or ban-- - These two high childhoods in the heart of man. - - - - - TO SYLVIA - - 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 clock - Within my cherishing heart, - To carry thee unalterable, and lock - Thy youth apart: - - Thy flower, for me, shall evermore be hid - In this close bud of thine, - Not, Sylvia, by thy death--O God forbid! - Merely by mine. - - - - - SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA - -_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 cries - Of victory on his severed breath. - That crimson head she clasped, her eyes - Blind 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? - - - - - CHIMES - - 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 wing - And flies with the cloud. - - - - - A POET'S WIFE - - 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 rest - And storm remote, thou, sea of thoughts, dost err - Scattered through east to west,-- - Now, while thou closest with the kiss of her - Who locks thee to her breast. - - - - - MESSINA, 1908 - - Lord, Thou hast crushed Thy tender ones, o'erthrown - Thy 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 own - Immediate, 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 feel - Thy mediate and intelligible hand. - - - - - THE UNKNOWN GOD - - One of the crowd went up, - And knelt before the Paten and the Cup, - Received the Lord, returned in peace, and prayed - Close 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 near - Within this lonely conscience, closed away - Within this brother's solitary day. - - "Christ in his unknown heart, - His intellect unknown--this love, this art, - This battle and this peace, this destiny - That 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 place - And from that separate dwelling, give me grace!" - - - - - A GENERAL COMMUNION - - 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 price - The sum of unimaginable powers - Did 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. - - - - - THE FUGITIVE - - "_Nous avons chassé ce Jésus Christ._"--FRENCH PUBLICIST. - - - Yes, from the ingrate heart, the street - Of garrulous tongue, the warm retreat - Within the village and the town; - Not from the lands where ripen brown - A thousand thousand hills of wheat; - - Not from the long Burgundian line, - The Southward, sunward range of vine. - Hunted, He never will escape - The flesh, the blood, the sheaf, the grape, - That feed His man--the bread, the wine. - - - - - IN PORTUGAL, 1912 - - And will they cast the altars down, - Scatter the chalice, crush the bread? - In field, in village, and in town - He 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 board - The Victim lurks unsacrificed; - The mill conceals the harvest's Lord, - The wine-press holds the unbidden Christ. - - - - - THE CRUCIFIXION - - "_A Paltry Sacrifice._"--PREFACE TO A PLAY - - - Oh, man's capacity - For 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 explored - The deepmost; but He did not die of it. - Not yet, not yet He died. Man's human Lord - Touched the extreme; it is not infinite. - - But over the abyss - Of God's capacity for woe He stayed - One hesitating hour; what gulf was this? - Forsaken He went down, and was afraid. - - - - - THE NEWER VAINGLORY - - Two men went up to pray; and one gave thanks, - Not with himself--aloud, - With proclamation, calling on the ranks - Of 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 MANCHESTER SQUARE - - (_In Memoriam_ T.H.) - - - The paralytic man has dropped in death - The 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 askance - On long hills to the South. - - Great green and golden hands of leaves ere long - Shall proffer clusters in that vineyard wide. - And O his might, his sweet, his wine, his song, - His stature, since he died! - - - - - MATERNITY - - 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 pain - A child, not now forlorn. - But oh, ten years ago, in vain, - A mother, a mother was born." - - - - - THE FIRST SNOW - - 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 tortuously - Led darkling to the dazzling sea. - - Not yet to breathing man, not to his song, - Not to his comforted heart; nor to the long - Close-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. - - - - - THE COURTS - - 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, metaphors - Enhancing life, are paths for pilgrim kings - Made 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 past - All symbols, simple; perfect, heavenly-wild, - The song some loaded poets reach at last-- - The kings that found a Child. - - - - - THE LAUNCH - - Forth, to the alien gravity, - Forth, to the laws of ocean, we - Builders on earth by laws of land - Entrust this creature of our hand - Upon the calculated sea. - - Fast bound to shore we cling, we creep, - And make our ship ready to leap - Light to the flood, equipped to ride - The 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 hold - We, warm, prepare him for the cold, - To keep the incalculable tryst. - - - - - TO THE BODY - - Thou inmost, ultimate - Council 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 close - With the world's pleas. The random odours reach - Their 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 eyes - O thou august! thou dost command the sun. - - Music, all dumb, hath trod - Into 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. - - - - - THE UNEXPECTED PERIL - - Unlike the youth that all men say - They 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 slumber - Nightly rehearsed my last; each breath - Knew itself one of the unknown number. - But Life was urgent with me as Death. - - My shroud was in the flocks; the hill - Within its quarry locked my stone; - My bier grew in the woods; and still - Life 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 foe - Has raised the siege, I know not why. - - I see them troop away; I ask - Were 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 drive - From 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! - - - - - CHRIST IN THE UNIVERSE - - With this ambiguous earth - His 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 all - The innumerable host of stars has heard - How He administered this terrestrial ball. - Our race have kept their Lord's entrusted Word. - - Of His earth-visiting feet - None knows the secret, cherished, perilous, - The terrible, shame fast, frightened, whispered, sweet, - Heart-shattering secret of His way with us. - - No planet knows that this - Our 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, hear - A million alien Gospels, in what guise - He trod the Pleiades, the Lyre, the Bear. - - O, be prepared, my soul! - To read the inconceivable, to scan - The million forms of God those stars unroll - When, in our turn, we show to them a Man. - - - - - BEYOND KNOWLEDGE - - "_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 summer - Was to my heart before I died? - Sir (to an angel), what is yonder - More bright than the remembered skies, - A lovelier sight, a softer splendour - Than when the moon was wont to rise? - Surely no sinner wears such seeming - Even the Rescued World within?" - - "O the success of His redeeming! - O child, it is a rescued sin!" - - - - - EASTER NIGHT - - All night had shout of men and cry - Of woeful women filled His way; - Until that noon of sombre sky - On Friday, clamour and display - Smote 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, alone - He rose again behind the stone. - - - - - A FATHER OF WOMEN - - 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 undone - Is he, not wasted, though transmuted thus, - And though he left no son. - - Therefore on him I cry - To arm me: "For my delicate mind a casque, - A breastplate for my heart, courage to die, - Of thee, captain, I ask. - - "Nor strengthen only; press - A finger on this violent blood and pale, - Over this rash will let thy tenderness - A while pause, and prevail. - - "And shepherd-father, thou - Whose staff folded my thoughts before my birth, - Control them now I am of earth, and now - Thou art no more of earth. - - "O liberal, constant, dear! - Crush in my nature the ungenerous art - Of 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. - - - - - LENGTH OF DAYS - - TO THE EARLY DEAD IN BATTLE - - There is no length of days - But yours, boys who were children once. - Of old - The 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 mystery - Did once for him the most that it can do; - He has had infancy. - - And all his dreams, and all - His loves for mighty Nature, sweet and few, - Are but the dwindling past he can recall - Of what his childhood knew. - - He counts not any more - His brief, his present years. But O he knows - How 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 bride - For ever mystical! - - Irrevocable good,-- - You dead, and now about, so young, to die,-- - Your childhood was; there Space, there Multitude, - There dwelt Antiquity. - - - - - NURSE EDITH CAVELL - - _Two o'clock, the morning of October_ 12_th_, 1915 - - - To her accustomed eyes - The midnight-morning brought not such a dread - As thrills the chance-awakened head that lies - In trivial sleep on the habitual bed. - - 'Twas yet some hours ere light; - And many, many, many a break of day - Had she outwatched the dying; but this night - Shortened 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 cock - Announced that day she met the Immortal Dead. - - - - - SUMMER IN ENGLAND, 1914 - - On London fell a clearer light; - Caressing pencils of the sun - Defined the distances, the white - Houses transfigured one by one, - The "long, unlovely street" impearled. - O what a sky has walked the world! - - Most happy year! And out of town - The hay was prosperous, and the wheat; - The silken harvest climbed the down: - Moon after moon was heavenly-sweet - Stroking the bread within the sheaves, - Looking 'twixt apples and their leaves. - - And while this rose made round her cup, - The armies died convulsed. And when - This chaste young silver sun went up - Softly, 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 skies - Made thrive the serried flocks and herds.-- - Yonder are men shot through the eyes. - Love, hide thy face - From 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. - - - - - TO TINTORETTO IN VENICE - -_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 call - Bade 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 eyes - Sky-ward, and by thy glooms; we know thy way - Ambiguous, 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 head - Cast 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 THRUSH BEFORE DAWN - - A voice peals in this end of night - A 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 sings - This wonderful one, alone, at peace? - What wilder things than song, what things - Sweeter than youth, clearer than Greece, - Dearer than Italy, untold - Delight, 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 bells - Lodged in the hills, what palace state - Illyrian! For it speaks, it tells, - Without desire, without dismay, - Some morrow and some yesterday. - - All-natural things! But more--Whence came - This yet remoter mystery? - How do these starry notes proclaim - A graver still divinity? - This hope, this sanctity of fear? - _O innocent throat! O human ear!_ - - - - - THE TWO SHAKESPEARE TERCENTENARIES - - OF BIRTH, 1864; OF DEATH, 1916 - - TO SHAKESPEARE - - Longer than thine, than thine, - Is now my time of life; and thus thy years - Seem to be clasped and harboured within mine. - O how ignoble this my clasp appears! - - Thy unprophetic birth, - Thy darkling death; living I might have seen - That cradle, marked those labours, closed that earth. - O first, O last, O infinite between! - - Now that my life has shared - Thy dedicated date, O mortal, twice, - To what all-vain embrace shall be compared - My lean enclosure of thy paradise: - - To ignorant arms that fold - A 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, pore - On thy last silence? O thou city of God, - My waste lies after thee, and lies before. - - - - - To O----, OF HER DARK EYES - - 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 two - This 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 transmit - In its perfection to thy face. - - Some father to some mother's breast - Entrusted it, unknowing. Time - Implied, or made it manifest, - Bequest of a forgotten clime. - - Hereditary eyes! But this - Is single, singular, apart:-- - New-made thy love, new-made thy kiss, - New-made thy errand to my heart. - - - - - THE TREASURE - - Three times have I beheld - Fear leap in a babe's face, and take his breath, - Fear, like the fear of eld - That knows the price of life, the name of death. - - What is it justifies - This thing, this dread, this fright that has no tongue, - The terror in those eyes - When 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 dumb - In the poor beast, and wild - In the old decorous man, caught, overcome? - - Of what the outposts these? - Of what the fighting guardians? What demands - That sense of menaces, - And then such flying feet, imploring hands? - - Life: There's nought else to seek; - Life only, little prized; but by design - Of nature prized. How weak, - How sad, how brief! O how divine, divine! - - - - - A WIND OF CLEAR WEATHER IN ENGLAND - - O what a miracle wind is this - Has crossed the English land to-day - With 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 pure - As 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 discreet - Walked 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. - - - - - IN SLEEP - - I dreamt (no "dream" awake--a dream indeed) - A wrathful man was talking in the park: - "Where are the Higher Powers, who know our need - And leave us in the dark? - - "There are no Higher Powers; there is no heart - In 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 create - Compassion, 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. - - - - - THE DIVINE PRIVILEGE - - 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 away - Worship 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 dream - That I can bargain for her rest. - - Seven hours I swiftly sleep, while she - Measures the leagues of dark, awake. - O that my dewy eyes might be - Parched 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. - - - - - FREE WILL - - Dear are some hidden things - My soul has sealed in silence; past delights; - Hope unconfessed; desires with hampered wings, - Remembered in the nights. - - But my best treasures are - Ignoble, undelightful, abject, cold; - Yet O! profounder hoards oracular - No reliquaries hold. - - There lie my trespasses, - Abjured but not disowned. I'll not accuse - Determinism, 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 by - I hold and garner these. - - How else, how otherwhere, - How otherwise, shall I discern and grope - For lowliness? How hate, how love, how dare, - How weep, how hope? - - *George Meredith - - - - - THE TWO QUESTIONS - - "A riddling world!" one cried. - "If pangs must be, would God that they were sent - To the impure, the cruel, and passed aside - The holy innocent!" - - But I, "Ah no, no, no! - Not the clean heart transpierced; not tears that fall - For 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 age - With dotage mocked; not gallantry that faints - And still pursues; not the vile heritage - Of sin's disease in saints; - - "Not these defeat the mind. - For great is that abjection, and august - That irony. Submissive we shall find - A splendour in that dust. - - "Not these puzzle the will; - Not these the yet unanswered question urge. - But the unjust stricken; but the hands that kill - Lopped; 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." - - - - - THE LORD'S PRAYER - - "_Audemus dicere 'Pater Noster.'_"--CANON OF THE MASS. - - - There is a bolder way, - There is a wilder enterprise than this - All-human iteration day by day. - Courage, mankind! Restore Him what is His. - - Out of His mouth were given - These phrases. O replace them whence they came. - He, only, knows our inconceivable "Heaven," - Our hidden "Father," and the unspoken "Name"; - - Our "trespasses," our "bread," - The "will" inexorable yet implored; - The miracle-words that are and are not said, - Charged with the unknown purpose of their Lord. - - "Forgive," "give," "lead us not"-- - Speak them by Him, O man the unaware, - Speak by that dear tongue, though thou know not what, - Shuddering through the paradox of prayer. - - - - -Last Poems - - - - - THE POET AND HIS BOOK - - Here are my thoughts, alive within this fold, - My simple sheep. Their shepherd, I grow wise - As dearly, gravely, deeply I behold - Their different eyes. - - O distant pastures in their blood! O streams - From watersheds that fed them for this prison! - Lights from aloft, midsummer suns in dreams, - Set and arisen. - - They wander out, but all return anew, - The small ones, to this heart to which they clung; - "And those that are with young," the fruitful few - That are with young. - - - - - INTIMATIONS OF MORTALITY - - FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY CHILDHOOD - - A simple child ... - That lightly draws its breath - And feels its life in every limb, - What should it know of death? - WORDSWORTH. - - - It knows but will not tell. - Awake, alone, it counts its father's years-- - How few are left--its mother's. Ah, how well - It knows of death, in tears. - - If any of the three-- - Parents and child--believe they have prevailed - To keep the secret of mortality, - I know that two have failed. - - The third, the lonely, keeps - One secret--a child's knowledge. When they come - At night to ask wherefore the sweet one weeps, - Those hidden lips are dumb. - - - - - THE WIND IS BLIND - - "EYELESS, IN GAZA, AT THE MILL, WITH SLAVES" - _Milton's "Samson."_ - - The wind is blind. - The earth sees sun and moon; the height - Is watch-tower to the dawn; the plain - Shines to the summer; visible light - Is scattered in the drops of rain. - - The wind is blind. - The flashing billows are aware; - With open eyes the cities see; - Light leaves the ether, everywhere - Known to the homing bird and bee. - - The wind is blind, - Is blind alone. How has he hurled - His ignorant lash, his aimless dart, - His eyeless rush upon the world, - Unseeing, to break his unknown heart! - - The wind is blind, - And the sail traps him, and the mill - Captures him; and he cannot save - His swiftness and his desperate will - From those blind uses of the slave. - - - - - TIME'S REVERSALS - - A DAUGHTER'S PARADOX - - To his devoted heart* - Who, young, had loved his ageing mate for life, - In late lone years Time gave the elder's part, - Time gave the bridegroom's boast, Time gave a younger wife. - - A wilder prank and plot - Time soon will promise, threaten, offering me - Impossible things that Nature suffers not-- - A daughter's riper mind, a child's seniority. - - Oh, by my filial tears - Mourned all too young, Father! On this my head - Time yet will force at last the longer years, - Claiming some strange respect for me from you, the dead. - - Nay, nay! Too new to know - Time's conjuring is, too great to understand. - Memory has not died; it leaves me so-- - Leaning a fading brow on your unfaded hand. - -*Dr. Johnson outlived by thirty years his wife, who was twenty years -his senior. - - - - - THE THRESHING MACHINE - - No "fan is in his hand" for these - Young villagers beneath the trees, - Watching the wheels. But I recall - The rhythm of rods that rise and fall, - Purging the harvest, over-seas. - - No fan, no flail, no threshing-floor! - And all their symbols evermore - Forgone in England now--the sign, - The visible pledge, the threat divine, - The chaff dispersed, the wheat in store. - - The unbreathing engine marks no tune, - Steady at sunrise, steady at noon, - Inhuman, perfect, saving time, - And saving measure, and saving rhyme-- - And did our Ruskin speak too soon? - - "No noble strength on earth" he sees - "Save Hercules' arm"; his grave decrees - Curse wheel and steam. As the wheels ran - I saw the other strength of man, - I knew the brain of Hercules. - - - - - WINTER TREES ON THE HORIZON - - O delicate! Even in wooded lands - They show the margin of my world, - My own horizon; little bands - Of twigs unveil that edge impearled. - - And what is more mine own than this, - My limit, level with mine eyes? - For me precisely do they kiss-- - The rounded earth, the rounding skies. - - It has my stature, that keen line - (Let mathematics vouch for it). - The lark's horizon is not mine, - No, nor his nestlings' where they sit; - - No, nor the child's. And, when I gain - The hills, I lift it as I rise - Erect; anon, back to the plain - I soothe it with mine equal eyes. - - - - - TO SLEEP - - Dear fool, be true to me! - I know the poets speak thee fair, and I - Hail thee uncivilly. - O but I call with a more urgent cry! - - I do not prize thee less, - I need thee more, that thou dost love to teach-- - Father of foolishness-- - The imbecile dreams clear out of wisdom's reach. - - Come and release me; bring - My irresponsible mind; come in thy hours. - Draw from my soul the sting - Of wit that trembles, consciousness that cowers. - - For if night comes without thee - She is more cruel than day. But thou, fulfil - Thy work, thy gifts about thee-- - Liberty, liberty, from this weight of will. - - My day-mind can endure - Upright, in hope, all it must undergo. - But O afraid, unsure, - My night-mind waking lies too low, too low. - - Dear fool, be true to me! - The night is thine, man yields it, it beseems - Thy ironic dignity. - Make me all night the innocent fool that dreams. - - - - - "THE MARRIAGE OF TRUE MINDS" - - (IN THE BACH-GOUNOD "AVE MARIA") - - That seeking Prelude found its unforetold - Unguessed intention, trend; - Though needing no fulfilment, did enfold - This exquisite end. - - Bach led his notes up through their delicate slope - Aspiring, so they sound, - And so they were--in some strange ignorant hope - Thus to be crowned. - - What deep soft seas beneath this buoyant barque! - What winds to speed this bird! - What impulses to toss this heavenward lark! - Thought--then the word. - - Lovely the tune, lovely the unconsciousness - Of him who promised it. - Lovely the years that joined in blessedness - The two, the fit. - - Bach was Precursor. But no Baptist's cry - Was his; he, who began - For one who was to end, did prophesy, - By Nature's generous act, the lesser man. - - - - - IN HONOUR OF AMERICA, 1917 - - IN ANTITHESIS TO ROSSETTI'S "ON THE REFUSAL - OF AID BETWEEN NATIONS" - - Not that the earth is changing, O my God! - Not that her brave democracies take heart - To share, to rule her treasure, to impart - The wine to those who long the wine-press trod; - Not therefore trust we that beneath Thy nod, - Thy silent benediction, even now - In gratitude so many nations bow, - So many poor: not therefore, O my God! - - But because living men for dying man - Go to a million deaths, to deal one blow; - And justice speaks one great compassionate tongue; - And nation unto nation calls "One clan - We succourers are, one tribe!" By this we know - Our earth holds confident, steadfast, being young. - - - - - "LORD, I OWE THEE A DEATH" - _Richard Hooker_ - - (IN TIME OF WAR) - - Man pays that debt with new munificence, - Not piecemeal now, not slowly, by the old: - Not grudgingly, by the effaced thin pence, - But greatly and in gold. - - - - - REFLECTIONS - - (I) IN IRELAND - - A mirror faced a mirror: ire and hate - Opposite ire and hate: the multiplied, - The complex charge rejected, intricate, - From side to sullen side; - - One plot, one crime, one treachery, nay, one name, - Assumed, denounced, in echoes of replies. - The doubt, exchanged, lit thousands of one flame - Within those mutual eyes. - - - - (II) IN "OTHELLO" - - A mirror faced a mirror: in sweet pain - His dangers with her pity did she track, - Received her pity with his love again, - And these she wafted back. - - That masculine passion in her little breast - She bandied with him; her compassion he - Bandied with her. What tender sport! No rest - Had love's infinity. - - - - (III) IN TWO POETS - - A mirror faced a mirror: O thy word, - Thou lord of images, did lodge in me, - Locked to my heart, homing from home, a bird, - A carrier, bound for thee. - - Thy migratory greatness, greater far - For that return, returns; now grow divine - By endlessness my visiting thoughts, that are - Those visiting thoughts of thine. - - - - - TO CONSCRIPTS - - "_Compel them to come in._"--ST. LUKE'S GOSPEL - - You "made a virtue of necessity" - By divine sanction; you, the loth, the grey, - The random, gentle, unconvinced; O be - The crowned!--you may, you may. - - You, the compelled, be feasted! You, the caught, - Be freemen of the gates that word unlocks! - Accept your victory from that unsought, - That heavenly paradox. - - - - - THE VOICE OF A BIRD - - "_He shall rise up at the voice of a bird._"--ECCLESIASTES - - Who then is "he"? - Dante, Keats, Shakespeare, Milton, Shelley; all - Rose in their greatness at the shrill decree, - The little rousing inarticulate call. - - For they stood up - At the bird-voice, of lark, of nightingale, - Drank poems from that throat as from a cup. - Over the great world's notes did these prevail. - - And not alone - The signal poets woke. In listening man, - Woman, and child a poet stirs unknown, - Throughout the Mays of birds since Mays began. - - He rose, he heard-- - Our father, our St. Peter, in his tears-- - The crowing, twice, of the prophetic bird, - The saddest cock-crow of our human years. - - - - - THE QUESTION - - IL POETA MI DISSE, "CHE PENSI?" - - Virgil stayed Dante with a wayside word; - But long, and how, and loud and urgently - The poets of my passion have I heard - Summoning me. - - It is their closest whisper and their call. - Their greatness to this lowliness hath spoken, - Their voices rest upon that interval, - Their sign, their token. - - Man at his little prayer tells Heaven his thought, - To man entrusts his thought--"Friend, this is mine." - The immortal poets within my breast have sought, - Saying, "What is thine?" - - - - - THE LAWS OF VERSE - - Dear laws, come to my breast! - Take all my frame, and make your close arms meet - Around me; and so ruled, so warmed, so pressed, - I breathe, aware; I feel my wild heart beat. - - Dear laws, be wings to me! - The feather merely floats. O be it heard - Through weight of life--the skylark's gravity-- - That I am not a feather, but a bird. - - - - - "THE RETURN TO NATURE" - - _Histories of Modern Poetry_ - - (I) PROMETHEUS - - It was the south: mid-everything, - Mid-land, mid-summer, noon; - And deep within a limpid spring - The mirrored sun of June. - - Splendour in freshness! Ah, who stole - This sun, this fire, from heaven? - He holds it shining in his soul, - Prometheus the forgiven. - - - - (II) THETIS - - In her bright title poets dare - What the wild eye of fancy sees-- - Similitude--the clear, the fair - Light mystery of images. - - Round the blue sea I love the best - The argent foam played, slender, fleet; - I saw--past Wordsworth and the rest-- - Her natural, Greek, and silver feet. - - - - - TO SILENCE - - "SPACE, THE BOUND OF A SOLID": SILENCE, THEN, - THE FORM OF A MELODY - - Silence, for thine idleness I raise - My silence-bounded singing in thy praise, - But for thy moulding of my Mozart's tune, - Thy hold upon the bird that sings the moon, - Thy magisterial ways. - - Man's lovely definite melody-shapes are thine, - Outlined, controlled, compressed, complete, divine. - Also thy fine intrusions do I trace, - Thy afterthoughts, thy wandering, thy grace, - Within the poet's line. - - Thy secret is the song that is to be. - Music had never stature but for thee, - Sculptor! strong as the sculptor Space whose hand - Urged the Discobolus and bade him stand. - * * * * * - Man, on his way to Silence, stops to hear and see. - - - - - THE ENGLISH METRES - - The rooted liberty of flowers in breeze - Is theirs, by national luck impulsive, terse, - Tethered, uncaptured, rules obeyed "at ease," - Time-strengthened laws of verse. - - Or they are like our seasons that admit - Inflexion, not infraction: Autumn hoar, - Winter more tender than our thoughts of it, - But a year's steadfast four; - - Redundant syllables of Summer rain, - And displaced accents of authentic Spring; - Spondaic clouds above a gusty plain - With dactyls on the wing. - - Not Common Law, but Equity, is theirs-- - Our metres; play and agile foot askance, - And distant, beckoning, blithely rhyming pairs, - Unknown to classic France; - - Unknown to Italy. Ay, count, collate, - Latins! with eye foreseeing on the time, - And numbered fingers, and approaching fate - On the appropriate rhyme. - - Nay, nobly our grave measures are decreed: - Heroic, Alexandrine with the stay, - Deliberate; or else like him whose speed - Did outrun Peter, urgent in the break of day. - - - - - "RIVERS UNKNOWN TO SONG" - _James Thomson_ - - Wide waters in the waste; or, out of reach, - Rough Alpine falls where late a glacier hung; - Or rivers groping for the alien beach, - Through continents, unsung. - - Nay, not these nameless, these remote, alone; - But all the streams from all the watersheds-- - Peneus, Danube, Nile--are the unknown. - Young in their ancient beds. - - Man has no tale for them. O travellers swift - From secrets to oblivion! Waters wild - That pass in act to bend a flower, or lift - The bright limbs of a child! - - For they are new, they are fresh; there's no surprise - Like theirs on earth. O strange for evermore! - This moment's Tiber with his shining eyes - Never saw Rome before. - - Man has no word for their eternity-- - Rhine, Avon, Arno, younglings, youth uncrowned: - Ignorant, innocent, instantaneous, free, - Unwelcomed, unrenowned. - - - - - TO THE MOTHER OF CHRIST - THE SON OF MAN - - We too (one cried), we too, - We the unready, the perplexed, the cold, - Must shape the Eternal in our thoughts anew, - Cherish, possess, enfold. - - Thou sweetly, we in strife. - It is our passion to conceive Him thus - In mind, in sense, within our house of life; - That seed is locked in us. - - We must affirm our Son - From the ambiguous Nature's difficult speech, - Gather in darkness that resplendent One, - Close as our grasp can reach. - - Nor shall we ever rest - From this our task. An hour sufficed for thee, - Thou innocent! He lingers in the breast - Of our humanity. - - - - - A COMPARISON IN A SEASIDE FIELD - - 'Tis royal and authentic June - Over this poor soil blossoming; - Here lies, beneath an upright noon, - Thin nation for so wild a king. - - Far off, the noble Summer rules, - Violent in the ardent rose, - His sun alight in mirroring pools, - Braggart on Alps of vanquished snows; - - Away, aloft, true to his hour, - Announced, his colour, his fire, his jest. - But here, in negligible flower, - Summer is not proclaimed:--confessed. - - A woman I marked; for her no state, - Small joy, no song. She had her boon, - Her only youth, true to its date, - Faintly perceptible, her June. - - - - - SURMISE - - THE TRACK OF A HUMAN MOOD - - Not wish, nor fear, nor quite expectancy - Is that vague spirit Surmise, - That wanderer, that wonderer, whom we see - Within each other's eyes; - - And yet not often. For she flits away, - Fitful as infant thought, - Visitant at a venture, hope at play, - Unversed in facts, untaught. - - In "the wide fields of possibility" - Surmise, conjecturing, - Makes little trials, incredulous, that flee - Abroad on random wing. - - One day this inarticulate shall find speech, - This hoverer seize our breath. - Surmise shall close with man--with all, with each-- - In her own sovereign hour, the moments of our death. - - - - - TO ANTIQUITY - - "... REVERENCE FOR OUR FATHERS, WITH THEIR - STORES OF EXPERIENCES" - _An author whose name I did not note_ - - - O our young ancestor, - Our boy in Letters, how we trudge oppressed - With our "experiences," and you of yore - Flew light, and blessed! - - Youngling, in your new town, - Tight, like a box of toys--the town that is - Our shattered, open ruin, with its crown - Of histories; - - You with your morning words, - Fresh from the night, your yet un-sonneted moon, - Your passion undismayed, cool as a bird's - Ignorant tune; - - O youngling! how is this? - Your poems are not wearied yet, not dead, - Must I bow low? or, With an envious kiss, - Put you to bed? - - - - - CHRISTMAS NIGHT - - "IF I CANNOT SEE THEE PRESENT I WILL MOURN - THEE ABSENT, FOR THIS ALSO IS A PROOF OF LOVE" - _Thomas à Kempis_ - - We do not find Him on the difficult earth, - In surging human-kind, - In wayside death or accidental birth, - Or in the "march of mind." - - Nature, her nests, her prey, the fed, the caught, - Hid Him so well, so well, - His steadfast secret there seems to our thought - Life's saddest miracle. - - He's but conjectured in man's happiness, - Suspected in man's tears, - Or lurks beyond the long, discouraged guess, - Grown fainter through the years. - - * * * * * - - But absent, absent now? Ah, what is this, - Near as in child-birth bed, - Laid on our sorrowful hearts, close to a kiss? - A homeless childish head. - - - - - THE OCTOBER REDBREAST - - Autumn is weary, halt, and old; - Ah, but she owns the song of joy! - Her colours fade, her woods are cold. - Her singing-bird's a boy, a boy. - - In lovely Spring the birds were bent - On nests, on use, on love, forsooth! - Grown-up were they. This boy's content, - For his is liberty, his is youth. - - The musical stripling sings for play - Taking no thought, and virgin-glad. - For duty sang those mates in May. - This singing-bird's a lad, a lad. - - - TO "A CERTAIN RICH MAN" - - "I HAVE FIVE BRETHREN.... FATHER, I BESEECH - THEE ... LEST THEY COME TO THIS PLACE" - _St. Luke's Gospel_ - - - Thou wouldst not part thy spoil - Gained from the beggar's want, the weakling's toil, - Nor spare a jot of sumptuousness or state - For Lazarus at the gate. - - And in the appalling night - Of expiation, as in day's delight, - Thou heldst thy niggard hand; it would not share - One hour of thy despair. - - Those five--thy prayer for them! - O generous! who, condemned, wouldst not condemn, - Whose ultimate human greatness proved thee so - A miser of thy woe. - - - - - EVERLASTING FAREWELLS - - "EVERLASTING FAREWELLS! AND AGAIN, AND - YET AGAIN ... EVERLASTING FAREWELLS!" - _De Quincey_ - - - "Farewells!" O what a word! - Denying this agony, denying the affrights, - Denying all De Quincey spoke or heard - In the infernal sadness of his nights. - - How mend these strange "farewells"? - "Vale"? "Addio"? "Leb'wohl"? Not one but seems - A tranquil refutation; tolling bells - That yet behold the terror of his dreams. - - - - - THE POET TO THE BIRDS - - You bid me hold my peace, - Or so I think, you birds; you'll not forgive - My kill-joy song that makes the wild song cease, - Silent or fugitive. - - Yon thrush stopt in mid-phrase - At my mere footfall; and a longer note - Took wing and fled afield, and went its ways - Within the blackbird's throat. - - Hereditary song, - Illyrian lark and Paduan nightingale, - Is yours, unchangeable the ages long; - Assyria heard your tale; - - Therefore you do not die. - But single, local, lonely, mortal, new, - Unlike, and thus like all my race, am I, - Preluding my adieu. - - My human song must be - My human thought. Be patient till 'tis done. - I shall not hold my little peace; for me - There is no peace but one. - - - - - AT NIGHT - - _To W. M._ - - Home, home from the horizon far and clear, - Hither the soft wings sweep; - Flocks of the memories of the day draw near - The dovecote doors of sleep. - - Oh, which are they that come through sweetest light - Of all these homing birds? - Which with the straightest and the swiftest flight? - Your words to me, your words! - - - - - WARWICK BROS. & RUTTER LIMITED, TORONTO - - PRINTERS & BOOKBINDERS - - - - - - - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's The Poems of Alice Meynell, by Alice Meynell - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE POEMS OF ALICE MEYNELL *** - -***** This file should be named 62251-8.txt or 62251-8.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/6/2/2/5/62251/ - -Produced by Al Haines -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: The Poems of Alice Meynell - -Author: Alice Meynell - -Release Date: May 28, 2020 [EBook #62251] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE POEMS OF ALICE MEYNELL *** - - - - -Produced by Al Haines - - - - - -</pre> - - -<p><br /></p> - -<p class="capcenter"> -<a id="img-front"></a> -<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-front.jpg" alt="Alice Meynell From a drawing by John S. Sargent, R.A." /> -<br /> -Alice Meynell <br /> -From a drawing by John S. Sargent, R.A. -</p> - -<h1> -<br /><br /> - THE POEMS<br /> - OF<br /> - ALICE MEYNELL<br /> -</h1> - -<p><br /><br /></p> - -<p class="t3"> - COMPLETE EDITION<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /></p> - -<p class="t3"> - MCCLELLAND & STEWART<br /> - PUBLISHERS - TORONTO<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<p class="t4"> - Copyright. Canada, 1923<br /> - by McClelland and Stewart, Limited, Toronto<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /></p> - -<p class="t4"> - Printed in Canada<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<p class="t3"> - To<br /> - W.M.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<p class="t3"> - BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE<br /> -</p> - -<p class="t3"> - <i>This volume contains the whole of Mrs. Meynell's<br /> - poetry: the early volume of "Preludes"; the "Poems,"<br /> - issued in 1893, of which nine impressions were printed<br /> - before 1913, when it was incorporated in the<br /> - Collected Edition; "Later Poems," issued in 1901,<br /> - also incorporated in the edition of 1913;<br /> - "Poems: Collected Edition," issued in<br /> - 1913, of which the eighth impression<br /> - was printed in 1919, and a ninth with<br /> - additions in 1921; "A Father of<br /> - Women, and other Poems," issued<br /> - in 1918, and included in the<br /> - Collected Edition in 1919;<br /> - and finally "Last Poems," issued in<br /> - February, 1923.</i><br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<p class="t3b"> - THE CONTENTS<br /> -</p> - -<p class="t3"> - <a href="#earlypoems">EARLY POEMS</a><br /> -</p> - -<p class="noindent"> - <a href="#spring">In Early Spring</a><br /> - <a href="#beloved">To the Beloved</a><br /> - <a href="#festival">An Unmarked Festival</a><br /> - <a href="#autumn">In Autumn</a><br /> - <a href="#parted">Parted</a><br /> - <a href="#monique">"Soeur Monique"</a><br /> - <a href="#regrets">Regrets</a><br /> - <a href="#sea">The Visiting Sea</a><br /> - <a href="#parting">After a Parting</a><br /> - <a href="#builders">Builders of Ruins</a><br /> -</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p class="noindent"> - <a href="#sonnets">SONNETS</a><br /> -</p> - -<p class="noindent"> - <a href="#thoughts">Thoughts in Separation</a><br /> - <a href="#garden">The Garden</a><br /> - <a href="#youth">Your Own Fair Youth</a><br /> - <a href="#neophyte">The Young Neophyte</a><br /> - <a href="#alban">Spring on the Alban Hills</a><br /> - <a href="#february">In February</a><br /> - <a href="#lute">A Shattered Lute</a><br /> - <a href="#renouncement">Renouncement</a><br /> - <a href="#daisy">To a Daisy</a><br /> -</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p class="noindent"> - <a href="#mother">San Lorenzo's Mother</a><br /> - <a href="#lover">The Lover Urges the Better Thrift</a><br /> - <a href="#cradle">Cradle-Song at Twilight</a><br /> - <a href="#daybreak">Song of the Night at Daybreak</a><br /> - <a href="#letter">A Letter from a Girl to her own Old Age</a><br /> - <a href="#advent">Advent Meditation</a><br /> -</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p class="noindent"> - <a href="#poetsfancies">A POET'S FANCIES</a><br /> -</p> - -<p class="noindent"> - <a href="#narcissus">The Love of Narcissus</a><br /> - <a href="#poet">To Any Poet</a><br /> - <a href="#silent">To One poem in a Silent Time</a><br /> - <a href="#moon">The Moon to the Sun</a><br /> - <a href="#summer">The Spring to the Summer</a><br /> - <a href="#night">The Day to the Night</a><br /> - <a href="#mood">A Poet of one Mood</a><br /> - <a href="#derivations">A Song of Derivations</a><br /> - <a href="#singers">Singers to Come</a><br /> - <a href="#unlinked">Unlinked</a><br /> -</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p class="t3"> - <a href="#laterpoems">LATER POEMS</a><br /> -</p> - -<p class="noindent"> - <a href="#shepherdess">The Shepherdess</a><br /> - <a href="#twopoets">The Two Poets</a><br /> - <a href="#poverty">The Lady Poverty</a><br /> - <a href="#november">November Blue</a><br /> - <a href="#harvest">A Dead Harvest</a><br /> - <a href="#watershed">The Watershed (<i>for R. T.</i>)</a><br /> - <a href="#wanderer">The Joyous Wanderer</a><br /> - <a href="#rainy">The Rainy Summer</a><br /> - <a href="#frost">The Roaring Frost</a><br /> - <a href="#westwind">West Wind in Winter</a><br /> - <a href="#fold">The Fold</a><br /> - <a href="#chide">"Why wilt thou Chide?"</a><br /> - <a href="#veneration">Veneration of Images</a><br /> - <a href="#theway">"I am the Way"</a><br /> - <a href="#viaveritas">Via, et Veritas, et Vita</a><br /> - <a href="#parentage">Parentage</a><br /> - <a href="#modern">The Modern Mother</a><br /> - <a href="#songiven">Unto us a Son is Given</a><br /> - <a href="#venicreator">Veni Creator</a><br /> - <a href="#boyhoods">Two Boyhoods</a><br /> - <a href="#sylvia">To Sylvia</a><br /> - <a href="#catherine">Saint Catherine of Siena</a><br /> - <a href="#chimes">Chimes</a><br /> - <a href="#poetswife">A Poet's Wife</a><br /> - <a href="#messina">Messina, 1908</a><br /> - <a href="#unknown">The Unknown God</a><br /> - <a href="#communion">A General Communion</a><br /> - <a href="#fugitive">The Fugitive</a><br /> - <a href="#portugal">In Portugal, 1912</a><br /> - <a href="#crucifixion">The Crucifixion</a><br /> - <a href="#vainglory">The Newer Vainglory</a><br /> - <a href="#manchester">In Manchester Square</a><br /> - <a href="#maternity">Maternity</a><br /> - <a href="#snow">The First Snow</a><br /> - <a href="#courts">The Courts</a><br /> - <a href="#launch">The Launch</a><br /> - <a href="#body">To the Body</a><br /> - <a href="#peril">The Unexpected Peril</a><br /> - <a href="#christ">Christ in the Universe</a><br /> - <a href="#knowledge">Beyond Knowledge</a><br /> - <a href="#easter">Easter Night</a><br /> - <a href="#father">A Father of Women</a><br /> - <a href="#days">Length of Days: To the Early Dead in Battle</a><br /> - <a href="#nurse">Nurse Edith Cavell</a><br /> - <a href="#summer1914">Summer in England, 1914</a><br /> - <a href="#tintoretto">To Tintoretto in Venice</a><br /> - <a href="#thrush">A Thrush before Dawn</a><br /> - <a href="#shakespeare">The Two Shakespeare Tercentenaries</a><br /> - <a href="#darkeyes">To O——, of Her Dark Eyes</a><br /> - <a href="#treasure">The Treasure</a><br /> - <a href="#weather">A Wind of Clear Weather in England</a><br /> - <a href="#sleep">In Sleep</a><br /> - <a href="#privilege">The Divine Privilege</a><br /> - <a href="#freewill">Free Will</a><br /> - <a href="#questions">The Two Questions</a><br /> - <a href="#prayer">The Lord's Prayer</a><br /> -</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p class="t3"> - <a href="#lastpoems">LAST POEMS</a><br /> -</p> - -<p class="noindent"> - <a href="#poetbook">The Poet and His Book</a><br /> - <a href="#mortality">Intimations of Mortality</a><br /> - <a href="#windblind">The Wind is Blind</a><br /> - <a href="#reversals">Time's Reversals</a><br /> - <a href="#threshing">The Threshing Machine</a><br /> - <a href="#wintertrees">Winter Trees on the Horizon</a><br /> - <a href="#tosleep">To Sleep</a><br /> - <a href="#trueminds">The Marriage of True Minds</a><br /> - <a href="#america">In Honour of America, 1917</a><br /> - <a href="#lorddeath">Lord, I owe Thee a Death</a><br /> - <a href="#reflections">Reflections</a><br /> - <a href="#conscripts">To Conscripts</a><br /> - <a href="#bird">The Voice of a Bird</a><br /> - <a href="#question">The Question</a><br /> - <a href="#laws">The Laws of Verse</a><br /> - <a href="#nature">"The Return to Nature"</a><br /> - <a href="#silence">To Silence</a><br /> - <a href="#metres">The English Metres</a><br /> - <a href="#rivers">"Rivers Unknown to Song"</a><br /> - <a href="#sonofman">To the Mother of Christ the Son of Man</a><br /> - <a href="#comparison">A Comparison</a><br /> - <a href="#surmise">Surmise</a><br /> - <a href="#antiquity">To Antiquity</a><br /> - <a href="#christmas">Christmas Night</a><br /> - <a href="#redbreast">The October Redbreast</a><br /> - <a href="#richman">To "a Certain Rich Man"</a><br /> - <a href="#farewells">"Everlasting Farewells"</a><br /> - <a href="#poetbirds">The Poet to the Birds</a><br /> -</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p class="t3"> - <a href="#atnight">At Night (<i>to W. M.</i>)</a><br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<p><a id="earlypoems"></a></p> - -<h2> - Early Poems -</h2> - -<p><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="spring"></a>IN EARLY SPRING<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - O Spring, I know thee! Seek for sweet surprise<br /> - In the young children's eyes.<br /> - But I have learnt the years, and know the yet<br /> - Leaf-folded violet.<br /> - Mine ear, awake to silence, can foretell<br /> - The cuckoo's fitful bell.<br /> - I wander in a grey time that encloses<br /> - June and the wild hedge-roses.<br /> - A year's procession of the flowers doth pass<br /> - My feet, along the grass.<br /> - And all you wild birds silent yet, I know<br /> - The notes that stir you so,<br /> - Your songs yet half devised in the dim dear<br /> - Beginnings of the year.<br /> - In these young days you meditate your part;<br /> - I have it all by heart.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - I know the secrets of the seeds of flowers<br /> - Hidden and warm with showers,<br /> - And how, in kindling Spring, the cuckoo shall<br /> - Alter his interval.<br /> - But not a flower or song I ponder is<br /> - My own, but memory's.<br /> - I shall be silent in those days desired<br /> - Before world inspired.<br /> - O all brown birds, compose your old song-phrases,<br /> - Earth, thy familiar daisies!<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - A poet mused upon the dusky height,<br /> - Between two stars towards night,<br /> - His purpose in his heart. I watched, a space,<br /> - The meaning of his face:<br /> - There was the secret, fled from earth and skies,<br /> - Hid in his grey young eyes.<br /> - My heart and all the Summer wait his choice,<br /> - And wonder for his voice.<br /> - Who shall foretell his songs, and who aspire<br /> - But to divine his lyre?<br /> - Sweet earth, we know thy dimmest mysteries,<br /> - But he is lord of his.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="beloved"></a>TO THE BELOVED<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - Oh, not more subtly silence strays<br /> - Amongst the winds, between the voices,<br /> - Mingling alike with pensive lays,<br /> - And with the music that rejoices,<br /> - Than thou art present in my days.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - My silence, life returns to thee<br /> - In all the pauses of her breath.<br /> - Hush back to rest the melody<br /> - That out of thee awakeneth;<br /> - And thou, wake ever, wake for me!<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Thou art like silence all unvexed,<br /> - Though wild words part my soul from thee.<br /> - Thou art like silence unperplexed,<br /> - A secret and a mystery<br /> - Between one footfall and the next.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Most dear pause in a mellow lay!<br /> - Thou art inwoven with every air.<br /> - With thee the wildest tempests play,<br /> - And snatches of thee everywhere<br /> - Make little heavens throughout a day.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Darkness and solitude shine, for me.<br /> - For life's fair outward part are rife<br /> - The silver noises; let them be.<br /> - It is the very soul of life<br /> - Listens for thee, listens for thee.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - O pause between the sobs of cares;<br /> - O thought within all thought that is;<br /> - Trance between laughters unawares:<br /> - Thou art the shape of melodies,<br /> - And thou the ecstasy of prayers!<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="festival"></a>AN UNMARKED FESTIVAL<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - There's a feast undated, yet<br /> - Both our true lives hold it fast,—<br /> - Even the day when first we met.<br /> - What a great day came and passed,<br /> - —Unknown then, but known at last.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - And we met: You knew not me,<br /> - Mistress of your joys and fears;<br /> - Held my hand that held the key<br /> - Of the treasure of your years,<br /> - Of the fountain of your tears.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - For you knew not it was I,<br /> - And I knew not it was you.<br /> - We have learnt, as days went by.<br /> - But a flower struck root and grew<br /> - Underground, and no one knew.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Day of days! Unmarked it rose,<br /> - In whose hours we were to meet;<br /> - And forgotten passed. Who knows,<br /> - Was earth cold or sunny, Sweet,<br /> - At the coming of your feet?<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - One mere day, we thought; the measure<br /> - Of such days the year fulfils.<br /> - Now, how dearly would we treasure<br /> - Something from its fields, its rills,<br /> - And its memorable hills.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="autumn"></a>IN AUTUMN<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - The leaves are many under my feet,<br /> - And drift one way.<br /> - Their scent of death is weary and sweet.<br /> - A flight of them is in the grey<br /> - Where sky and forest meet.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - The low winds moan for dead sweet years;<br /> - The birds sing all for pain,<br /> - Of a common thing, to weary ears,—<br /> - Only a summer's fate of rain,<br /> - And a woman's fate of tears.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - I walk to love and life alone<br /> - Over these mournful places,<br /> - Across the summer overthrown,<br /> - The dead joys of these silent faces,<br /> - To claim my own.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - I know his heart has beat to bright<br /> - Sweet loves gone by;<br /> - I know the leaves that die to-night<br /> - Once budded to the sky;<br /> - And I shall die from his delight.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - O leaves, so quietly ending now,<br /> - You heard the cuckoos sing.<br /> - And I will grow upon my bough<br /> - If only for a Spring,<br /> - And fall when the rain is on my brow.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - O tell me, tell me ere you die,<br /> - Is it worth the pain?<br /> - You bloomed so fair, you waved so high;<br /> - Now that the sad days wane,<br /> - Are you repenting where you lie?<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - I lie amongst you, and I kiss<br /> - Your fragrance mouldering.<br /> - O dead delights, is it such bliss,<br /> - That tuneful Spring?<br /> - Is love so sweet, that comes to this?<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Kiss me again as I kiss you;<br /> - Kiss me again,<br /> - For all your tuneful nights of dew,<br /> - In this your time of rain,<br /> - For all your kisses when Spring was new.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - You will not, broken hearts; let be.<br /> - I pass across your death<br /> - To a golden summer you shall not see,<br /> - And in your dying breath<br /> - There is no benison for me.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - There is an autumn yet to wane,<br /> - There are leaves yet to fall,<br /> - Which, when I kiss, may kiss again,<br /> - And, pitied, pity me all for all,<br /> - And love me in mist and rain.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="parted"></a>PARTED<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - Farewell to one now silenced quite,<br /> - Sent out of hearing, out of sight,—<br /> - My friend of friends, whom I shall miss.<br /> - He is not banished, though, for this,—<br /> - Nor he, nor sadness, nor delight.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Though I shall talk with him no more,<br /> - A low voice sounds upon the shore.<br /> - He must not watch my resting-place,<br /> - But who shall drive a mournful face<br /> - From the sad winds about my door?<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - I shall not hear his voice complain,<br /> - But who shall stop the patient rain?<br /> - His tears must not disturb my heart,<br /> - But who shall change the years, and part<br /> - The world from every thought of pain?<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Although my life is left so dim,<br /> - The morning crowns the mountain-rim;<br /> - Joy is not gone from summer skies,<br /> - Nor innocence from children's eyes,<br /> - And all these things are part of him.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - He is not banished, for the showers<br /> - Yet wake this green warm earth of ours.<br /> - How can the summer but be sweet?<br /> - I shall not have him at my feet,<br /> - And yet my feet are on the flowers.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="monique"></a>"SOEUR MONIQUE"<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="t3"> - <i>A Rondeau by Couperin</i><br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Quiet form of silent nun,<br /> - What has given you to my inward eyes?<br /> - What has marked you, unknown one,<br /> - In the throngs of centuries<br /> - That mine ears do listen through?<br /> - This old master's melody<br /> - That expresses you;<br /> - This admired simplicity,<br /> - Tender, with a serious wit;<br /> - And two words, the name of it,<br /> - "Soeur Monique."<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - And if sad the music is,<br /> - It is sad with mysteries<br /> - Of a small immortal thing<br /> - That the passing ages sing,—<br /> - Simple music making mirth<br /> - Of the dying and the birth<br /> - Of the people of the earth.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - No, not sad; we are beguiled,<br /> - Sad with living as we are;<br /> - Ours the sorrow, outpouring<br /> - Sad self on a selfless thing,<br /> - As our eyes and hearts are mild<br /> - With our sympathy for Spring,<br /> - With a pity sweet and wild<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - For the innocent and far,<br /> - With our sadness in a star,<br /> - Or our sadness in a child.<br /> - But two words, and this sweet air.<br /> - Soeur Monique,<br /> - Had he more, who set you there?<br /> - Was his music-dream of you<br /> - Of some perfect nun he knew,<br /> - Or of some ideal, as true?<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - And I see you where you stand<br /> - With your life held in your hand<br /> - As a rosary of days.<br /> - And your thoughts in calm arrays,<br /> - And your innocent prayers are told<br /> - On your rosary of days.<br /> - And the young days and the old<br /> - With their quiet prayers did meet<br /> - When the chaplet was complete.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Did it vex you, the surmise<br /> - Of this wind of words, this storm of cries,<br /> - Though you kept the silence so<br /> - In the storms of long ago,<br /> - And you keep it, like a star?<br /> - —Of the evils triumphing,<br /> - Strong, for all your perfect conquering,<br /> - Silenced conqueror that you are?<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - And I wonder at your peace, I wonder.<br /> - Would it trouble you to know,<br /> - Tender soul, the world and sin<br /> - By your calm feet trodden under<br /> - Long ago,<br /> - Living now, mighty to win?<br /> - And your feet are vanished like the snow.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Vanished; but the poet, he<br /> - In whose dream your face appears,<br /> - He who ranges unknown years<br /> - With your music in his heart,<br /> - Speaks to you familiarly<br /> - Where you keep apart,<br /> - And invents you as you were.<br /> - And your picture, O my nun!<br /> - Is a strangely easy one,<br /> - For the holy weed you wear,<br /> - For your hidden eyes and hidden hair,<br /> - And in picturing you I may<br /> - Scarcely go astray.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - O the vague reality,<br /> - The mysterious certainty!<br /> - O strange truth of these my guesses<br /> - In the wide thought-wildernesses!<br /> - —Truth of one divined of many flowers;<br /> - Of one raindrop in the showers<br /> - Of the long ago swift rain;<br /> - Of one tear of many tears<br /> - In some world-renowned pain;<br /> - Of one daisy 'mid the centuries of sun;<br /> - Of a little living nun<br /> - In the garden of the years.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Yes, I am not far astray;<br /> - But I guess you as might one<br /> - Pausing when young March is grey,<br /> - In a violet-peopled day;<br /> - All his thoughts go out to places that he knew,<br /> - To his child-home in the sun,<br /> - To the fields of his regret,<br /> - To one place i' the innocent March air,<br /> - By one olive, and invent<br /> - The familiar form and scent<br /> - Safely; a white violet<br /> - Certainly is there.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Soeur Monique, remember me.<br /> - 'Tis not in the past alone<br /> - I am picturing you to be;<br /> - But my little friend, my own,<br /> - In my moment, pray for me.<br /> - For another dream is mine,<br /> - And another dream is true,<br /> - Sweeter even,<br /> - Of the little ones that shine<br /> - Lost within the light divine,—<br /> - Of some meekest flower, or you,<br /> - In the fields of heaven.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="regrets"></a>REGRETS<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - As, when the seaward ebbing tide doth pour<br /> - Out by the low sand spaces,<br /> - The parting waves slip back to clasp the shore<br /> - With lingering embraces,—<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - So in the tide of life that carries me<br /> - From where thy true heart dwells,<br /> - Waves of my thoughts and memories turn to thee<br /> - With lessening farewells;<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Waving of hands; dreams, when the day forgets;<br /> - A care half lost in cares;<br /> - The saddest of my verses; dim regrets;<br /> - Thy name among my prayers.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - I would the day might come, so waited for,<br /> - So patiently besought,<br /> - When I, returning, should fill up once more<br /> - Thy desolated thought;<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - And fill thy loneliness that lies apart<br /> - In still, persistent pain.<br /> - Shall I content thee, O thou broken heart,<br /> - As the tide comes again,<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - And brims the little sea-shore lakes, and sets<br /> - Seaweeds afloat, and fills<br /> - The silent pools, rivers and rivulets<br /> - Among the inland hills?<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="sea"></a>THE VISITING SEA<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - As the inhastening tide doth roll,<br /> - Home from the deep, along the whole<br /> - Wide shining strand, and floods the caves,<br /> - —Your love comes filling with happy waves<br /> - The open sea-shore of my soul.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - But inland from the seaward spaces,<br /> - None knows, not even you, the places<br /> - Brimmed, at your coming, out of sight,<br /> - —The little solitudes of delight<br /> - This tide constrains in dim embraces.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - You see the happy shore, wave-rimmed,<br /> - But know not of the quiet dimmed<br /> - Rivers your coming floods and fills,<br /> - The little pools 'mid happier hills,<br /> - My silent rivulets, over-brimmed.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - What! I have secrets from you? Yes.<br /> - But, visiting Sea, your love doth press<br /> - And reach in further than you know,<br /> - And fills all these; and, when you go,<br /> - There's loneliness in loneliness.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="parting"></a>AFTER A PARTING<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - Farewell has long been said; I have foregone thee;<br /> - I never name thee even.<br /> - But how shall I learn virtues and yet shun thee?<br /> - For thou art so near Heaven<br /> - That Heavenward meditations pause upon thee.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Thou dost beset the path to every shrine;<br /> - My trembling thoughts discern<br /> - Thy goodness in the good for which I pine;<br /> - And, if I turn from but one sin, I turn<br /> - Unto a smile of thine.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - How shall I thrust thee apart<br /> - Since all my growth tends to thee night and day—<br /> - To thee faith, hope, and art?<br /> - Swift are the currents setting all one way;<br /> - They draw my life, my life, out of my heart.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="builders"></a>BUILDERS OF RUINS<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - We build with strength the deep tower wall<br /> - That shall be shattered thus and thus.<br /> - And fair and great are court and hall,<br /> - But how fair—this is not for us,<br /> - Who know the lack that lurks in all.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - We know, we know how all too bright<br /> - The hues are that our painting wears,<br /> - And how the marble gleams too white;—<br /> - We speak in unknown tongues, the years<br /> - Interpret everything aright,<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - And crown with weeds our pride of towers,<br /> - And warm our marble through with sun,<br /> - And break our pavements through with flowers,<br /> - With an Amen when all is done,<br /> - Knowing these perfect things of ours.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - O days, we ponder, left alone,<br /> - Like children in their lonely hour,<br /> - And in our secrets keep your own,<br /> - As seeds the colour of the flower.<br /> - To-day they are not all unknown,<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - The stars that 'twixt the rise and fall,<br /> - Like relic-seers, shall one by one<br /> - Stand musing o'er our empty hall;<br /> - And setting moons shall brood upon<br /> - The frescoes of our inward wall.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - And when some midsummer shall be,<br /> - Hither will come some little one<br /> - (Dusty with bloom of flowers is he),<br /> - Sit on a ruin i' the late long sun,<br /> - And think, one foot upon his knee.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - And where they wrought, these lives of ours,<br /> - So many-worded, many-souled,<br /> - A North-west wind will take the towers,<br /> - And dark with colour, sunny and cold,<br /> - Will range alone among the flowers.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - And here or there, at our desire,<br /> - The little clamorous owl shall sit<br /> - Through her still time; and we aspire<br /> - To make a law (and know not it)<br /> - Unto the life of a wild briar.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Our purpose is distinct and dear,<br /> - Though from our open eyes 'tis hidden.<br /> - Thou, Time to come, shalt make it clear,<br /> - Undoing our work; we are children chidden<br /> - With pity and smiles of many a year.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Who shall allot the praise, and guess<br /> - What part is yours and what is ours?—<br /> - O years that certainly will bless<br /> - Our flowers with fruits, our seeds with flowers,<br /> - With ruin all our perfectness.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Be patient, Time, of our delays,<br /> - Too happy hopes, and wasted fears,<br /> - Our faithful ways, our Wilful ways;<br /> - Solace our labours, O our seers<br /> - The seasons, and our bards the days;<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - And make our pause and silence brim<br /> - With the shrill children's play, and sweets<br /> - Of those pathetic flowers and dim,<br /> - Of those eternal flowers my Keats<br /> - Dying felt growing over him!<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="sonnets"></a><a id="thoughts"></a>THOUGHTS IN SEPARATION<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - We never meet; yet we meet day by day<br /> - Upon those hills of life, dim and immense—<br /> - The good we love, and sleep, our innocence.<br /> - O hills of life, high hills! And, higher than they,<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Our guardian spirits meet at prayer and play.<br /> - Beyond pain, joy, and hope, and long suspense,<br /> - Above the summits of our souls, far hence,<br /> - An angel meets an angel on the way.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Beyond all good I ever believed of thee,<br /> - Or thou of me, these always love and live.<br /> - And though I fail of thy ideal of me,<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - My angel falls not short. They greet each other.<br /> - Who knows, they may exchange the kiss we give,<br /> - Thou to thy crucifix, I to my mother.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="garden"></a>THE GARDEN<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - My heart shall be thy garden. Come, my own,<br /> - Into thy garden; thine be happy hours<br /> - Among my fairest thoughts, my tallest flowers,<br /> - From root to crowning petal thine alone.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Thine is the place from where the seeds are sown<br /> - Up to the sky enclosed, with all its showers.<br /> - But ah, the birds, the birds! Who shall build bowers<br /> - To keep these thine? O friend, the birds have flown.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - For as these come and go, and quit our pine<br /> - To follow the sweet season, or, new-comers,<br /> - Sing one song only from our alder-trees,<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - My heart has thoughts, which, though thine eyes hold mine,<br /> - Flit to the silent world and other summers,<br /> - With wings that dip beyond the silver seas.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="youth"></a>YOUR OWN FAIR YOUTH<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - Your own fair youth, you care so little for it—<br /> - Smiling towards Heaven, you would not stay the advances<br /> - Of time and change upon your happiest fancies.<br /> - I keep your golden hour, and will restore it.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - If ever, in time to come, you would explore it—<br /> - Your old self, whose thoughts went like last year's pansies,<br /> - Look unto me; no mirror keeps its glances;<br /> - In my unfailing praises now I store it.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - To guard all joys of yours from Time's estranging,<br /> - I shall be then a treasury where your gay,<br /> - Happy, and pensive past unaltered is.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - I shall be then a garden charmed from changing,<br /> - In which your June has never passed away.<br /> - Walk there awhile among my memories.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="neophyte"></a>THE YOUNG NEOPHYTE<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - Who knows what days I answer for to-day?<br /> - Giving the bud I give the flower. I bow<br /> - This yet unfaded and a faded brow;<br /> - Bending these knees and feeble knees, I pray.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Thoughts yet unripe in me I bend one way,<br /> - Give one repose to pain I know not now,<br /> - One check to joy that comes, I guess not how.<br /> - I dedicate my fields when Spring is grey.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - O rash! (I smile) to pledge my hidden wheat.<br /> - I fold to-day at altars far apart<br /> - Hands trembling with what toils? In their retreat<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - I seal my love to-be, my folded art.<br /> - I light the tapers at my head and feet,<br /> - And lay the crucifix on this silent heart.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="alban"></a>SPRING ON THE ALBAN HILLS<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - O'er the Campagna it is dim, warm weather;<br /> - The Spring comes with a full heart silently,<br /> - And many thoughts; a faint flash of the sea<br /> - Divides two mists; straight falls the falling feather.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - With wild Spring meanings hill and plain together<br /> - Grow pale, or just flush with a dust of flowers.<br /> - Rome in the ages, dimmed with all her towers,<br /> - Floats in the midst, a little cloud at tether.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - I fain would put my hands about thy face,<br /> - Thou with thy thoughts, who art another Spring,<br /> - And draw thee to me like a mournful child.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Thou lookest on me from another place;<br /> - I touch not this day's secret, nor the thing<br /> - That in the silence makes thy soft eyes wild.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="february"></a>IN FEBRUARY<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - Rich meanings of the prophet-Spring adorn,<br /> - Unseen, this colourless sky of folded showers,<br /> - And folded winds; no blossom in the bowers;<br /> - A poet's face asleep in this grey morn.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Now in the midst of the old world forlorn<br /> - A mystic child is set in these still hours.<br /> - I keep this time, even before the flowers,<br /> - Sacred to all the young and the unborn:<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - To all the miles and miles of unsprung wheat,<br /> - And to the Spring waiting beyond the portal,<br /> - And to the future of my own young art,<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - And, among all these things, to you, my sweet,<br /> - My friend, to your calm face and the immortal<br /> - Child tarrying all your life-time in your heart.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="lute"></a>A SHATTERED LUTE<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - I touched the heart that loved me as a player<br /> - Touches a lyre. Content with my poor skill,<br /> - No touch save mine knew my beloved (and still<br /> - I thought at times: Is there no sweet lost air<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Old loves could wake in him, I cannot share?)<br /> - O he alone, alone could so fulfil<br /> - My thoughts in sound to the measure of my will.<br /> - He is gone, and silence takes me unaware.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - The songs I knew not he resumes, set free<br /> - From my constraining love, alas for me!<br /> - His part in our tune goes with him; my part<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Is locked in me for ever; I stand as mute<br /> - As one with vigorous music in his heart<br /> - Whose fingers stray upon a shattered lute.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="renouncement"></a>RENOUNCEMENT<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - I must not think of thee; and, tired yet strong,<br /> - I shun the thought that lurks in all delight—<br /> - The thought of thee—and in the blue Heaven's height,<br /> - And in the sweetest passage of a song.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - O just beyond the fairest thoughts that throng<br /> - This breast, the thought of thee waits, hidden yet bright;<br /> - But it must never, never come in sight;<br /> - I must stop short of thee the whole day long.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - But when sleep comes to close each difficult day,<br /> - When night gives pause to the long watch I keep,<br /> - And all my bonds I needs must loose apart,<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Must doff my will as raiment laid away,—<br /> - With the first dream that comes with the first sleep<br /> - I run, I run, I am gathered to thy heart.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="daisy"></a>TO A DAISY<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - Slight as thou art, thou art enough to hide<br /> - Like all created things, secrets from me,<br /> - And stand a barrier to eternity.<br /> - And I, how can I praise thee well and wide<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - From where I dwell—upon the hither side?<br /> - Thou little veil for so great mystery,<br /> - When shall I penetrate all things and thee,<br /> - And then look back? For this I must abide,<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Till thou shalt grow and fold and be unfurled<br /> - Literally between me and the world.<br /> - Then I shall drink from in beneath a spring,<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - And from a poet's side shall read his book.<br /> - O daisy mine, what will it be to look<br /> - From God's side even of such a simple thing?<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="mother"></a>SAN LORENZO'S MOTHER<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - I had not seen my son's dear face<br /> - (He chose the cloister by God's grace)<br /> - Since it had come to full flower-time.<br /> - I hardly guessed at its perfect prime,<br /> - That folded flower of his dear face.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Mine eyes were veiled by mists of tears<br /> - When on a day in many years<br /> - One of his Order came. I thrilled,<br /> - Facing, I thought, that face fulfilled.<br /> - I doubted, for my mists of tears.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - His blessing be with me for ever!<br /> - My hope and doubt were hard to sever.<br /> - —That altered face, those holy weeds.<br /> - I filled his wallet and kissed his beads,<br /> - And lost his echoing feet for ever.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - If to my son my alms were given<br /> - I know not, and I wait for Heaven.<br /> - He did not plead for child of mine,<br /> - But for another Child divine,<br /> - And unto Him it was surely given.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - There is One alone who cannot change;<br /> - Dreams are we, shadows, visions strange;<br /> - And all I give is given to One.<br /> - I might mistake my dearest son,<br /> - But never the Son who cannot change.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="lover"></a>THE LOVER URGES THE BETTER THRIFT<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - My Fair, no beauty of thine will last<br /> - Save in my love's eternity.<br /> - Thy smiles, that light thee fitfully,<br /> - Are lost for ever—their moment past—<br /> - Except the few thou givest to me.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Thy sweet words vanish day by day,<br /> - As all breath of mortality;<br /> - Thy laughter, done, must cease to be,<br /> - And all thy dear tones pass away,<br /> - Except the few that sing to me.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Hide then within my heart, O hide<br /> - All thou art loth should go from thee.<br /> - Be kinder to thyself and me.<br /> - My cupful from this river's tide<br /> - Shall never reach the long sad sea.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="cradle"></a>CRADLE-SONG AT TWILIGHT<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - The child not yet is lulled to rest.<br /> - Too young a nurse, the slender Night<br /> - So laxly hold him to her breast<br /> - That throbs with flight.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - He plays with her, and will not sleep.<br /> - For other playfellows she sighs;<br /> - An unmaternal fondness keep<br /> - Her alien eyes.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="daybreak"></a>SONG OF THE NIGHT AT DAYBREAK<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - All my stars forsake me.<br /> - And the dawn-winds shake me,<br /> - Where shall I betake me?<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Whither shall I run<br /> - Till the set of sun,<br /> - Till the day be done?<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - To the mountain-mine,<br /> - To the boughs o' the pine,<br /> - To the blind man's eyne,<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - To a brow that is<br /> - Bowed upon the knees,<br /> - Sick with memories?<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="letter"></a>A LETTER FROM A GIRL TO HER OWN OLD AGE<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - Listen, and when thy hand this paper presses,<br /> - O time-worn woman, think of her who blesses<br /> - What thy thin fingers touch, with her caresses.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - O mother, for the weight of years that break thee!<br /> - O daughter, for slow time must yet awake thee.<br /> - And from the changes of my heart must make thee!<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - O fainting traveller, morn is grey in heaven.<br /> - Dost thou remember how the clouds were driven?<br /> - And are they calm about the fall of even?<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Pause near the ending of thy long migration,<br /> - For this one sudden hour of desolation<br /> - Appeals to one hour of thy meditation.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Suffer, O silent one, that I remind thee<br /> - Of the great hills that stormed the sky behind thee,<br /> - Of the wild winds of power that have resigned thee.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Know that the mournful plain where thou must wander<br /> - Is but a grey and silent world, but ponder<br /> - The misty mountains of the morning yonder.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Listen:—the mountain winds with rain were fretting,<br /> - And sudden gleams the mountain-tops besetting.<br /> - I cannot let thee fade to death, forgetting.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - What part of this wild heart of mine I know not<br /> - Will follow with thee where the great winds blow not,<br /> - And where the young flowers of the mountain grow not.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Yet let my letter with thy lost thoughts in it<br /> - Tell what the way was when thou didst begin it,<br /> - And win with thee the goal when thou shalt win it.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Oh, in some hour of thine thy thoughts shall guide thee.<br /> - Suddenly, though time, darkness, silence, hide thee,<br /> - This wind from thy lost country flits beside thee,—<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Telling thee: all thy memories moved the maiden,<br /> - With thy regrets was morning over-shaden,<br /> - With sorrow, thou hast left, her life was laden.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - But whither shall my thoughts turn to pursue thee?<br /> - Life changes, and the years and days renew thee.<br /> - Oh, Nature brings my straying heart unto thee.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Her winds will join us, with their constant kisses<br /> - Upon the evening as the morning tresses,<br /> - Her summers breathe the same unchanging blisses.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - And we, so altered in our shifting phases,<br /> - Track one another 'mid the many mazes<br /> - By the eternal child-breath of the daisies.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - I have not writ this letter of divining<br /> - To make a glory of thy silent pining,<br /> - A triumph of thy mute and strange declining.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Only one youth, and the bright life was shrouded.<br /> - Only one morning, and the day was clouded.<br /> - And one old age with all regrets is crowded.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - O hush, O hush! Thy tears my words are steeping.<br /> - O hush, hush, hush! So full, the fount of weeping?<br /> - Poor eyes, so quickly moved, so near to sleeping?<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Pardon the girl; such strange desires beset her.<br /> - Poor woman, lay aside the mournful letter<br /> - That breaks thy heart; the one who wrote, forget her:<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - The one who now thy faded features guesses,<br /> - With filial fingers thy grey hair caresses,<br /> - With morning tears thy mournful twilight blesses.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="advent"></a>ADVENT MEDITATION<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - <i>Rorate coeli desuper, et nubes pluant Justum<br /> - Aperiatur terra, et germinet Salvatorem.</i><br /> -</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p class="poem"> - No sudden thing of glory and fear<br /> - Was the Lord's coming; but the dear<br /> - Slow Nature's days followed each other<br /> - To form the Saviour from his Mother<br /> - —One of the children of the year.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - The earth, the rain, received the trust,<br /> - —The sun and dews, to frame the Just.<br /> - He drew His daily life from these,<br /> - According to His own decrees<br /> - Who makes man from the fertile dust.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Sweet summer and the winter wild,<br /> - These brought him forth, the Undefiled.<br /> - The happy Springs renewed again<br /> - His daily bread, the growing grain,<br /> - The food and raiment of the Child.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h2> - <a id="poetsfancies"></a>A POET'S FANCIES<br /> -</h2> - -<p><br /></p> - -<h3> - I<br /> -<br /> - <a id="narcissus"></a>THE LOVE OF NARCISSUS<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - Like him who met his own eyes in the river,<br /> - The poet trembles at his own long gaze<br /> - That meets him through the changing nights and days<br /> - From out great Nature; all her waters quiver<br /> - With his fair image facing him for ever;<br /> - The music that he listens to betrays<br /> - His own heart to his ears; by trackless ways<br /> - His wild thoughts tend to him in long endeavour.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - His dreams are far among the silent hills;<br /> - His vague voice calls him from the darkened plain<br /> - With winds at night; strange recognition thrills<br /> - His lonely heart with piercing love and pain;<br /> - He knows again his mirth in mountain rills,<br /> - His weary tears that touch him with the rain.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="poet"></a>II<br /> -<br /> - TO ANY POET<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - Thou who singest through the earth<br /> - All the earth's wild creatures fly thee;<br /> - Everywhere thou marrest mirth,—<br /> - Dumbly they defy thee;<br /> - There is something they deny thee.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Pines thy fallen nature ever<br /> - For the unfallen Nature sweet.<br /> - But she shuns thy long endeavour,<br /> - Though her flowers and wheat<br /> - Throng and press thy pausing feet.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Though thou tame a bird to love thee,<br /> - Press thy face to grass and flowers,<br /> - All these things reserve above thee,<br /> - Secrets in the bowers,<br /> - Secrets in the sun and showers.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Sing thy sorrow, sing thy gladness,<br /> - In thy songs must wind and tree<br /> - Bear the fictions of thy sadness,<br /> - Thy humanity.<br /> - For their truth is not for thee.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Wait, and many a secret nest,<br /> - Many a hoarded winter-store<br /> - Will be hidden on thy breast.<br /> - Things thou longest for<br /> - Will not fear or shun thee more.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Thou shalt intimately lie<br /> - In the roots of flowers that thrust<br /> - Upwards from thee to the sky,<br /> - With no more distrust<br /> - When they blossom from thy dust.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Silent labours of the rain<br /> - Shall be near thee, reconciled;<br /> - Little lives of leaves and grain,<br /> - All things shy and wild,<br /> - Tell thee secrets, quiet child.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Earth, set free from thy fair fancies<br /> - And the art thou shalt resign,<br /> - Will bring forth her rue and pansies<br /> - Unto more divine<br /> - Thoughts than any thoughts of thine.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Nought will fear thee, humbled creature.<br /> - There will lie thy mortal burden<br /> - Pressed unto the heart of Nature,<br /> - Songless in a garden,<br /> - With a long embrace of pardon.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Then the truth all creatures tell,<br /> - And His will Whom thou entreatest,<br /> - Shall absorb thee; there shall dwell<br /> - Silence, the completest<br /> - Of thy poems, last and sweetest.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="silent"></a>III<br /> -<br /> - TO ONE POEM IN A SILENT TIME<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - Who looked for thee, thou little song of mine?<br /> - This winter of a silent poet's heart<br /> - Is suddenly sweet with thee. But what thou art,<br /> - Mid-winter flower, I would I could divine.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Art thou a last one, orphan of thy line?<br /> - Did the dead summer's last warmth foster thee?<br /> - Or is Spring folded up unguessed in me,<br /> - And stirring out of sight,—and thou the sign?<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Where shall I look—backwards or to the morrow<br /> - For others of thy fragrance, secret child?<br /> - Who knows if last things or if first things claim thee?<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - —Whether thou be the last smile of my sorrow,<br /> - Or else a joy too sweet, a joy too wild.<br /> - How, my December violet, shall I name thee?<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="moon"></a>IV<br /> -<br /> - THE MOON TO THE SUN<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="t3"> - <i>The Poet sings to her Poet</i><br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - As the full moon shining there<br /> - To the sun that lighteth her<br /> - Am I unto thee for ever,<br /> - O my secret glory-giver!<br /> - O my light, I am dark but fair,<br /> - Black but fair.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Shine, Earth loves thee! And then shine<br /> - And be loved through thoughts of mine.<br /> - All thy secrets that I treasure<br /> - I translate them at my pleasure<br /> - I am crowned with glory of thine,<br /> - Thine, not thine.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - I make pensive thy delight,<br /> - And thy strong gold silver-white.<br /> - Though all beauty of mine thou makest,<br /> - Yet to earth which thou forsakest<br /> - I have made thee fair all night,<br /> - Day all night.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="summer"></a>V<br /> -<br /> - THE SPRING TO THE SUMMER<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="t3"> - <i>The Poet sings to her Poet</i><br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - O poet of the time to be,<br /> - My conqueror, I began for thee.<br /> - Enter into thy poet's pain,<br /> - And take the riches of the rain,<br /> - And make the perfect year for me.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Thou unto whom my lyre shall fall,<br /> - Whene'er thou comest, hear my call.<br /> - O keep the promise of my lays,<br /> - Take thou the parable of my days;<br /> - I trust thee with the aim of all.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - And if my thoughts unfold from me,<br /> - Know that I too have hints of thee,<br /> - Dim hopes that come across my mind<br /> - In the rare days of warmer wind,<br /> - And tones of summer in the sea.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - And I have set thy paths, I guide<br /> - Thy blossoms on the wild hillside.<br /> - And I, thy bygone poet, share<br /> - The flowers that throng thy feet where'er<br /> - I led thy feet before I died.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="night"></a>VI<br /> -<br /> - THE DAY TO THE NIGHT<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="t3"> - <i>The Poet sings to his Poet</i><br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - From dawn to dusk, and from dusk to dawn,<br /> - We two are sundered always, Sweet.<br /> - A few stars shake o'er the rocky lawn<br /> - And the cold sea-shore when we meet.<br /> - The twilight comes with thy shadowy feet.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - We are not day and night, my Fair,<br /> - But one. It is an hour of hours.<br /> - And thoughts that are not otherwhere<br /> - Are thought here 'mid the blown sea-flowers,<br /> - This meeting and this dusk of ours.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Delight has taken Pain to her heart,<br /> - And there is dusk and stars for these.<br /> - O linger, linger! They would not part;<br /> - And the wild wind comes from over-seas,<br /> - With a new song to the olive trees.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - And when we meet by the sounding pine<br /> - Sleep draws near to his dreamless brother.<br /> - And when thy sweet eyes answer mine,<br /> - Peace nestles close to her mournful mother,<br /> - And Hope and Weariness kiss each other.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="mood"></a>VII<br /> -<br /> - A POET OF ONE MOOD<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - A poet of one mood in all my lays,<br /> - Ranging all life to sing one only love,<br /> - Like a west wind across the world I move,<br /> - Sweeping my harp of floods mine own wild ways.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - The countries change, but not the west-wind days<br /> - Which are my songs. My soft skies shine above,<br /> - And on all seas the colours of a dove,<br /> - And on all fields a flash of silver greys.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - I make the whole world answer to my art<br /> - And sweet monotonous meanings. In your ears<br /> - I change not ever, bearing, for my part,<br /> - One thought that is the treasure of my years<br /> - A small cloud full of rain upon my heart<br /> - And in mine arms, clasped, like a child in tears.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="derivations"></a>VIII<br /> -<br /> - A SONG OF DERIVATIONS<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - I come from nothing; but from where<br /> - Come the undying thoughts I bear?<br /> - Down, through long links of death and birth,<br /> - From the past poets of the earth,<br /> - My immortality is there.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - I am like the blossom of an hour,<br /> - But long, long vanished sun and shower<br /> - Awoke my breath i' the young world's air;<br /> - I track the past back everywhere<br /> - Through seed and flower and seed and flower.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Or I am like a stream that flows<br /> - Full of the cold springs that arose<br /> - In morning lands, in distant hills;<br /> - And down the plain my channel fills<br /> - With melting of forgotten snows.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Voices, I have not heard, possessed<br /> - My own fresh songs; my thoughts are blessed<br /> - With relics of the far unknown.<br /> - And mixed with memories not my own<br /> - The sweet streams throng into my breast.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Before this life began to be,<br /> - The happy songs that wake in me<br /> - Woke long ago and far apart.<br /> - Heavily on this little heart<br /> - Presses this immortality.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="singers"></a>IX<br /> -<br /> - SINGERS TO COME<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - No new delights to our desire<br /> - The singers of the past can yield.<br /> - I lift mine eyes to hill and field,<br /> - And see in them your yet dumb lyre,<br /> - Poets unborn and unrevealed.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Singers to come, what thoughts will start<br /> - To song? What words of yours be sent<br /> - Through man's soul, and with earth be blent?<br /> - These worlds of nature and the heart<br /> - Await you like an instrument.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Who knows what musical flocks of words<br /> - Upon these pine-tree tops will light,<br /> - And crown these towers in circling flight,<br /> - And cross these seas like summer birds,<br /> - And give a voice to the day and night?<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Something of you already is ours;<br /> - Some mystic part of you belongs<br /> - To us whose dreams your future throngs,<br /> - Who look on hills, and trees, and flowers,<br /> - Which will mean so much in your songs.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - I wonder, like the maid who found,<br /> - And knelt to lift, the lyre supreme<br /> - Of Orpheus from the Thracian stream.<br /> - She dreams on its sealed past profound;<br /> - On a deep future sealed I dream.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - She bears it in her wanderings<br /> - Within her arms, and has not pressed<br /> - Her unskilled fingers but her breast<br /> - Upon those silent sacred strings;<br /> - I, too, clasp mystic strings at rest.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - For I, i' the world of lands and seas,<br /> - The sky of wind and rain and fire,<br /> - And in man's world of long desire—<br /> - In all that is yet dumb in these—<br /> - Have found a more mysterious lyre.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="unlinked"></a>X<br /><br /> -<br /> - UNLINKED<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - If I should quit thee, sacrifice, forswear,<br /> - To what, my art, shall I give thee in keeping?<br /> - To the long winds of heaven? Shall these come sweeping<br /> - My songs forgone against my face and hair?<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Or shall the mountain streams my lost joys bear,<br /> - My past poetic in rain be weeping?<br /> - No, I shall live a poet waking, sleeping,<br /> - And I shall die a poet unaware.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - From me, my art, thou canst not pass away;<br /> - And I, a singer though I cease to sing,<br /> - Shall own thee without joy in thee or woe.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Through my indifferent words of every day,<br /> - Scattered and all unlinked the rhymes shall ring,<br /> - And make my poem; and I shall not know.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h2> - <a id="laterpoems"></a>Later Poems -</h2> - -<p><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="shepherdess"></a>THE SHEPHERDESS<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - She walks—the lady of my delight—<br /> - A shepherdess of sheep.<br /> - Her flocks are thoughts. She keeps them white;<br /> - She guards them from the steep;<br /> - She feeds them on the fragrant height,<br /> - And folds them in for sleep.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - She roams maternal hills and bright,<br /> - Dark valleys safe and deep.<br /> - Into that tender breast at night<br /> - The chastest stars may peep.<br /> - She walks—the lady of my delight—<br /> - A shepherdess of sheep.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - She holds her little thoughts in sight,<br /> - Though gay they run and leap.<br /> - She is so circumspect and right;<br /> - She has her soul to keep.<br /> - She walks—the lady of my delight—<br /> - A shepherdess of sheep.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="twopoets"></a>THE TWO POETS<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - Whose is the speech<br /> - That moves the voices of this lonely beech?<br /> - Out of the long west did this wild wind come—<br /> - O strong and silent! And the tree was dumb,<br /> - Ready and dumb, until<br /> - The dumb gale struck it on the darkened hill.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Two memories,<br /> - Two powers, two promises, two silences<br /> - Closed in this cry, closed in these thousand leaves<br /> - Articulate. This sudden hour retrieves<br /> - The purpose of the past,<br /> - Separate, apart—embraced, embraced at last.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - "Whose is the word?<br /> - Is it I that spake? Is it thou? Is it I that heard?"<br /> - "Thine earth was solitary, yet I found thee!"<br /> - "Thy sky was pathless, but I caught, I bound thee,<br /> - Thou visitant divine."<br /> - "O thou my Voice, the word was thine." "Was thine."<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="poverty"></a>THE LADY POVERTY<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - The Lady Poverty was fair:<br /> - But she lost her looks of late,<br /> - With change of times and change of air.<br /> - Ah slattern! she neglects her hair,<br /> - Her gown; her shoes; she keeps no state<br /> - As once when her pure feet were bare.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Or—almost worse, if worse can be—<br /> - She scolds in parlours, dusts and trims,<br /> - Watches and counts. O is this she<br /> - Whom Francis met, whose step was free,<br /> - Who with Obedience carolled hymns,<br /> - In Umbria walked with Chastity?<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Where is her ladyhood? Not here,<br /> - Not among modern kinds of men;<br /> - But in the stony fields, where clear<br /> - Through the thin trees the skies appear,<br /> - In delicate spare soil and fen,<br /> - And slender landscape and austere.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="november"></a>NOVEMBER BLUE<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="intro"> -<i>The golden tints of the electric lights seems to give a -complementary colour to the air in the early evening.</i>—ESSAY ON -LONDON. -</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p class="poem"> - O heavenly colour, London town<br /> - Has blurred it from her skies;<br /> - And, hooded in an earthly brown,<br /> - Unheaven'd the city lies.<br /> - No longer, standard-like, this hue<br /> - Above the broad road flies;<br /> - Nor does the narrow street the blue<br /> - Wear, slender pennon-wise.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - But when the gold and silver lamps<br /> - Colour the London dew,<br /> - And, misted by the winter damps,<br /> - The shops shine bright anew—<br /> - Blue comes to earth, it walks the street,<br /> - It dyes the wide air through;<br /> - A mimic sky about their feet,<br /> - The throng go crowned with blue.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="harvest"></a>A DEAD HARVEST<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="t3"> - IN KENSINGTON GARDENS.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Along the graceless grass of town<br /> - They rake the rows of red and brown,—<br /> - Dead leaves, unlike the rows of hay<br /> - Delicate, touched with gold and grey,<br /> - Raked long ago and far away.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - A narrow silence in the park,<br /> - Between the lights a narrow dark,<br /> - One street rolls on the north; and one,<br /> - Muffled, upon the south doth run;<br /> - Amid the mist the work is done.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - A futile crop!—for it the fire<br /> - Smoulders, and, for a stack, a pyre.<br /> - So go the town's lives on the breeze,<br /> - Even as the sheddings of the trees;<br /> - Bosom nor barn is filled with these.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="watershed"></a>THE WATERSHED<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="t3"> - <i>Lines written between Munich and Verona</i><br /> -</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p class="poem"> - Black mountains pricked with pointed pine<br /> - A melancholy sky.<br /> - Out-distanced was the German vine,<br /> - The sterile fields lay high.<br /> - From swarthy Alps I travelled forth<br /> - Aloft; it was the north, the north;<br /> - Bound for the Noon was I.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - I seemed to breast the streams that day;<br /> - I met, opposed, withstood<br /> - The northward rivers on their way,<br /> - My heart against the flood—<br /> - My heart that pressed to rise and reach,<br /> - And felt the love of altering speech,<br /> - Of frontiers, in its blood.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - But O the unfolding South! the burst<br /> - Of summer! O to see<br /> - Of all the southward brooks the first!<br /> - The travelling heart went free<br /> - With endless streams; that strife was stopped;<br /> - And down a thousand vales I dropped,<br /> - I flowed to Italy.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="wanderer"></a>THE JOYOUS WANDERER<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="t3"> - <i>Translated from M. Catulle Mendès</i><br /> -</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p class="poem"> - I go by road, I go by street—<br /> - Lira, la, la!<br /> - O white highways, ye know my feet!<br /> - A loaf I carry and, all told,<br /> - Three broad bits of lucky gold—<br /> - Lira, la, la!<br /> - And O within my flowering heart,<br /> - (Sing, dear nightingale!) is my Sweet.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - A poor man met me and begged for bread—<br /> - Lira, la, la!<br /> - "Brother, take all the loaf," I said,<br /> - I shall but go with lighter cheer—<br /> - Lira, la, la!<br /> - And O within my flowering heart<br /> - (Sing, sweet nightingale!) is my Dear.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - A thief I met on the lonely way—<br /> - Lira, la, la!<br /> - He took my gold; I cried to him, "Stay!<br /> - And take my pocket and make an end."<br /> - Lira, la, la!<br /> - And O within my flowering heart<br /> - (Sing, soft nightingale!) is my Friend.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Now on the plain I have met with death—<br /> - Lira, la, la!<br /> - My bread is gone, my gold, my breath.<br /> - But O this heart is not afraid—<br /> - Lira, la, la!<br /> - For O within this lonely heart<br /> - (Sing, sad nightingale!) is my Maid.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="rainy"></a>THE RAINY SUMMER<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - There's much afoot in heaven and earth this year;<br /> - The winds hunt up the sun, hunt up the moon,<br /> - Trouble the dubious dawn, hasten the drear<br /> - Height of a threatening noon.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - No breath of boughs, no breath of leaves, of fronds,<br /> - May linger or grow warm; the trees are loud;<br /> - The forest, rooted, tosses in her bonds,<br /> - And strains against the cloud.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - No scents may pause within the garden-fold;<br /> - The rifled flowers are cold as ocean-shells;<br /> - Bees, humming in the storm, carry their cold<br /> - Wild honey to cold cells.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="frost"></a>THE ROARING FROST<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - A flock of winds came winging from the North,<br /> - Strong birds with fighting pinions driving forth<br /> - With a resounding call:—<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Where will they close their wings and cease their cries—<br /> - Between what warming seas and conquering skies—<br /> - And fold, and fall?<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="westwind"></a>WEST WIND IN WINTER -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - Another day awakes. And who—<br /> - Changing the world—is this?<br /> - He comes at whiles, the winter through,<br /> - West Wind! I would not miss<br /> - His sudden tryst: the long, the new<br /> - Surprises of his kiss.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Vigilant, I make haste to close<br /> - With him who comes my way,<br /> - I go to meet him as he goes;<br /> - I know his note, his lay,<br /> - His colour and his morning-rose,<br /> - And I confess his day.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - My window waits; at dawn I hark<br /> - His call; at morn I meet<br /> - His haste around the tossing park<br /> - And down the softened street;<br /> - The gentler light is his: the dark,<br /> - The grey—he turns it sweet.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - So too, so too, do I confess<br /> - My poet when he sings.<br /> - He rushes on my mortal guess<br /> - With his immortal things.<br /> - I feel, I know, him. On I press—<br /> - He finds me 'twixt his wings.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="fold"></a>THE FOLD<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - Behold,<br /> - The time is now! Bring back, bring back<br /> - Thy flocks of fancies, wild of whim.<br /> - O lead them from the mountain-track<br /> - Thy frolic thoughts untold,<br /> - O bring them in—the fields grow dim—<br /> - And let me be the fold!<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Behold,<br /> - The time is now! Call in, O call<br /> - Thy pasturing kisses gone astray<br /> - For scattered sweets; gather them all<br /> - To shelter from the cold.<br /> - Throng them together, close and gay,<br /> - And let me be the fold!<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="chide"></a>"WHY WILT THOU CHIDE?"<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - Why wilt thou chide,<br /> - Who has attained to be denied?<br /> - O learn, above<br /> - All price is my refusal, Love.<br /> - My sacred Nay<br /> - Was never cheapened by the way.<br /> - Thy single sorrow crowns thee lord<br /> - Of an unpurchasable word.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - O strong, O pure!<br /> - As Yea makes happier loves secure,<br /> - I vow thee this<br /> - Unique rejection of a kiss.<br /> - I guard for thee<br /> - This jealous sad monopoly.<br /> - I seal this honour thine; none dare<br /> - Hope for a part in thy despair.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="veneration"></a>VENERATION OF IMAGES<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - Thou man, first-comer, whose wide arms entreat,<br /> - Gather, clasp, welcome, bind,<br /> - Lack, or remember; whose warm pulses beat<br /> - With love of thine own kind:—<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Unlifted for a blessing on yon sea,<br /> - Unshrined on this highway,<br /> - O flesh, O grief, thou too shalt have our knee,<br /> - Thou rood of every day!<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="theway"></a>"I AM THE WAY"<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - Thou art the Way.<br /> - Hadst Thou been nothing but the goal,<br /> - I cannot say<br /> - If Thou hadst ever met my soul.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - I cannot see—<br /> - I, child of process—if there lies<br /> - An end for me,<br /> - Full of repose, full of replies.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - I'll not reproach<br /> - The road that winds, my feet that err,<br /> - Access, Approach<br /> - Art Thou, Time, Way, and Wayfarer.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="viaveritas"></a>VIA, ET VERITAS, ET VITA<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - "You never attained to Him?" "If to attain<br /> - Be to abide, then that may be."<br /> - "Endless the way, followed with how much pain!"<br /> - "The way was He."<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="parentage"></a>PARENTAGE<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="intro"> -"<i>When Augustus Cæsar legislated against the unmarried citizens -of Rome, he declared them to be, in some sort, slayers of the -people.</i>" -</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p class="poem"> - Ah! no, not these!<br /> - These, who were childless, are not they who gave<br /> - So many dead unto the journeying wave,<br /> - The helpless nurselings of the cradling seas;<br /> - Not they who doomed by infallible decrees<br /> - Unnumbered man to the innumerable grave.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - But those who slay<br /> - Are fathers. Theirs are armies. Death is theirs—<br /> - The death of innocences and despairs;<br /> - The dying of the golden and the grey.<br /> - The sentence, when these speak it, has no Nay.<br /> - And she who slays is she who bears, who bears.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="modern"></a>THE MODERN MOTHER<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - Oh, what a kiss<br /> - With filial passion overcharged is this!<br /> - To this misgiving breast<br /> - This child runs, as a child ne'er ran to rest<br /> - Upon the light heart and the unoppressed.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Unhoped, unsought!<br /> - A little tenderness, this mother thought<br /> - The utmost of her meed.<br /> - She looked for gratitude; content indeed<br /> - With thus much that her nine years' love had bought.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Nay, even with less.<br /> - This mother, giver of life, death, peace, distress,<br /> - Desired ah! not so much<br /> - Thanks as forgiveness; and the passing touch<br /> - Expected, and the slight, the brief caress.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - O filial light<br /> - Strong in these childish eyes, these new, these bright<br /> - Intelligible stars! Their rays<br /> - Are near the constant earth, guides in the maze,<br /> - Natural, true, keen in this dusk of days.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="songiven"></a>UNTO US A SON IS GIVEN<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - Given, not lent,<br /> - And not withdrawn—once sent,<br /> - This Infant of mankind, this One,<br /> - Is still the little welcome Son.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - New every year,<br /> - New born and newly dear,<br /> - He comes with tidings and a song,<br /> - The ages long, the ages long;<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Even as the cold<br /> - Keen winter grows not old,<br /> - As childhood is so fresh, foreseen,<br /> - And spring in the familiar green—<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Sudden as sweet<br /> - Come the expected feet.<br /> - All joy is young, and new all art,<br /> - And He, too, Whom we have by heart.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="venicreator"></a>VENI CREATOR<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - So humble things Thou hast born for us, O God,<br /> - Left'st Thou a path of lowliness untrod?<br /> - Yes, one, till now; another Olive-Garden.<br /> - For we endure the tender pain of pardon,—<br /> - One with another we forbear. Give heed,<br /> - Look at the mournful world thou hast decreed.<br /> - The time has come. At last we hapless men<br /> - Know all our haplessness all through. Come, then,<br /> - Endure undreamed humility: Lord of Heaven,<br /> - Come to our ignorant hearts and be forgiven.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="boyhoods"></a>TWO BOYHOODS -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - Luminous passions reign<br /> - High in the soul of man; and they are twain.<br /> - Of these he hath made the poetry of earth—<br /> - Hath made his nobler tears, his magic mirth.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Fair love is one of these,<br /> - The visiting vision of seven centuries;<br /> - And one is love of Nature—love to tears—<br /> - The modern passion of this hundred years.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - O never to such height,<br /> - O never to such spiritual light—<br /> - The light of lonely visions, and the gleam<br /> - Of secret splendid sombre suns in dream—<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - O never to such long<br /> - Glory in life, supremacy in song,<br /> - Had either of these loves attained in joy,<br /> - But for the ministration of a boy.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Dante was one who bare<br /> - Love in his deep heart, apprehended there<br /> - When he was yet a child; and from that day<br /> - The radiant love has never passed away.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - And one was Wordsworth; he<br /> - Conceived the love of Nature childishly<br /> - As no adult heart might; old poets sing<br /> - That exaltation by remembering.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - For no divine<br /> - Intelligence, or art, or fire, or wine,<br /> - Is high-delirious as that rising lark—<br /> - The child's soul and its daybreak in the dark.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - And Letters keep these two<br /> - Heavenly treasures safe the ages through,<br /> - Safe from ignoble benison or ban—<br /> - These two high childhoods in the heart of man.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="sylvia"></a>TO SYLVIA<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="t3"> - TWO YEARS OLD<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Long life to thee, long virtue, long delight,<br /> - A flowering early and late!<br /> - Long beauty, grave to thought and gay to sight,<br /> - A distant date!<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Yet, as so many poets love to sing<br /> - (When young the child will die),<br /> - "No autumn will destroy this lovely spring,"<br /> - So, Sylvia, I.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - I'll write thee dapper verse and touching rhyme;<br /> - "Our eyes shall not behold—"<br /> - The commonplace shall serve for thee this time:<br /> - "Never grow old."<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - For there's another way to stop thy clock<br /> - Within my cherishing heart,<br /> - To carry thee unalterable, and lock<br /> - Thy youth apart:<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Thy flower, for me, shall evermore be hid<br /> - In this close bud of thine,<br /> - Not, Sylvia, by thy death—O God forbid!<br /> - Merely by mine.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="catherine"></a>SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="intro"> -<i>Written for Strephon, who said that a woman must lean, -or she should not have his chivalry.</i> -</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p class="poem"> - The light young man who was to die,<br /> - Stopped in his frolic by the State,<br /> - Aghast, beheld the world go by;<br /> - But Catherine crossed his dungeon gate.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - She found his lyric courage dumb,<br /> - His stripling beauties strewn in wrecks,<br /> - His modish bravery overcome;<br /> - Small profit had he of his sex.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - On any old wife's level he,<br /> - For once—for all. But he alone—<br /> - Man—must not fear the mystery,<br /> - The pang, the passage, the unknown:<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Death. He did fear it, in his cell,<br /> - Darkling amid the Tuscan sun;<br /> - And, weeping, at her feet he fell,<br /> - The sacred, young, provincial nun.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - She prayed, she preached him innocent;<br /> - She gave him to the Sacrificed;<br /> - On her courageous breast he leant,<br /> - The breast where beat the heart of Christ.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - He left it for the block, with cries<br /> - Of victory on his severed breath.<br /> - That crimson head she clasped, her eyes<br /> - Blind with the splendour of his death.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - And will the man of modern years<br /> - —Stern on the Vote—withhold from thee,<br /> - Thou prop, thou cross, erect, in tears,<br /> - Catherine, the service of his knee?<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="chimes"></a>CHIMES<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - Brief, on a flying night,<br /> - From the shaken tower,<br /> - A flock of bells take flight.<br /> - And go with the hour.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Like birds from the cote to the gales,<br /> - Abrupt—O hark!<br /> - A fleet of bells set sails,<br /> - And go to the dark.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Sudden the cold airs swing.<br /> - Alone, aloud,<br /> - A verse of bells takes wing<br /> - And flies with the cloud.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="poetswife"></a>A POET'S WIFE<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - I saw a tract of ocean locked inland,<br /> - Within a field's embrace—<br /> - The very sea! Afar it fled the strand,<br /> - And gave the seasons chase,<br /> - And met the night alone, the tempest spanned,<br /> - Saw sunrise face to face.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - O Poet, more than ocean, lonelier!<br /> - In inaccessible rest<br /> - And storm remote, thou, sea of thoughts, dost err<br /> - Scattered through east to west,—<br /> - Now, while thou closest with the kiss of her<br /> - Who locks thee to her breast.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="messina"></a>MESSINA, 1908<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - Lord, Thou hast crushed Thy tender ones, o'erthrown<br /> - Thy strong, Thy fair; Thy man thou hast unmanned,<br /> - Thy elaborate works unwrought, Thy deeds undone,<br /> - Thy lovely sentiment human plan unplanned;<br /> - Destroyer, we have cowered beneath Thine own<br /> - Immediate, unintelligible hand.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Lord, thou hast hastened to retrieve, to heal,<br /> - To feed, to bind, to clothe, to quench the brand,<br /> - To prop the ruin, to bless, and to anneal;<br /> - Hast sped Thy ships by sea, Thy trains by land,<br /> - Shed pity and tears:—our shattered fingers feel<br /> - Thy mediate and intelligible hand.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="unknown"></a>THE UNKNOWN GOD<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - One of the crowd went up,<br /> - And knelt before the Paten and the Cup,<br /> - Received the Lord, returned in peace, and prayed<br /> - Close to my side. Then in my heart I said:<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - "O Christ, in this man's life!—<br /> - This stranger who is Thine—in all his strife,<br /> - All his felicity, his good and ill,<br /> - In the assaulted stronghold of his will,<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - "I do confess Thee here,<br /> - Alive within this life; I know Thee near<br /> - Within this lonely conscience, closed away<br /> - Within this brother's solitary day.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - "Christ in his unknown heart,<br /> - His intellect unknown—this love, this art,<br /> - This battle and this peace, this destiny<br /> - That I shall never know, look upon me!<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - "Christ in his numbered breath,<br /> - Christ in his beating heart and in his death,<br /> - Christ in his mystery! From that secret place<br /> - And from that separate dwelling, give me grace!"<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="communion"></a>A GENERAL COMMUNION<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - I saw the throng, so deeply separate,<br /> - Fed at one only board—<br /> - The devout people, moved, intent, elate,<br /> - And the devoted Lord.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - O struck apart! not side from human side,<br /> - But soul from human soul,<br /> - As each asunder absorbed the multiplied,<br /> - The ever unparted, whole.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - I saw this people as a field of flowers,<br /> - Each grown at such a price<br /> - The sum of unimaginable powers<br /> - Did no more than suffice.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - A thousand single central daisies they,<br /> - A thousand of the one;<br /> - For each, the entire monopoly of day;<br /> - For each, the whole of the devoted sun.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="fugitive"></a>THE FUGITIVE -</h3> - -<p class="intro"> - "<i>Nous avons chassé ce Jésus Christ.</i>"—FRENCH PUBLICIST.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p class="poem"> - Yes, from the ingrate heart, the street<br /> - Of garrulous tongue, the warm retreat<br /> - Within the village and the town;<br /> - Not from the lands where ripen brown<br /> - A thousand thousand hills of wheat;<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Not from the long Burgundian line,<br /> - The Southward, sunward range of vine.<br /> - Hunted, He never will escape<br /> - The flesh, the blood, the sheaf, the grape,<br /> - That feed His man—the bread, the wine.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="portugal"></a>IN PORTUGAL, 1912<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - And will they cast the altars down,<br /> - Scatter the chalice, crush the bread?<br /> - In field, in village, and in town<br /> - He hides an unregarded head;<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Waits in the corn-lands far and near,<br /> - Bright in His sun, dark in His frost,<br /> - Sweet in the vine, ripe in the ear—<br /> - Lonely unconsecrated Host.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - In ambush at the merry board<br /> - The Victim lurks unsacrificed;<br /> - The mill conceals the harvest's Lord,<br /> - The wine-press holds the unbidden Christ.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="crucifixion"></a>THE CRUCIFIXION<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="t3"> - "<i>A Paltry Sacrifice.</i>"—PREFACE TO A PLAY<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p class="poem"> - Oh, man's capacity<br /> - For spiritual sorrow, corporal pain!<br /> - Who has explored the deepmost of that sea,<br /> - With heavy links of a far-fathoming chain?<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - That melancholy lead,<br /> - Let down in guilty and in innocent hold,<br /> - Yea into childish hands delivered,<br /> - Leaves the sequestered floor unreached, untold.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - One only has explored<br /> - The deepmost; but He did not die of it.<br /> - Not yet, not yet He died. Man's human Lord<br /> - Touched the extreme; it is not infinite.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - But over the abyss<br /> - Of God's capacity for woe He stayed<br /> - One hesitating hour; what gulf was this?<br /> - Forsaken He went down, and was afraid.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="vainglory"></a>THE NEWER VAINGLORY<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - Two men went up to pray; and one gave thanks,<br /> - Not with himself—aloud,<br /> - With proclamation, calling on the ranks<br /> - Of an attentive crowd.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - "Thank God, I clap not my own humble breast,<br /> - But other ruffians' backs,<br /> - Imputing crime—such is my tolerant haste—<br /> - To any man that lacks.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - "For I am tolerant, generous, keep no rules,<br /> - And the age honours me.<br /> - Thank God, I am not as these rigid fools,<br /> - Even as this Pharisee."<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="manchester"></a>IN MANCHESTER SQUARE<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="t3"> - (<i>In Memoriam</i> T.H.)<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p class="poem"> - The paralytic man has dropped in death<br /> - The crossing-sweeper's brush to which he clung,<br /> - One-handed, twisted, dwarfed, scanted of breath,<br /> - Although his hair was young.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - I saw this year the winter vines of France,<br /> - Dwarfed, twisted, goblins in the frosty drouth—<br /> - Gnarled, crippled, blackened little stems askance<br /> - On long hills to the South.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Great green and golden hands of leaves ere long<br /> - Shall proffer clusters in that vineyard wide.<br /> - And O his might, his sweet, his wine, his song,<br /> - His stature, since he died!<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="maternity"></a>MATERNITY<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - One wept whose only child was dead,<br /> - New-born, ten years ago.<br /> - "Weep not; he is in bliss," they said.<br /> - She answered, "Even so,<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - "Ten years ago was born in pain<br /> - A child, not now forlorn.<br /> - But oh, ten years ago, in vain,<br /> - A mother, a mother was born."<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="snow"></a>THE FIRST SNOW<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - Not yet was winter come to earth's soft floor,<br /> - The tideless wave, the warm white road, the shore,<br /> - The serried town whose small street tortuously<br /> - Led darkling to the dazzling sea.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Not yet to breathing man, not to his song,<br /> - Not to his comforted heart; nor to the long<br /> - Close-cultivated lands beneath the hill.<br /> - Summer was gently with them still.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - But on the Apennine mustered the cloud;<br /> - The grappling storm shut down. Aloft, aloud,<br /> - Ruled secret tempest one long day and night,<br /> - Until another morning's light.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - O tender mountain-tops and delicate,<br /> - Where summer-long the westering sunlight sate!<br /> - Within that fastness darkened from the sun,<br /> - What solitary things were done?<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - The clouds let go, they rose, they winged away;<br /> - Snow-white the altered mountains faced the day,<br /> - As saints who keep their counsel sealed and fast,<br /> - Their anguish over-past.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="courts"></a>THE COURTS<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="t3"> - A FIGURE OF THE EPIPHANY<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - The poet's imageries are noble ways,<br /> - Approaches to a plot, an open shrine.<br /> - Their splendours, colours, avenues, arrays,<br /> - Their courts that run with wine;<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Beautiful similes, "fair and flagrant things,"<br /> - Enriched, enamouring,—raptures, metaphors<br /> - Enhancing life, are paths for pilgrim kings<br /> - Made free of golden doors.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - And yet the open heavenward plot, with dew,<br /> - Ultimate poetry, enclosed, enskied<br /> - (Albeit such ceremonies lead thereto)<br /> - Stands on the yonder side.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Plain, behind oracles, it is; and past<br /> - All symbols, simple; perfect, heavenly-wild,<br /> - The song some loaded poets reach at last—<br /> - The kings that found a Child.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="launch"></a>THE LAUNCH<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - Forth, to the alien gravity,<br /> - Forth, to the laws of ocean, we<br /> - Builders on earth by laws of land<br /> - Entrust this creature of our hand<br /> - Upon the calculated sea.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Fast bound to shore we cling, we creep,<br /> - And make our ship ready to leap<br /> - Light to the flood, equipped to ride<br /> - The strange conditions of the tide—<br /> - New weight, new force, new world: the Deep.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Ah thus—not thus—the Dying, kissed,<br /> - Cherished, exhorted, shriven, dismissed;<br /> - By all the eager means we hold<br /> - We, warm, prepare him for the cold,<br /> - To keep the incalculable tryst.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="body"></a>TO THE BODY<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - Thou inmost, ultimate<br /> - Council of judgment, palace of decrees,<br /> - Where the high senses hold their spiritual state,<br /> - Sued by earth's embassies,<br /> - And sign, approve, accept, conceive, create;<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Create—thy senses close<br /> - With the world's pleas. The random odours reach<br /> - Their sweetness in the place of thy repose,<br /> - Upon thy tongue the peach,<br /> - And in thy nostrils breathes the breathing rose.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - To thee, secluded one,<br /> - The dark vibrations of the sightless skies,<br /> - The lovely inexplicit colours run;<br /> - The light gropes for those eyes<br /> - O thou august! thou dost command the sun.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Music, all dumb, hath trod<br /> - Into thine ear her one effectual way;<br /> - And fire and cold approach to gain thy nod,<br /> - Where thou call'st up the day,<br /> - Where thou awaitest the appeal of God.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="peril"></a>THE UNEXPECTED PERIL<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - Unlike the youth that all men say<br /> - They prize—youth of abounding blood,<br /> - In love with the sufficient day,<br /> - And gay in growth, and strong in bud;<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Unlike was mine! Then my first slumber<br /> - Nightly rehearsed my last; each breath<br /> - Knew itself one of the unknown number.<br /> - But Life was urgent with me as Death.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - My shroud was in the flocks; the hill<br /> - Within its quarry locked my stone;<br /> - My bier grew in the woods; and still<br /> - Life spurred me where I paused alone.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - "Begin!" Life called. Again her shout,<br /> - "Make haste while it is called to-day!"<br /> - Her exhortations plucked me out,<br /> - Hunted me, turned me, held me at bay.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - But if my youth is thus hard pressed<br /> - (I thought) what of a later year?<br /> - If the end so threats this tender breast,<br /> - What of the days when it draws near?<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Draws near, and little done? yet lo,<br /> - Dread has forborne, and haste lies by.<br /> - I was beleaguered; now the foe<br /> - Has raised the siege, I know not why.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - I see them troop away; I ask<br /> - Were they in sooth mine enemies—<br /> - Terror, the doubt, the lash, the task?<br /> - What heart has my new housemate, Ease?<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - How am I left, at last, alive,<br /> - To make a stranger of a tear?<br /> - What did I do one day to drive<br /> - From me the vigilant angel, Fear?<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - The diligent angel, Labour? Ay,<br /> - The inexorable angel, Pain?<br /> - Menace me, lest indeed I die,<br /> - Sloth! Turn; crush, teach me fear again!<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="christ"></a>CHRIST IN THE UNIVERSE -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - With this ambiguous earth<br /> - His dealings have been told us. These abide:<br /> - The signal to a maid, the human birth,<br /> - The lesson, and the young Man crucified.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - But not a star of all<br /> - The innumerable host of stars has heard<br /> - How He administered this terrestrial ball.<br /> - Our race have kept their Lord's entrusted Word.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Of His earth-visiting feet<br /> - None knows the secret, cherished, perilous,<br /> - The terrible, shame fast, frightened, whispered, sweet,<br /> - Heart-shattering secret of His way with us.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - No planet knows that this<br /> - Our wayside planet, carrying land and wave,<br /> - Love and life multiplied, and pain and bliss,<br /> - Bears, as chief treasure, one forsaken grave.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Nor, in our little day,<br /> - May His devices with the heavens be guessed,<br /> - His pilgrimage to thread the Milky Way,<br /> - Or His bestowals there be manifest.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - But, in the eternities,<br /> - Doubtless we shall compare together, hear<br /> - A million alien Gospels, in what guise<br /> - He trod the Pleiades, the Lyre, the Bear.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - O, be prepared, my soul!<br /> - To read the inconceivable, to scan<br /> - The million forms of God those stars unroll<br /> - When, in our turn, we show to them a Man.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="knowledge"></a>BEYOND KNOWLEDGE<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="t3"> - "<i>Your sins ... shall be white as snow.</i>"<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p class="poem"> - Into the rescued world newcomer,<br /> - The newly-dead stepped up, and cried,<br /> - "O what is that, sweeter than summer<br /> - Was to my heart before I died?<br /> - Sir (to an angel), what is yonder<br /> - More bright than the remembered skies,<br /> - A lovelier sight, a softer splendour<br /> - Than when the moon was wont to rise?<br /> - Surely no sinner wears such seeming<br /> - Even the Rescued World within?"<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - "O the success of His redeeming!<br /> - O child, it is a rescued sin!"<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="easter"></a>EASTER NIGHT<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - All night had shout of men and cry<br /> - Of woeful women filled His way;<br /> - Until that noon of sombre sky<br /> - On Friday, clamour and display<br /> - Smote Him; no solitude had He,<br /> - No silence, since Gethsemane.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Public was Death; but Power, but Might,<br /> - But Life again, but Victory,<br /> - Were hushed within the dead of night,<br /> - The shutter'd dark, the secrecy.<br /> - And all alone, alone, alone<br /> - He rose again behind the stone.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="father"></a>A FATHER OF WOMEN<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="t3"> - AD SOROREM E. B.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="intro"> - "<i>Thy father was transfused into thy blood.</i>"<br /> - <i>Dryden: Ode to Mrs. Anne Killigrew.</i><br /> -</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p class="poem"> - Our father works in us,<br /> - The daughters of his manhood. Not undone<br /> - Is he, not wasted, though transmuted thus,<br /> - And though he left no son.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Therefore on him I cry<br /> - To arm me: "For my delicate mind a casque,<br /> - A breastplate for my heart, courage to die,<br /> - Of thee, captain, I ask.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - "Nor strengthen only; press<br /> - A finger on this violent blood and pale,<br /> - Over this rash will let thy tenderness<br /> - A while pause, and prevail.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - "And shepherd-father, thou<br /> - Whose staff folded my thoughts before my birth,<br /> - Control them now I am of earth, and now<br /> - Thou art no more of earth.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - "O liberal, constant, dear!<br /> - Crush in my nature the ungenerous art<br /> - Of the inferior; set me high, and here,<br /> - Here garner up thy heart."<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Like to him now are they,<br /> - The million living fathers of the War—<br /> - Mourning the crippled world, the bitter day—<br /> - Whose striplings are no more.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - The crippled world! Come then,<br /> - Fathers of women with your honour in trust;<br /> - Approve, accept, know them daughters of men,<br /> - Now that your sons are dust.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="days"></a>LENGTH OF DAYS<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="t3"> - TO THE EARLY DEAD IN BATTLE<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - There is no length of days<br /> - But yours, boys who were children once.<br /> - Of old<br /> - The Past beset you in your childish ways,<br /> - With sense of Time untold.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - What have you then forgone?<br /> - A history? This you had. Or memories?<br /> - These, too, you had of your far-distant dawn.<br /> - No further dawn seems his,<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - The old man who shares with you,<br /> - But has no more, no more. Time's mystery<br /> - Did once for him the most that it can do;<br /> - He has had infancy.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - And all his dreams, and all<br /> - His loves for mighty Nature, sweet and few,<br /> - Are but the dwindling past he can recall<br /> - Of what his childhood knew.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - He counts not any more<br /> - His brief, his present years. But O he knows<br /> - How far apart the summers were of yore,<br /> - How far apart the snows.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Therefore be satisfied;<br /> - Long life is in your treasury ere you fall;<br /> - Yes, and first love, like Dante's. O a bride<br /> - For ever mystical!<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Irrevocable good,—<br /> - You dead, and now about, so young, to die,—<br /> - Your childhood was; there Space, there Multitude,<br /> - There dwelt Antiquity.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="nurse"></a>NURSE EDITH CAVELL<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="t3"> - <i>Two o'clock, the morning of October</i> 12<i>th</i>, 1915<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p class="poem"> - To her accustomed eyes<br /> - The midnight-morning brought not such a dread<br /> - As thrills the chance-awakened head that lies<br /> - In trivial sleep on the habitual bed.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - 'Twas yet some hours ere light;<br /> - And many, many, many a break of day<br /> - Had she outwatched the dying; but this night<br /> - Shortened her vigil was, briefer the way.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - By dial of the clock<br /> - 'Twas day in the dark above her lonely head.<br /> - "This day thou shalt be with Me." Ere the cock<br /> - Announced that day she met the Immortal Dead.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="summer1914"></a>SUMMER IN ENGLAND, 1914 -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - On London fell a clearer light;<br /> - Caressing pencils of the sun<br /> - Defined the distances, the white<br /> - Houses transfigured one by one,<br /> - The "long, unlovely street" impearled.<br /> - O what a sky has walked the world!<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Most happy year! And out of town<br /> - The hay was prosperous, and the wheat;<br /> - The silken harvest climbed the down:<br /> - Moon after moon was heavenly-sweet<br /> - Stroking the bread within the sheaves,<br /> - Looking 'twixt apples and their leaves.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - And while this rose made round her cup,<br /> - The armies died convulsed. And when<br /> - This chaste young silver sun went up<br /> - Softly, a thousand shattered men,<br /> - One wet corruption, heaped the plain,<br /> - After a league-long throb of pain.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Flower following tender flower; and birds,<br /> - And berries; and benignant skies<br /> - Made thrive the serried flocks and herds.—<br /> - Yonder are men shot through the eyes.<br /> - Love, hide thy face<br /> - From man's unpardonable race.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - * * *<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Who said "No man hath greater love than this,<br /> - To die to serve his friend"?<br /> - So these have loved us all unto the end.<br /> - Chide thou no more, O thou unsacrificed!<br /> - The soldier dying dies upon a kiss,<br /> - The very kiss of Christ.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="tintoretto"></a>TO TINTORETTO IN VENICE<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="intro"> -<i>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.</i> -</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p class="poem"> - Master, thy enterprise,<br /> - Magnificent, magnanimous, was well done,<br /> - Which seized the head of Art, and turned her eyes—<br /> - The simpleton—and made her front the sun.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Long had she sat content,<br /> - Her young unlessoned back to a morning gay,<br /> - To a solemn noon, to a cloudy firmament,<br /> - And looked upon a world in gentle day.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - But thy imperial call<br /> - Bade her to stand with thee and breast the light,<br /> - And therefore face the shadows, mystical,<br /> - Sombre, translucent, vestiges of night,<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Yet glories of the day.<br /> - Eagle! we know thee by thy undaunted eyes<br /> - Sky-ward, and by thy glooms; we know thy way<br /> - Ambiguous, and those halo-misted dyes.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Thou Cloud, the bridegroom's friend<br /> - (The bridegroom sun)! Master, we know thy sign:<br /> - A mystery of hues world-without-end;<br /> - And hide-and-seek of gamesome and divine;<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Shade of the noble head<br /> - Cast hitherward upon the noble breast;<br /> - Human solemnities thrice hallowed;<br /> - The haste to Calvary, the Cross at rest.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Look sunward, Angel, then!<br /> - Carry the fortress-heavens by that hand;<br /> - Still be the interpreter of suns to men;<br /> - And shadow us, O thou Tower! for thou shalt stand.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="thrush"></a>A THRUSH BEFORE DAWN<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - A voice peals in this end of night<br /> - A phrase of notes resembling stars,<br /> - Single and spiritual notes of light.<br /> - What call they at my window-bars?<br /> - The South, the past, the day to be,<br /> - An ancient infelicity.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Darkling, deliberate, what sings<br /> - This wonderful one, alone, at peace?<br /> - What wilder things than song, what things<br /> - Sweeter than youth, clearer than Greece,<br /> - Dearer than Italy, untold<br /> - Delight, and freshness centuries old?<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - And first first-loves, a multitude,<br /> - The exaltation of their pain;<br /> - Ancestral childhood long renewed;<br /> - And midnights of invisible rain;<br /> - And gardens, gardens, night and day,<br /> - Gardens and childhood all the way.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - What Middle Ages passionate,<br /> - O passionless voice! What distant bells<br /> - Lodged in the hills, what palace state<br /> - Illyrian! For it speaks, it tells,<br /> - Without desire, without dismay,<br /> - Some morrow and some yesterday.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - All-natural things! But more—Whence came<br /> - This yet remoter mystery?<br /> - How do these starry notes proclaim<br /> - A graver still divinity?<br /> - This hope, this sanctity of fear?<br /> - <i>O innocent throat! O human ear!</i><br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="shakespeare"></a>THE TWO SHAKESPEARE TERCENTENARIES<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="t3"> - OF BIRTH, 1864; OF DEATH, 1916<br /> -</p> - -<p class="t3"> - TO SHAKESPEARE<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Longer than thine, than thine,<br /> - Is now my time of life; and thus thy years<br /> - Seem to be clasped and harboured within mine.<br /> - O how ignoble this my clasp appears!<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Thy unprophetic birth,<br /> - Thy darkling death; living I might have seen<br /> - That cradle, marked those labours, closed that earth.<br /> - O first, O last, O infinite between!<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Now that my life has shared<br /> - Thy dedicated date, O mortal, twice,<br /> - To what all-vain embrace shall be compared<br /> - My lean enclosure of thy paradise:<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - To ignorant arms that fold<br /> - A poet to a foolish breast? The Line,<br /> - That is not, with the world within its hold?<br /> - So, days with days, my days encompass thine.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Child, Stripling, Man—the sod.<br /> - Might I talk little language to thee, pore<br /> - On thy last silence? O thou city of God,<br /> - My waste lies after thee, and lies before.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="darkeyes"></a>To O——, OF HER DARK EYES<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - Across what calm of tropic seas,<br /> - 'Neath alien clusters of the nights,<br /> - Looked, in the past, such eyes as these!<br /> - Long-quenched, relumed, ancestral lights!<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - The generations fostered them;<br /> - And steadfast Nature, secretwise—<br /> - Thou seedling child of that old stem—<br /> - Kindled anew thy dark-bright eyes.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Was it a century or two<br /> - This lovely darkness rose and set,<br /> - Occluded by grey eyes and blue,<br /> - And Nature feigning to forget?<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Some grandam gave a hint of it—<br /> - So cherished was it in thy race,<br /> - So fine a treasure to transmit<br /> - In its perfection to thy face.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Some father to some mother's breast<br /> - Entrusted it, unknowing. Time<br /> - Implied, or made it manifest,<br /> - Bequest of a forgotten clime.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Hereditary eyes! But this<br /> - Is single, singular, apart:—<br /> - New-made thy love, new-made thy kiss,<br /> - New-made thy errand to my heart.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="treasure"></a>THE TREASURE<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - Three times have I beheld<br /> - Fear leap in a babe's face, and take his breath,<br /> - Fear, like the fear of eld<br /> - That knows the price of life, the name of death.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - What is it justifies<br /> - This thing, this dread, this fright that has no tongue,<br /> - The terror in those eyes<br /> - When only eyes can speak—they are so young?<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Not yet those eyes had wept.<br /> - What does fear cherish that it locks so well?<br /> - What fortress is thus kept?<br /> - Of what is ignorant terror sentinel?<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - And pain in the poor child,<br /> - Monstrously disproportionate, and dumb<br /> - In the poor beast, and wild<br /> - In the old decorous man, caught, overcome?<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Of what the outposts these?<br /> - Of what the fighting guardians? What demands<br /> - That sense of menaces,<br /> - And then such flying feet, imploring hands?<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Life: There's nought else to seek;<br /> - Life only, little prized; but by design<br /> - Of nature prized. How weak,<br /> - How sad, how brief! O how divine, divine!<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="weather"></a>A WIND OF CLEAR WEATHER IN ENGLAND<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - O what a miracle wind is this<br /> - Has crossed the English land to-day<br /> - With an unprecedented kiss,<br /> - And wonderfully found a way!<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Unsmirched incredibly and clean,<br /> - Between the towns and factories,<br /> - Avoiding, has his long flight been,<br /> - Bringing a sky like Sicily's.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - O fine escape, horizon pure<br /> - As Rome's! Black chimneys left and right,<br /> - But not for him, the straight, the sure,<br /> - His luminous day, his spacious night.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - How keen his choice, how swift his feet!<br /> - Narrow the way and hard to find!<br /> - This delicate stepper and discreet<br /> - Walked not like any worldly wind.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Most like a man in man's own day,<br /> - One of the few, a perfect one:<br /> - His open earth—the single way;<br /> - His narrow road—the open sun.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="sleep"></a>IN SLEEP<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - I dreamt (no "dream" awake—a dream indeed)<br /> - A wrathful man was talking in the park:<br /> - "Where are the Higher Powers, who know our need<br /> - And leave us in the dark?<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - "There are no Higher Powers; there is no heart<br /> - In God, no love"—his oratory here,<br /> - Taking the paupers' and the cripples' part,<br /> - Was broken by a tear.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - And then it seemed that One who did create<br /> - Compassion, who alone invented pity,<br /> - Walked, as though called, in at that north-east gate,<br /> - Out from the muttering city;<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Threaded the little crowd, trod the brown grass,<br /> - Bent o'er the speaker close, saw the tear rise,<br /> - And saw Himself, as one looks in a glass,<br /> - In those impassioned eyes.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="privilege"></a>THE DIVINE PRIVILEGE<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - Lord, where are Thy prerogatives?<br /> - Why, men have more than Thou hast kept;<br /> - The king rewards, remits, forgives,<br /> - The poet to a throne has stept.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - And Thou, despoiled, hast given away<br /> - Worship to men, success to strife,<br /> - Thy glory to the heavenly day,<br /> - And made Thy sun the lord of life.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Is one too precious to impart,<br /> - One property reserved to Christ,<br /> - One, cherished, grappled to that heart?<br /> - —To be alone the Sacrificed?<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - O Thou who lovest to redeem!—<br /> - One whom I know lies sore oppressed,<br /> - Thou wilt not suffer me to dream<br /> - That I can bargain for her rest.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Seven hours I swiftly sleep, while she<br /> - Measures the leagues of dark, awake.<br /> - O that my dewy eyes might be<br /> - Parched by a vigil for her sake!<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - But O rejected! O in vain!<br /> - I cannot give who would not keep.<br /> - I cannot buy, I cannot gain,<br /> - I cannot give her half my sleep.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="freewill"></a>FREE WILL<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - Dear are some hidden things<br /> - My soul has sealed in silence; past delights;<br /> - Hope unconfessed; desires with hampered wings,<br /> - Remembered in the nights.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - But my best treasures are<br /> - Ignoble, undelightful, abject, cold;<br /> - Yet O! profounder hoards oracular<br /> - No reliquaries hold.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - There lie my trespasses,<br /> - Abjured but not disowned. I'll not accuse<br /> - Determinism, nor, as the Master* says,<br /> - Charge even "the poor Deuce."<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Under my hand they lie,<br /> - My very own, my proved iniquities;<br /> - And though the glory of my life go by<br /> - I hold and garner these.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - How else, how otherwhere,<br /> - How otherwise, shall I discern and grope<br /> - For lowliness? How hate, how love, how dare,<br /> - How weep, how hope?<br /> -</p> - -<p class="footnote"> - *George Meredith<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="questions"></a>THE TWO QUESTIONS<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - "A riddling world!" one cried.<br /> - "If pangs must be, would God that they were sent<br /> - To the impure, the cruel, and passed aside<br /> - The holy innocent!"<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - But I, "Ah no, no, no!<br /> - Not the clean heart transpierced; not tears that fall<br /> - For a child's agony; nor a martyr's woe;<br /> - Not these, not these appal.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - "Not docile motherhood,<br /> - Dutiful, frequent, closed in all distress;<br /> - Not shedding of the unoffending blood;<br /> - Not little joy grown less;<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - "Not all-benign old age<br /> - With dotage mocked; not gallantry that faints<br /> - And still pursues; not the vile heritage<br /> - Of sin's disease in saints;<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - "Not these defeat the mind.<br /> - For great is that abjection, and august<br /> - That irony. Submissive we shall find<br /> - A splendour in that dust.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - "Not these puzzle the will;<br /> - Not these the yet unanswered question urge.<br /> - But the unjust stricken; but the hands that kill<br /> - Lopped; but the merited scourge;<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - "The sensualist at fast;<br /> - The merciless felled; the liar in his snares.<br /> - The cowardice of my judgment sees, aghast,<br /> - The flail, the chaff, the tares."<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="prayer"></a>THE LORD'S PRAYER<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="t3"> - "<i>Audemus dicere 'Pater Noster.'</i>"—CANON OF THE MASS.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p class="poem"> - There is a bolder way,<br /> - There is a wilder enterprise than this<br /> - All-human iteration day by day.<br /> - Courage, mankind! Restore Him what is His.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Out of His mouth were given<br /> - These phrases. O replace them whence they came.<br /> - He, only, knows our inconceivable "Heaven,"<br /> - Our hidden "Father," and the unspoken "Name";<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Our "trespasses," our "bread,"<br /> - The "will" inexorable yet implored;<br /> - The miracle-words that are and are not said,<br /> - Charged with the unknown purpose of their Lord.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - "Forgive," "give," "lead us not"—<br /> - Speak them by Him, O man the unaware,<br /> - Speak by that dear tongue, though thou know not what,<br /> - Shuddering through the paradox of prayer.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h2> - <a id="lastpoems"></a>Last Poems -</h2> - -<p><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="poetbook"></a>THE POET AND HIS BOOK<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - Here are my thoughts, alive within this fold,<br /> - My simple sheep. Their shepherd, I grow wise<br /> - As dearly, gravely, deeply I behold<br /> - Their different eyes.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - O distant pastures in their blood! O streams<br /> - From watersheds that fed them for this prison!<br /> - Lights from aloft, midsummer suns in dreams,<br /> - Set and arisen.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - They wander out, but all return anew,<br /> - The small ones, to this heart to which they clung;<br /> - "And those that are with young," the fruitful few<br /> - That are with young.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="mortality"></a>INTIMATIONS OF MORTALITY<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="t3"> - FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY CHILDHOOD<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - A simple child ...<br /> - That lightly draws its breath<br /> - And feels its life in every limb,<br /> - What should it know of death?<br /> - WORDSWORTH.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p class="poem"> - It knows but will not tell.<br /> - Awake, alone, it counts its father's years—<br /> - How few are left—its mother's. Ah, how well<br /> - It knows of death, in tears.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - If any of the three—<br /> - Parents and child—believe they have prevailed<br /> - To keep the secret of mortality,<br /> - I know that two have failed.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - The third, the lonely, keeps<br /> - One secret—a child's knowledge. When they come<br /> - At night to ask wherefore the sweet one weeps,<br /> - Those hidden lips are dumb.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="windblind"></a>THE WIND IS BLIND<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="intro"> - "EYELESS, IN GAZA, AT THE MILL, WITH SLAVES"<br /> - <i>Milton's "Samson."</i><br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - The wind is blind.<br /> - The earth sees sun and moon; the height<br /> - Is watch-tower to the dawn; the plain<br /> - Shines to the summer; visible light<br /> - Is scattered in the drops of rain.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - The wind is blind.<br /> - The flashing billows are aware;<br /> - With open eyes the cities see;<br /> - Light leaves the ether, everywhere<br /> - Known to the homing bird and bee.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - The wind is blind,<br /> - Is blind alone. How has he hurled<br /> - His ignorant lash, his aimless dart,<br /> - His eyeless rush upon the world,<br /> - Unseeing, to break his unknown heart!<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - The wind is blind,<br /> - And the sail traps him, and the mill<br /> - Captures him; and he cannot save<br /> - His swiftness and his desperate will<br /> - From those blind uses of the slave.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="reversals"></a>TIME'S REVERSALS<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="t3"> - A DAUGHTER'S PARADOX<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - To his devoted heart*<br /> - Who, young, had loved his ageing mate for life,<br /> - In late lone years Time gave the elder's part,<br /> - Time gave the bridegroom's boast, Time gave a younger wife.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - A wilder prank and plot<br /> - Time soon will promise, threaten, offering me<br /> - Impossible things that Nature suffers not—<br /> - A daughter's riper mind, a child's seniority.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Oh, by my filial tears<br /> - Mourned all too young, Father! On this my head<br /> - Time yet will force at last the longer years,<br /> - Claiming some strange respect for me from you, the dead.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Nay, nay! Too new to know<br /> - Time's conjuring is, too great to understand.<br /> - Memory has not died; it leaves me so—<br /> - Leaning a fading brow on your unfaded hand.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="footnote"> -*Dr. Johnson outlived by thirty years his wife, who was -twenty years his senior. -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="threshing"></a>THE THRESHING MACHINE<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - No "fan is in his hand" for these<br /> - Young villagers beneath the trees,<br /> - Watching the wheels. But I recall<br /> - The rhythm of rods that rise and fall,<br /> - Purging the harvest, over-seas.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - No fan, no flail, no threshing-floor!<br /> - And all their symbols evermore<br /> - Forgone in England now—the sign,<br /> - The visible pledge, the threat divine,<br /> - The chaff dispersed, the wheat in store.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - The unbreathing engine marks no tune,<br /> - Steady at sunrise, steady at noon,<br /> - Inhuman, perfect, saving time,<br /> - And saving measure, and saving rhyme—<br /> - And did our Ruskin speak too soon?<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - "No noble strength on earth" he sees<br /> - "Save Hercules' arm"; his grave decrees<br /> - Curse wheel and steam. As the wheels ran<br /> - I saw the other strength of man,<br /> - I knew the brain of Hercules.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="wintertrees"></a>WINTER TREES ON THE HORIZON<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - O delicate! Even in wooded lands<br /> - They show the margin of my world,<br /> - My own horizon; little bands<br /> - Of twigs unveil that edge impearled.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - And what is more mine own than this,<br /> - My limit, level with mine eyes?<br /> - For me precisely do they kiss—<br /> - The rounded earth, the rounding skies.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - It has my stature, that keen line<br /> - (Let mathematics vouch for it).<br /> - The lark's horizon is not mine,<br /> - No, nor his nestlings' where they sit;<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - No, nor the child's. And, when I gain<br /> - The hills, I lift it as I rise<br /> - Erect; anon, back to the plain<br /> - I soothe it with mine equal eyes.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="tosleep"></a>TO SLEEP<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - Dear fool, be true to me!<br /> - I know the poets speak thee fair, and I<br /> - Hail thee uncivilly.<br /> - O but I call with a more urgent cry!<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - I do not prize thee less,<br /> - I need thee more, that thou dost love to teach—<br /> - Father of foolishness—<br /> - The imbecile dreams clear out of wisdom's reach.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Come and release me; bring<br /> - My irresponsible mind; come in thy hours.<br /> - Draw from my soul the sting<br /> - Of wit that trembles, consciousness that cowers.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - For if night comes without thee<br /> - She is more cruel than day. But thou, fulfil<br /> - Thy work, thy gifts about thee—<br /> - Liberty, liberty, from this weight of will.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - My day-mind can endure<br /> - Upright, in hope, all it must undergo.<br /> - But O afraid, unsure,<br /> - My night-mind waking lies too low, too low.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Dear fool, be true to me!<br /> - The night is thine, man yields it, it beseems<br /> - Thy ironic dignity.<br /> - Make me all night the innocent fool that dreams.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="trueminds"></a>"THE MARRIAGE OF TRUE MINDS"<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="t3"> - (IN THE BACH-GOUNOD "AVE MARIA")<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - That seeking Prelude found its unforetold<br /> - Unguessed intention, trend;<br /> - Though needing no fulfilment, did enfold<br /> - This exquisite end.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Bach led his notes up through their delicate slope<br /> - Aspiring, so they sound,<br /> - And so they were—in some strange ignorant hope<br /> - Thus to be crowned.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - What deep soft seas beneath this buoyant barque!<br /> - What winds to speed this bird!<br /> - What impulses to toss this heavenward lark!<br /> - Thought—then the word.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Lovely the tune, lovely the unconsciousness<br /> - Of him who promised it.<br /> - Lovely the years that joined in blessedness<br /> - The two, the fit.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Bach was Precursor. But no Baptist's cry<br /> - Was his; he, who began<br /> - For one who was to end, did prophesy,<br /> - By Nature's generous act, the lesser man.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="america"></a>IN HONOUR OF AMERICA, 1917<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="t3"> - IN ANTITHESIS TO ROSSETTI'S "ON THE REFUSAL<br /> - OF AID BETWEEN NATIONS"<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Not that the earth is changing, O my God!<br /> - Not that her brave democracies take heart<br /> - To share, to rule her treasure, to impart<br /> - The wine to those who long the wine-press trod;<br /> - Not therefore trust we that beneath Thy nod,<br /> - Thy silent benediction, even now<br /> - In gratitude so many nations bow,<br /> - So many poor: not therefore, O my God!<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - But because living men for dying man<br /> - Go to a million deaths, to deal one blow;<br /> - And justice speaks one great compassionate tongue;<br /> - And nation unto nation calls "One clan<br /> - We succourers are, one tribe!" By this we know<br /> - Our earth holds confident, steadfast, being young.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="lorddeath"></a>"LORD, I OWE THEE A DEATH"<br /> - <i>Richard Hooker</i><br /> -</h3> - -<p class="t3"> - (IN TIME OF WAR)<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Man pays that debt with new munificence,<br /> - Not piecemeal now, not slowly, by the old:<br /> - Not grudgingly, by the effaced thin pence,<br /> - But greatly and in gold.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="reflections"></a>REFLECTIONS<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="t3"> - (I) IN IRELAND<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - A mirror faced a mirror: ire and hate<br /> - Opposite ire and hate: the multiplied,<br /> - The complex charge rejected, intricate,<br /> - From side to sullen side;<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - One plot, one crime, one treachery, nay, one name,<br /> - Assumed, denounced, in echoes of replies.<br /> - The doubt, exchanged, lit thousands of one flame<br /> - Within those mutual eyes.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /></p> - -<p class="t3"> - (II) IN "OTHELLO"<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - A mirror faced a mirror: in sweet pain<br /> - His dangers with her pity did she track,<br /> - Received her pity with his love again,<br /> - And these she wafted back.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - That masculine passion in her little breast<br /> - She bandied with him; her compassion he<br /> - Bandied with her. What tender sport! No rest<br /> - Had love's infinity.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /></p> - -<p class="t3"> - (III) IN TWO POETS<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - A mirror faced a mirror: O thy word,<br /> - Thou lord of images, did lodge in me,<br /> - Locked to my heart, homing from home, a bird,<br /> - A carrier, bound for thee.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Thy migratory greatness, greater far<br /> - For that return, returns; now grow divine<br /> - By endlessness my visiting thoughts, that are<br /> - Those visiting thoughts of thine.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="conscripts"></a>TO CONSCRIPTS<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="t3"> - "<i>Compel them to come in.</i>"—ST. LUKE'S GOSPEL<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - You "made a virtue of necessity"<br /> - By divine sanction; you, the loth, the grey,<br /> - The random, gentle, unconvinced; O be<br /> - The crowned!—you may, you may.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - You, the compelled, be feasted! You, the caught,<br /> - Be freemen of the gates that word unlocks!<br /> - Accept your victory from that unsought,<br /> - That heavenly paradox.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="bird"></a>THE VOICE OF A BIRD<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="t3"> - "<i>He shall rise up at the voice of a bird.</i>"—ECCLESIASTES<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Who then is "he"?<br /> - Dante, Keats, Shakespeare, Milton, Shelley; all<br /> - Rose in their greatness at the shrill decree,<br /> - The little rousing inarticulate call.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - For they stood up<br /> - At the bird-voice, of lark, of nightingale,<br /> - Drank poems from that throat as from a cup.<br /> - Over the great world's notes did these prevail.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - And not alone<br /> - The signal poets woke. In listening man,<br /> - Woman, and child a poet stirs unknown,<br /> - Throughout the Mays of birds since Mays began.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - He rose, he heard—<br /> - Our father, our St. Peter, in his tears—<br /> - The crowing, twice, of the prophetic bird,<br /> - The saddest cock-crow of our human years.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="question"></a>THE QUESTION<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="t3"> - IL POETA MI DISSE, "CHE PENSI?"<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Virgil stayed Dante with a wayside word;<br /> - But long, and how, and loud and urgently<br /> - The poets of my passion have I heard<br /> - Summoning me.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - It is their closest whisper and their call.<br /> - Their greatness to this lowliness hath spoken,<br /> - Their voices rest upon that interval,<br /> - Their sign, their token.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Man at his little prayer tells Heaven his thought,<br /> - To man entrusts his thought—"Friend, this is mine."<br /> - The immortal poets within my breast have sought,<br /> - Saying, "What is thine?"<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="laws"></a>THE LAWS OF VERSE -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - Dear laws, come to my breast!<br /> - Take all my frame, and make your close arms meet<br /> - Around me; and so ruled, so warmed, so pressed,<br /> - I breathe, aware; I feel my wild heart beat.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Dear laws, be wings to me!<br /> - The feather merely floats. O be it heard<br /> - Through weight of life—the skylark's gravity—<br /> - That I am not a feather, but a bird.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="nature"></a>"THE RETURN TO NATURE"<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="t3"> - <i>Histories of Modern Poetry</i><br /> -</p> - -<p class="t3"> - (I) PROMETHEUS<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - It was the south: mid-everything,<br /> - Mid-land, mid-summer, noon;<br /> - And deep within a limpid spring<br /> - The mirrored sun of June.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Splendour in freshness! Ah, who stole<br /> - This sun, this fire, from heaven?<br /> - He holds it shining in his soul,<br /> - Prometheus the forgiven.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /></p> - -<p class="t3"> - (II) THETIS<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - In her bright title poets dare<br /> - What the wild eye of fancy sees—<br /> - Similitude—the clear, the fair<br /> - Light mystery of images.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Round the blue sea I love the best<br /> - The argent foam played, slender, fleet;<br /> - I saw—past Wordsworth and the rest—<br /> - Her natural, Greek, and silver feet.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="silence"></a>TO SILENCE<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="t3"> - "SPACE, THE BOUND OF A SOLID": SILENCE, THEN,<br /> - THE FORM OF A MELODY<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Silence, for thine idleness I raise<br /> - My silence-bounded singing in thy praise,<br /> - But for thy moulding of my Mozart's tune,<br /> - Thy hold upon the bird that sings the moon,<br /> - Thy magisterial ways.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Man's lovely definite melody-shapes are thine,<br /> - Outlined, controlled, compressed, complete, divine.<br /> - Also thy fine intrusions do I trace,<br /> - Thy afterthoughts, thy wandering, thy grace,<br /> - Within the poet's line.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Thy secret is the song that is to be.<br /> - Music had never stature but for thee,<br /> - Sculptor! strong as the sculptor Space whose hand<br /> - Urged the Discobolus and bade him stand.<br /> - * * * * *<br /> - Man, on his way to Silence, stops to hear and see.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="metres"></a>THE ENGLISH METRES<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - The rooted liberty of flowers in breeze<br /> - Is theirs, by national luck impulsive, terse,<br /> - Tethered, uncaptured, rules obeyed "at ease,"<br /> - Time-strengthened laws of verse.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Or they are like our seasons that admit<br /> - Inflexion, not infraction: Autumn hoar,<br /> - Winter more tender than our thoughts of it,<br /> - But a year's steadfast four;<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Redundant syllables of Summer rain,<br /> - And displaced accents of authentic Spring;<br /> - Spondaic clouds above a gusty plain<br /> - With dactyls on the wing.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Not Common Law, but Equity, is theirs—<br /> - Our metres; play and agile foot askance,<br /> - And distant, beckoning, blithely rhyming pairs,<br /> - Unknown to classic France;<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Unknown to Italy. Ay, count, collate,<br /> - Latins! with eye foreseeing on the time,<br /> - And numbered fingers, and approaching fate<br /> - On the appropriate rhyme.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Nay, nobly our grave measures are decreed:<br /> - Heroic, Alexandrine with the stay,<br /> - Deliberate; or else like him whose speed<br /> - Did outrun Peter, urgent in the break of day.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="rivers"></a>"RIVERS UNKNOWN TO SONG"<br /> - <i>James Thomson</i><br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - Wide waters in the waste; or, out of reach,<br /> - Rough Alpine falls where late a glacier hung;<br /> - Or rivers groping for the alien beach,<br /> - Through continents, unsung.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Nay, not these nameless, these remote, alone;<br /> - But all the streams from all the watersheds—<br /> - Peneus, Danube, Nile—are the unknown.<br /> - Young in their ancient beds.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Man has no tale for them. O travellers swift<br /> - From secrets to oblivion! Waters wild<br /> - That pass in act to bend a flower, or lift<br /> - The bright limbs of a child!<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - For they are new, they are fresh; there's no surprise<br /> - Like theirs on earth. O strange for evermore!<br /> - This moment's Tiber with his shining eyes<br /> - Never saw Rome before.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Man has no word for their eternity—<br /> - Rhine, Avon, Arno, younglings, youth uncrowned:<br /> - Ignorant, innocent, instantaneous, free,<br /> - Unwelcomed, unrenowned.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="sonofman"></a>TO THE MOTHER OF CHRIST<br /> - THE SON OF MAN<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - We too (one cried), we too,<br /> - We the unready, the perplexed, the cold,<br /> - Must shape the Eternal in our thoughts anew,<br /> - Cherish, possess, enfold.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Thou sweetly, we in strife.<br /> - It is our passion to conceive Him thus<br /> - In mind, in sense, within our house of life;<br /> - That seed is locked in us.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - We must affirm our Son<br /> - From the ambiguous Nature's difficult speech,<br /> - Gather in darkness that resplendent One,<br /> - Close as our grasp can reach.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Nor shall we ever rest<br /> - From this our task. An hour sufficed for thee,<br /> - Thou innocent! He lingers in the breast<br /> - Of our humanity.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="comparison"></a>A COMPARISON IN A SEASIDE FIELD<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - 'Tis royal and authentic June<br /> - Over this poor soil blossoming;<br /> - Here lies, beneath an upright noon,<br /> - Thin nation for so wild a king.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Far off, the noble Summer rules,<br /> - Violent in the ardent rose,<br /> - His sun alight in mirroring pools,<br /> - Braggart on Alps of vanquished snows;<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Away, aloft, true to his hour,<br /> - Announced, his colour, his fire, his jest.<br /> - But here, in negligible flower,<br /> - Summer is not proclaimed:—confessed.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - A woman I marked; for her no state,<br /> - Small joy, no song. She had her boon,<br /> - Her only youth, true to its date,<br /> - Faintly perceptible, her June.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="surmise"></a>SURMISE<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="t3"> - THE TRACK OF A HUMAN MOOD<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Not wish, nor fear, nor quite expectancy<br /> - Is that vague spirit Surmise,<br /> - That wanderer, that wonderer, whom we see<br /> - Within each other's eyes;<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - And yet not often. For she flits away,<br /> - Fitful as infant thought,<br /> - Visitant at a venture, hope at play,<br /> - Unversed in facts, untaught.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - In "the wide fields of possibility"<br /> - Surmise, conjecturing,<br /> - Makes little trials, incredulous, that flee<br /> - Abroad on random wing.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - One day this inarticulate shall find speech,<br /> - This hoverer seize our breath.<br /> - Surmise shall close with man—with all, with each—<br /> - In her own sovereign hour, the moments of our death.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="antiquity"></a>TO ANTIQUITY<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="t3"> - "... REVERENCE FOR OUR FATHERS, WITH THEIR<br /> - STORES OF EXPERIENCES"<br /> - <i>An author whose name I did not note</i><br /> -</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p class="poem"> - O our young ancestor,<br /> - Our boy in Letters, how we trudge oppressed<br /> - With our "experiences," and you of yore<br /> - Flew light, and blessed!<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Youngling, in your new town,<br /> - Tight, like a box of toys—the town that is<br /> - Our shattered, open ruin, with its crown<br /> - Of histories;<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - You with your morning words,<br /> - Fresh from the night, your yet un-sonneted moon,<br /> - Your passion undismayed, cool as a bird's<br /> - Ignorant tune;<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - O youngling! how is this?<br /> - Your poems are not wearied yet, not dead,<br /> - Must I bow low? or, With an envious kiss,<br /> - Put you to bed?<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="christmas"></a>CHRISTMAS NIGHT<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="t3"> - "IF I CANNOT SEE THEE PRESENT I WILL MOURN<br /> - THEE ABSENT, FOR THIS ALSO IS A PROOF OF LOVE"<br /> - <i>Thomas à Kempis</i><br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - We do not find Him on the difficult earth,<br /> - In surging human-kind,<br /> - In wayside death or accidental birth,<br /> - Or in the "march of mind."<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Nature, her nests, her prey, the fed, the caught,<br /> - Hid Him so well, so well,<br /> - His steadfast secret there seems to our thought<br /> - Life's saddest miracle.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - He's but conjectured in man's happiness,<br /> - Suspected in man's tears,<br /> - Or lurks beyond the long, discouraged guess,<br /> - Grown fainter through the years.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - * * * * *<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - But absent, absent now? Ah, what is this,<br /> - Near as in child-birth bed,<br /> - Laid on our sorrowful hearts, close to a kiss?<br /> - A homeless childish head.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="redbreast"></a>THE OCTOBER REDBREAST -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - Autumn is weary, halt, and old;<br /> - Ah, but she owns the song of joy!<br /> - Her colours fade, her woods are cold.<br /> - Her singing-bird's a boy, a boy.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - In lovely Spring the birds were bent<br /> - On nests, on use, on love, forsooth!<br /> - Grown-up were they. This boy's content,<br /> - For his is liberty, his is youth.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - The musical stripling sings for play<br /> - Taking no thought, and virgin-glad.<br /> - For duty sang those mates in May.<br /> - This singing-bird's a lad, a lad.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="richman"></a>TO "A CERTAIN RICH MAN"<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="t3"> - "I HAVE FIVE BRETHREN.... FATHER, I BESEECH<br /> - THEE ... LEST THEY COME TO THIS PLACE"<br /> - <i>St. Luke's Gospel</i><br /> -</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p class="poem"> - Thou wouldst not part thy spoil<br /> - Gained from the beggar's want, the weakling's toil,<br /> - Nor spare a jot of sumptuousness or state<br /> - For Lazarus at the gate.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - And in the appalling night<br /> - Of expiation, as in day's delight,<br /> - Thou heldst thy niggard hand; it would not share<br /> - One hour of thy despair.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Those five—thy prayer for them!<br /> - O generous! who, condemned, wouldst not condemn,<br /> - Whose ultimate human greatness proved thee so<br /> - A miser of thy woe.<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h3> - <a id="farewells"></a>EVERLASTING FAREWELLS -</h3> - -<p class="t3"> -"EVERLASTING FAREWELLS! AND AGAIN, AND<br /> - YET AGAIN ... EVERLASTING FAREWELLS!"<br /> - <i>De Quincey</i><br /> -</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p class="poem"> - "Farewells!" O what a word!<br /> - Denying this agony, denying the affrights,<br /> - Denying all De Quincey spoke or heard<br /> - In the infernal sadness of his nights.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - How mend these strange "farewells"?<br /> - "Vale"? "Addio"? "Leb'wohl"? Not one but seems<br /> - A tranquil refutation; tolling bells<br /> - That yet behold the terror of his dreams.<br /> -</p> - -<h3> - <a id="poetbirds"></a>THE POET TO THE BIRDS<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="poem"> - You bid me hold my peace,<br /> - Or so I think, you birds; you'll not forgive<br /> - My kill-joy song that makes the wild song cease,<br /> - Silent or fugitive.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Yon thrush stopt in mid-phrase<br /> - At my mere footfall; and a longer note<br /> - Took wing and fled afield, and went its ways<br /> - Within the blackbird's throat.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Hereditary song,<br /> - Illyrian lark and Paduan nightingale,<br /> - Is yours, unchangeable the ages long;<br /> - Assyria heard your tale;<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Therefore you do not die.<br /> - But single, local, lonely, mortal, new,<br /> - Unlike, and thus like all my race, am I,<br /> - Preluding my adieu.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - My human song must be<br /> - My human thought. Be patient till 'tis done.<br /> - I shall not hold my little peace; for me<br /> - There is no peace but one.<br /> -</p> - -<h3> - <a id="atnight"></a>AT NIGHT<br /> -</h3> - -<p class="t3"> - <i>To W. M.</i><br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Home, home from the horizon far and clear,<br /> - Hither the soft wings sweep;<br /> - Flocks of the memories of the day draw near<br /> - The dovecote doors of sleep.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="poem"> - Oh, which are they that come through sweetest light<br /> - Of all these homing birds?<br /> - Which with the straightest and the swiftest flight?<br /> - Your words to me, your words!<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<p class="t4"> - WARWICK BROS. & RUTTER LIMITED, TORONTO<br /> -<br /> - PRINTERS & BOOKBINDERS<br /> -</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /><br /></p> - - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's The Poems of Alice Meynell, by Alice Meynell - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE POEMS OF ALICE MEYNELL *** - -***** This file should be named 62251-h.htm or 62251-h.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/6/2/2/5/62251/ - -Produced by Al Haines -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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