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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Ride to the Lady, by Helen Gray Cone
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere 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
+
+
+Title: Ride to the Lady
+       and Other Poems
+
+Author: Helen Gray Cone
+
+Posting Date: August 16, 2012 [EBook #9559]
+Release Date: December, 2005
+First Posted: October 8, 2003
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RIDE TO THE LADY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Ted Garvin, Josephine Paolucci, and Project
+Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE RIDE TO THE LADY
+
+And Other Poems
+
+BY
+
+HELEN GRAY CONE
+
+1891
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  CONTENTS
+
+  The Ride to the Lady
+
+  The First Guest
+
+  Silence
+
+  Arraignment
+
+  The Going Out of the Tide
+
+  King Raedwald
+
+  Ivo of Chartres
+
+  Madonna Pia
+
+  Two Moods of Failure
+
+  The Story of the "Orient"
+
+  A Resurrection
+
+  The Glorious Company
+
+  The Trumpeter
+
+  Comrades
+
+  The House of Hate
+
+  The Arrowmaker
+
+  A Nest in a Lyre
+
+  Thisbe
+
+  The Spring Beauties
+
+  Kinship
+
+  Compensation
+
+  When Willows Green
+
+  At the Parting of the Ways
+
+  The Fair Gray Lady
+
+  The Encounter.
+
+  Summer Hours
+
+  Love Unsung
+
+  The Wish for a Chaplet
+
+  Sonnets:
+  The Torch Race
+  To Sleep
+  Sister Snow
+  The Contrast
+  A Mystery
+  Triumph
+  In Winter, with the Book we had in Spring
+  Sere Wisdom
+  Isolation
+  The Lost Dryad
+  The Gifts of the Oak
+  The Strayed Singer
+  The Immortal Word
+
+
+
+
+  THE RIDE TO THE LADY
+
+
+  "Now since mine even is come at last,--
+  For I have been the sport of steel,
+  And hot life ebbeth from me fast,
+  And I in saddle roll and reel,--
+  Come bind me, bind me on my steed!
+  Of fingering leech I have no need!"
+  The chaplain clasped his mailed knee.
+  "Nor need I more thy whine and thee!
+  No time is left my sins to tell;
+  But look ye bind me, bind me well!"
+  They bound him strong with leathern thong,
+  For the ride to the lady should be long.
+
+  Day was dying; the poplars fled,
+  Thin as ghosts, on a sky blood-red;
+  Out of the sky the fierce hue fell,
+  And made the streams as the streams of hell.
+  All his thoughts as a river flowed,
+  Flowed aflame as fleet he rode,
+  Onward flowed to her abode,
+  Ceased at her feet, mirrored her face.
+  (Viewless Death apace, apace,
+  Rode behind him in that race.)
+
+  "Face, mine own, mine alone,
+  Trembling lips my lips have known,
+  Birdlike stir of the dove-soft eyne
+  Under the kisses that make them mine!
+  Only of thee, of thee, my need!
+  Only to thee, to thee, I speed!"
+  The Cross flashed by at the highway's turn;
+  In a beam of the moon the Face shone stern.
+
+  Far behind had the fight's din died;
+  The shuddering stars in the welkin wide
+  Crowded, crowded, to see him ride.
+  The beating hearts of the stars aloof
+  kept time to the beat of the horse's hoof,
+  "What is the throb that thrills so sweet?
+  Heart of my lady, I feel it beat!"
+  But his own strong pulse the fainter fell,
+  Like the failing tongue of a hushing bell.
+  The flank of the great-limbed steed was wet
+  Not alone with the started sweat.
+
+  Fast, and fast, and the thick black wood
+  Arched its cowl like a black friar's hood;
+  Fast, and fast, and they plunged therein,--
+  But the viewless rider rode to win,
+  Out of the wood to the highway's light
+  Galloped the great-limbed steed in fright;
+  The mail clashed cold, and the sad owl cried,
+  And the weight of the dead oppressed his side.
+
+  Fast, and fast, by the road he knew;
+  And slow, and slow, the stars withdrew;
+  And the waiting heaven turned weirdly blue,
+  As a garment worn of a wizard grim.
+  He neighed at the gate in the morning dim.
+
+  She heard no sound before her gate,
+  Though very quiet was her bower.
+  All was as her hand had left it late:
+  The needle slept on the broidered vine,
+  Where the hammer and spikes of the passion-flower
+  Her fashioning did wait.
+  On the couch lay something fair,
+  With steadfast lips and veiled eyne;
+
+  But the lady was not there,
+  On the wings of shrift and prayer,
+  Pure as winds that winnow snow,
+  Her soul had risen twelve hours ago.
+  The burdened steed at the barred gate stood,
+  No whit the nearer to his goal.
+  Now God's great grace assoil the soul
+  That went out in the wood!
+
+
+
+
+  THE FIRST GUEST
+
+
+  When the house is finished, Death enters.
+  _Eastern Proverb_
+
+  Life's House being ready all,
+  Each chamber fair and dumb,
+  Ere life, the Lord, is come
+  With pomp into his hall,--
+  Ere Toil has trod the floors,
+  Ere Love has lit the fires,
+  Or young great-eyed Desires
+  Have, timid, tried the doors;
+  Or from east-window leaned
+  One Hope, to greet the sun,
+  Or one gray Sorrow screened
+  Her sight against the west,--
+  Then enters the first guest,
+  The House of life being done.
+
+  He waits there in the shade.
+  I deem he is Life's twin,
+  For whom the house was made.
+  Whatever his true name,
+  Be sure, to enter in
+  He has both key and claim.
+
+  The daybeams, free of fear,
+  Creep drowsy toward his feet;
+  His heart were heard to beat,
+  Were any there to hear;
+  Ah, not for ends malign,
+  Like wild thing crouched in lair,
+  Or watcher of a snare,
+  But with a friend's design
+  He lurks in shadow there!
+
+  He goes not to the gates
+  To welcome any other,
+  Nay, not Lord Life, his brother;
+  But still his hour awaits
+  Each several guest to find
+  Alone, yea, quite alone;
+  Pacing with pensive mind
+  The cloister's echoing stone,
+  Or singing, unaware,
+  At the turning of the stair
+  Tis truth, though we forget,
+  In Life's House enters none
+  Who shall that seeker shun,
+  Who shall not so be met.
+  "Is this mine hour?" each saith.
+  "So be it, gentle Death!"
+  Each has his way to end,
+  Encountering this friend.
+  Griefs die to memories mild;
+  Hope turns a weanèd child;
+  Love shines a spirit white,
+  With eyes of deepened light.
+  When many a guest has passed,
+  Some day 'tis Life's at last
+  To front the face of Death.
+  Then, casements closed, men say:
+  "Lord Life is gone away;
+  He went, we trust and pray,
+  To God, who gave him breath."
+  Beginning, End, He is:
+  Are not these sons both His?
+  Lo, these with Him are one!
+  To phrase it so were best:
+  God's self is that first Guest,
+  The House of Life being done!
+
+
+
+
+  SILENCE
+
+
+  Why should I sing of earth or heaven? not rather rest,
+  Powerless to speak of that which hath my soul possessed,--
+  For full possession dumb? Yea, Silence, that were best.
+
+  And though for what it failed to sound I brake the string,
+  And dashed the sweet lute down, a too much fingered thing,
+  And found a wild new voice,--oh, still, why should I sing?
+
+  An earth-song could I make, strange as the breath of earth,
+  Filled with the great calm joy of life and death and birth?
+  Yet, were it less than this, the song were little worth.
+
+  For this the fields caress; brown clods tell each to each;
+  Sad-colored leaves have sense whereto I cannot reach;
+  Spiced everlasting-flowers outstrip my range of speech.
+
+  A heaven-song could I make, all fire that yet was peace,
+  And tenderness not lost, though glory did increase?
+  But were it less than this, 't were well the song should cease.
+
+  For this the still west saith, with plumy flames bestrewn;
+  Heaven's body sapphire-clear, at stirless height of noon;
+  The cloud where lightnings pulse, beside the untroubled moon.
+
+  I will not sing of earth or heaven, but rather rest,
+  Rapt by the face of heaven, and hold on earth's warm breast.
+  Hushed lips, a beating heart, yea, Silence, that were best.
+
+
+
+
+  ARRAIGNMENT
+
+
+  "Not ye who have stoned, not ye who have smitten us," cry
+  The sad, great souls, as they go out hence into dark,
+  "Not ye we accuse, though for you was our passion borne;
+  And ye we reproach not, who silently passed us by.
+  We forgive blind eyes and the ears that would not hark,
+  The careless and causeless hate and the shallow scorn.
+
+  "But ye, who have seemed to know us, have seen and heard;
+  Who have set us at feasts and have crowned with the costly rose;
+  Who have spread us the purple of praises beneath our feet;
+  Yet guessed not the word that we spake was a living word,
+  Applauding the sound,--we account you as worse than foes!
+  We sobbed you our message; ye said, 'It is song, and sweet!'"
+
+
+
+
+  THE GOING OUT OF THE TIDE
+
+
+  The eastern heaven was all faint amethyst,
+  Whereon the moon hung dreaming in the mist;
+  To north yet drifted one long delicate plume
+  Of roseate cloud; like snow the ocean-spume.
+
+  Now when the first foreboding swiftly ran
+  Through the loud-glorying sea that it began
+  To lose its late gained lordship of the land,
+  Uprose the billow like an angered man,
+  And flung its prone strength far along the sand;
+  Almost, almost to the old bound, the dark
+  And taunting triumph-mark.
+
+  But no, no, no! and slow, and slow, and slow,
+  Like a heart losing hold, this wave must go,--
+  Must go, must go,--dragged heavily back, back,
+  Beneath the next wave plunging on its track,
+  Charging, with thunderous and defiant shout,
+  To fore-determined rout.
+
+  Again, again the unexhausted main
+  Renews fierce effort, drawing force unguessed
+  From awful deeps of its mysterious breast:
+  Like arms of passionate protest, tossed in vain,
+  The spray upflings above the billow's crest.
+  Again the appulse, again the backward strain--
+  Till ocean must have rest.
+
+  With one abandoned movement, swift and wild,--
+  As though bowed head and outstretched arms it laid
+  On the earth's lap, soft sobbing,--hushed and stayed,
+  The great sea quiets, like a soothed child.
+  Ha! what sharp memory clove the calm, and drave
+  This last fleet furious wave?
+
+  On, on, endures the struggle into night,
+  Ancient as Time, yet fresh as the fresh hour;
+  As oft repeated since the birth of light
+  As the strong agony and mortal fight
+  Of human souls, blind-reaching, with the Power
+  Aloof, unmoved, impossible to cross,
+  Whose law is seeming loss.
+
+  Low-sunken from the longed-for triumph-mark;
+  The spent sea sighs as one that grieves in sleep.
+  The unveiled moon along the rippling plain
+  Casts many a keen, cold, shifting silvery spark,
+  Wild as the pulses of strange joy, that leap
+  Even in the quick of pain.
+
+  And she compelling, she that stands for law,--
+  As law for Will eternal,--perfect, clear,
+  And uncompassionate shines: to her appear
+  Vast sequences close-linked without a flaw.
+  All past despairs of ocean unforgot,
+  All raptures past, serene her light she gives,
+  The moon too high for pity, since she lives
+  Aware that loss is not.
+
+
+
+
+  KING RAEDWALD
+
+
+  Will you hear now the speech of King Raedwald,--heathen Raedwald,
+        the simple yet wise?
+  He, the ruler of North-folk and South-folk, a man open-browed
+        as the skies,
+  Held the eyes of the eager Italians with his blue, bold,
+        Englishman's eyes.
+
+  In his hall, on his throne, so he sat, with the light of the fire
+        on him full:
+  Colored bright as the ring of red gold on his hand, fit to buffet
+        a bull,
+  Was the mane that grew down on his neck, was the beard he would
+        pondering pull.
+
+  To the priests, to the eager Italians, thus fearless less he poured
+        his free speech;
+  "O my honey-tongued fathers, I turn not away from the faith that ye
+        teach!
+  Not the less hath a man many moods, and may ask a religion for each.
+
+  "Grant that all things are well with the realm on a delicate day
+        of the spring,
+  Easter month, time of hopes and of swallows!
+         The praises, the psalms that ye sing,
+  As in pleasant accord they float heavenward, are good in the ears
+        of the king.
+
+  "Then the heart bubbles forth with clear waters, to the time
+        of this wonder-word Peace,
+  From the chanting and preaching whereof ye who serve the
+        white Christ never cease;
+  And your curly, soft incense ascending enwraps my content
+        like a fleece.
+
+  "But a churl comes adrip from the rivers, pants me out, fallen
+        spent on the floor,
+  'O King Raedwald, Northumberland marches, and to-morrow knocks
+        hard at thy door,
+  Hot for melting thy crown on the hearth!'
+          Then commend me to Woden and Thor!
+
+  "Could I sit then and listen to preachments on turning the cheek
+        to the blow,
+  And saying a prayer for the smiter, and holding my seen treasure low
+  For the sake of a treasure unseen? By the sledge of the Thunderer, no!
+
+  "For my thought flashes out as a sword, cleaving counsel as
+        clottage of cream;
+  And your incense and chanting are but as the smoke of burnt
+        towns and the scream;
+  And I quaff me the thick mead of triumph from enemies' skulls
+        in my dream!
+
+  "And 'tis therefore this day I resolve me,--for King Raedwald
+        will cringe not, nor lie!--
+  I will bring back the altar  of Woden; in the temple will have it,
+        hard by
+  The new altar of this your white Christ. As my mood may decide,
+        worship I!"
+
+  So he spake in his large self-reliance,--he, a man open-browed
+        as the skies;
+  Would not measure his soul by a standard that was womanish-weak
+        to his eyes,
+  Smite his breast and go on with his sinning,--savage Raedwald,
+        the simple yet wise!
+
+  And the centuries bloom o'er his barrow. But for us,--have we
+        mastered it quite,
+  The old riddle, that sweet is strong's outcome, the old marvel,
+        that meekness is might,
+  That the child is the leader of lions, that forgiveness is force
+        at its height?
+
+  When we summon the shade of rude Raedwald, in his candor how
+        king-like he towers!
+  Have the centuries, over his slumber, only borne sterile falsehoods
+        for flowers?
+  Pray you, what if Christ found him the nobler, having weighed his
+        frank manhood with ours?
+
+
+
+
+  IVO OF CHARTRES
+
+
+  Now may it please my lord, Louis the king,
+    Lily of Christ and France! riding his quest,
+  I, Bishop Ivo, saw a wondrous thing.
+
+    There was no light of sun left in the west,
+  And slowly did the moon's new light increase.
+    Heaven, without cloud, above the near hill's crest,
+  Lay passion purple in a breathless peace.
+    Stars started like still tears, in rapture shed,
+  Which without consciousness the lids release.
+
+    All steadily, one little sparkle red,
+  Afar, drew close. A woman's form grew up
+    Out of the dimness, tall, with queen-like head,
+  And in one hand was fire; in one, a cup.
+    Of aspect grave she was, with eyes upraised,
+  As one whose thoughts perpetually did sup
+    At the Lord's table.
+
+                   While the cresset blazed,
+  Her I regarded. "Daughter, whither bent,
+    And wherefore?" As by speech of man amazed,
+  One moment her deep look to me she lent;
+    Then, in a voice of hymn-like, solemn fall,
+  Calm, as by role, she spake out her intent:
+
+    "I in my cruse bear water, wherewithal
+  To quench the flames of Hell; and with my fire
+    I Paradise would burn: that hence no small
+  Fear shall impel, and no mean hope shall hire,
+    Men to serve God as they have served of yore;
+  But to his will shall set their whole desire,
+    For love, love, love alone, forevermore!"
+
+  And "love, love, love," rang round her as she passed
+    From sight, with mystic murmurs o'er and o'er
+  Reverbed from hollow heaven, as from some vast,
+    Deep-colored, vaulted, ocean-answering shell.
+
+  I, Ivo, had no power to ban or bless,
+    But was as one withholden by a spell.
+  Forward she fared in lofty loneliness,
+  Urged on by an imperious inward stress,
+    To waste fair Eden, and to drown fierce Hell.
+
+
+
+
+  MADONNA PIA
+
+
+  Ricordati di me, che son la Pia.
+  Siena mi fe; disfecomi Maremma;
+  Salsi colui, che, inanellata pria,
+  Disposato m'avea colla sua gemma.
+
+  _Purgatorio_, Canto V.
+
+
+  To westward lies the unseen sea,
+    Blue sea the live winds wander o'er.
+  The many-colored sails can flee,
+    And leave the dead, low-lying shore.
+  Her longing does not seek the main,
+    Her face turns northward first at morn;
+  There, crowning all the wide champaign,
+    Siena stood, where she was born.
+
+  Siena stands, and still shall stand;
+    She ne'er shall see or town or tower.
+  Warm life and beauty, hand in hand,
+    Steal farther from her hour by hour.
+  Yet forth she leans, with trembling knees,
+    And northward will she stare and stare
+  Through that thick wall of cypress-trees,
+    And sigh adown the stirless air:
+
+  "Shall no remembrance in Siena linger
+    Of me, once fair, whom slow Maremma slays?
+  As well he knows, whose ring upon my finger
+    Hath sealed for his alone mine earthly days!"
+
+  From wilds where shudders through the weeds
+    The dull, mean-headed, silent snake,
+  Like voiceless doubt that creeps and breeds;
+    From swamps where sluggish waters take,
+  As lives unblest a passing love,
+    The flag-flower's image in the spring,
+  Or seem, when flits the bird above,
+    To stir within with shadowed wing,
+
+  A Presence mounts in pallid mist
+    To fold her close: she breathes its breath;
+  She waxes wan, by Fever kissed,
+    Who weds her for his master, Death,
+  Aside are set her dimmed hopes all,
+    She counts no more the uncurrent hoard;
+  On gray Death's neck she fain would fall,
+    To own him for her proper lord.
+
+  She minds the journey here by night:
+    When some red sudden torch would blaze,
+  She saw by fits, with childish fright,
+    The cork-trees twist beside the ways.
+  Like dancing demon shapes they showed,
+    With malice drunk; the bat beat by,
+  The owlet sobbed; on, on they rode,
+    She knew not where, she knows not why.
+
+  For Nello--when in piteous wise
+    She lifted up her look to ask,
+  Except the ever-burning eyes
+    His face was like a marble mask.
+  And so it always meets her now;
+    The tomb wherein at last he lies
+  Shall bear such carven lips and brow,
+    All save the ever-burning eyes.
+
+  Perchance it is his form alone
+    Doth stroke his hound, at meat doth sit,
+  And, for the soul that was his own,
+    A fiend awhile inhabits it;
+  While he sinks through the fiery throng,
+    Down, to fill an evil bond,
+  Since false conceit of others' wrong
+    Hath wrought him to a sin beyond.
+
+  But she--if when her years were glad
+    Vain fluttering thoughts were hers, that hid
+  Behind that gracious fame she had;
+    If e'er observance hard she did
+  That sinful men might call her saint,--
+    White-handed Pia, dovelike-eyed,--
+  The sick blank hours shall yet acquaint
+    Her heart with all her blameful pride.
+
+  And Death shall find her kneeling low,
+    And lift her to the porphyry stair,
+  And she from ledge to ledge shall go,
+    Stayed by the staff of that last prayer,
+  Until the high, sweet-singing wood
+    Whence folk are rapt to heaven, she win;
+  Therein the unpardoned never stood,
+    Nor may one Sorrow nest therein.
+
+  But through the Tuscan land shall beat
+    Her Sorrow, like a wounded bird;
+  And if her suit at Mary's feet
+    Avail, its moan shall yet be heard
+  By some just poet, who shall shed,
+    Whate'er the theme that leads his rhyme
+  Bright words like tears above her, dead,
+    Entreating of the after time:
+
+  "Among you let her mournful memory linger!
+    Siena bare her, whom Maremma slew;
+  And this dark lord, who gave her maiden finger
+    His ancient gem, the secret only knew."
+
+
+
+
+  TWO MOODS OF FAILURE
+
+  I
+
+  THE LAST CUP OF CANARY
+
+  Sir Harry Lovelock, 1645
+
+
+  So, the powder's low, and the larder's clean,
+    And surrender drapes, with its black impending,
+  All the stage for a sorry and sullen scene:
+    Yet indulge me my whim of a madcap ending!
+
+  Let us once more fill, ere the final chill,
+    Every vein with the glow of the rich canary!
+  Since the sweet hot liquor of life's to spill,
+    Of the last of the cellar what boots be chary?
+
+  Then hear the conclusion: I'll yield my breath,
+    But my leal old house and my good blade never!
+  Better one bitter kiss on the lips of Death
+    Than despoiled Defeat as a wife forever!
+
+  Let the faithful fire hold the walls in ward
+    Till the roof-tree crash! Be the smoke once riven
+  While we flash from the gate like a single sword,
+    True steel to the hilt, though in dull earth driven!
+
+  Do you frown, Sir Richard, above your ruff,
+    In the Holbein yonder? My deed ensures you!
+  For the flame like a fencer shall give rebuff
+    To your blades that blunder, you Roundhead boors, you!
+
+  And my ladies, a-row on the gallery wall,
+    Not a sing-song sergeant or corporal sainted
+  Shall pierce their breasts with his Puritan ball,
+    To annul the charms of the flesh, though painted!
+
+  I have worn like a jewel the life they gave;
+    As the ring in mine ear I can lightly lose it,
+  If my days be done, why, my days were brave!
+    If the end arrive, I as master choose it!
+
+  Then fill to the brim, and a health, I say,
+    To our liege King Charles, and I pray God bless him!
+  'T would amend worse vintage to drink dismay
+    To the clamorous mongrel pack that press him!
+
+  And a health to the fair women, past recall,
+    That like birds astray through the heart's hall flitted;
+  To the lean devil Failure last of all,
+    And the lees in his beard for a fiend outwitted!
+
+
+  II
+
+  THE YOUNG MAN CHARLES STUART REVIEWETH THE TROOPS ON BLACKHEATH
+
+  (Private Constant-in-Tribulation Joyce, _May_, 1660)
+
+
+  We were still as a wood without wind; as 't were set by a spell
+  Stayed the gleam on the steel cap, the glint on the slant petronel.
+  He to left of me drew down his grim grizzled lip with his teeth,--
+  I remember his look; so we grew like dumb trees on the heath.
+
+  But the people,--the people were mad as with store of new wine;
+  Oh, they cheered him, they capped him, they roared as he rode
+        down the line:
+  He that fled us at Worcester, the boy, the green brier-shoot, the son
+  Of the Stuart on whom for his sin the great judgment was done!
+
+  Swam before us the field of our shame, and our souls walked afar;
+  Saw the glory, the blaze of the sun bursting over Dunbar;
+  Saw the faces of friends, in the morn riding jocund to fight;
+  Saw the stern pallid faces again, as we saw them at night!
+
+  "O ye blessed, who died in the Lord! would to God that we too
+  Had so passed, only sad that we ceased his high justice to do,
+  With the words of the psalm on our lips that from Israel's once came,
+  How the Lord is a strong man of war; yea, the Lord is his name!
+
+  "Not for us, not for us! who have served for his kingdom seven years,
+  Yea, and yet other seven have we served, sweating blood, bleeding
+  tears,
+  For the kingdom of God and the saints! Rachel's beauty made bold,
+  Yet we bear but a Leah at last to a hearth that is cold!"
+
+  Burned the fire while I mused, while I gloomed; in the end came a call;
+  Settled o'er me a calm like a cloud, spake a voice still and small:
+  "Take thou Leah to bride, take thou Failure to bed and to board!
+  Thou shalt rear up new strengths at her knees; she is given
+        of the Lord!
+
+  "If with weight of his right hand, with power, he denieth to deal,
+  And the smoke clouds, and thunders of guns, and the lightnings
+        of steel,
+  Shall the cool silent dews of his grace, in a season of peace,
+  Not descend on the land, as of old, for a sign, on the fleece?
+
+  "Hath he cleft not the rock, to the yield of a stream that is sweet?
+  Hath he set in the ribs of the lion no honey for meat?
+  Can he bring not delight to the desert, and buds to the rod?
+  He will shine, he will visit his vine; he hath sworn, he is God!"
+
+  Then I thought of the gate I rode through on the roan that's
+        long dead,--
+  I remember the dawn was but pale, and the stars overhead;
+  Of the babe that is grown to a maid, and of Martha, my wife,
+  And the spring on the wolds far away, and gave thanks for my life!
+
+
+
+
+  THE STORY OF THE "ORIENT"
+
+
+  'T was a pleasant Sunday morning while the spring was in its glory,
+  English spring of gentle glory; smoking by his cottage door,
+  Florid-faced, the man-o'-war's-man told his white-head boy the story,
+  Noble story of Aboukir, told a hundred times before.
+
+  "Here, the _Theseus_--here, the _Vanguard_;" as he spoke
+        each name sonorous,--
+  _Minotaur, Defence, Majestic_, stanch old comrades of the brine,
+  That against the ships of Brucys made their broadsides roar
+       in chorus,--
+  Ranging daisies on his doorstone, deft he mapped the battle-line.
+
+  Mapped the curve of tall three-deckers, deft as might
+       a man left-handed,
+  Who had given an arm to England later on at Trafalgar.
+  While he poured the praise of Nelson to the child with eyes expanded,
+  Bright athwart his honest forehead blushed the scarlet cutlass-scar.
+
+  For he served aboard the _Vanguard_, saw the Admiral blind and bleeding
+  Borne below by silent sailors, borne to die as then they deemed.
+  Every stout heart sick but stubborn, fought the sea-dogs on unheeding,
+  Guns were cleared and manned and cleared, the battle thundered,
+        flashed, and screamed.
+
+  Till a cry swelled loud and louder,--towered on fire the
+        _Orient_ stately,
+  Brucys' flag-ship, she that carried guns a hundred and a score;
+  Then came groping up the hatchway he they counted dead but lately,
+  Came the little one-armed Admiral to guide the fight once more.
+
+  "'Lower the boats!' was Nelson's order."--
+          But the listening boy beside him,
+  Who had followed all his motions with an eager wide blue eye,
+  Nursed upon the name of Nelson till he half had deified him,
+  Here, with childhood's crude consistence, broke the tale
+        to question "Why?"
+
+  For by children facts go streaming in a throng that never pauses,
+  Noted not, till, of a sudden, thought, a sunbeam, gilds the motes,
+  All at once the known words quicken, and the child would deal
+        with causes.
+  Since to kill the French was righteous, why bade Nelson lower
+        the boats?
+
+  Quick the man put by the question. "But the _Orient_, none
+        could save her;
+  We could see the ships, the ensigns, clear as daylight by the flare;
+  And a many leaped and left her; but, God rest 'em! some were braver;
+  Some held by her, firing steady till she blew to God knows where."
+
+  At the shock, he said, the _Vanguard_ shook through all
+        her timbers oaken;
+  It was like the shock of Doomsday,--not a tar but shuddered hard.
+  All was hushed for one strange moment; then that awful calm was broken
+  By the heavy plash that answered the descent of mast and yard.
+
+  So, her cannon still defying, and her colors flaming, flying,
+  In her pit her wounded helpless, on her deck her Admiral dead,
+  Soared the _Orient_ into darkness with her living and her dying:
+  "Yet our lads made shift to rescue three-score souls," the seaman said.
+
+  Long the boy with knit brows wondered o'er that friending
+        of the foeman;
+  Long the man with shut lips pondered; powerless he to tell the cause
+  Why the brother in his bosom that desired the death of no man,
+  In the crash of battle wakened, snapped the bonds of hate like straws.
+
+  While he mused, his toddling maiden drew the daisies to a posy;
+  Mild the bells of Sunday morning rang across the church-yard sod;
+  And, helped on by tender hands, with sturdy feet all bare and rosy,
+  Climbed his babe to mother's breast, as climbs the slow world
+        up to God.
+
+
+
+  A RESURRECTION
+
+
+  _Neither would they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead_.
+
+  I was quick in the flesh, was warm, and the live heart shook my breast;
+    In the market I bought and sold, in the temple I bowed my head.
+  I had swathed me in shows and forms, and was honored above the rest
+    For the sake of the life I lived; nor did any esteem me dead.
+
+  But at last, when the hour was ripe--was it sudden-remembered word?
+    Was it sight of a bird that mounted, or sound of a strain that
+          stole?
+  I was 'ware of a spell that snapped, of an inward strength that
+        stirred,
+    Of a Presence that filled that place; and it shone, and I knew
+          my Soul.
+
+  And the dream I had called my life was a garment about my feet,
+    For the web of the years was rent with the throe of a
+          yearning strong.
+  With a sweep as of winds in heaven, with a rush as of flames that meet,
+    The Flesh and the Spirit clasped; and I cried, "Was I dead so long?"
+
+  I had glimpse of the Secret, flashed through the symbol obscure
+        and mean,
+    And I felt as a fire what erst I repeated with lips of clay;
+  And I knew for the things eternal the things eye hath not seen;
+    Yea, the heavens and the earth shall pass; but they never
+          shall pass away.
+
+  And the miracle on me wrought, in the streets I would straight
+        make known:
+    "When this marvel of mine is heard, without cavil shall men receive
+  Any legend of haloed saint, staring up through the sealèd stone!"
+    So I spake in the trodden ways; but behold, there would none believe!
+
+
+
+
+  THE GLORIOUS COMPANY
+
+
+  "Faces, faces, faces of the streaming marching surge,
+    Streaming on the weary road, toward the awful steep,
+  Whence your glow and glory, as ye set to that sharp verge,
+    Faces lit as sunlit stars, shining as ye sweep?
+
+  "Whence this wondrous radiance that ye somehow catch and cast,
+    Faces rapt, that one discerns 'mid the dusky press
+  Herding in dull wonder, gathering fearful to the Vast?
+    Surely all is dark before, night of nothingness!"
+
+  _Lo, the Light!_ (they answer) _O the pure,
+        the pulsing Light,
+    Beating like a heart of life, like a heart of love,
+  Soaring, searching, filling all the breadth and depth and height,
+    Welling, whelming with its peace worlds below, above!_
+
+  "O my soul, how art thou to that living Splendor blind,
+    Sick with thy desire to see even as these men see!--
+  Yet to look upon them is to know that God hath shined:
+    Faces lit as sunlit stars, be all my light to me!"
+
+
+
+
+  THE TRUMPETER
+
+
+  Two ships, alone in sky and sea,
+    Hang clinched, with crash and roar;
+  There is but one--whiche'er it be--
+    Will ever come to shore.
+
+  And will it be the grim black bulk,
+    That towers so evil now?
+  Or will it be The Grace of God,
+    With the angel at her prow?
+
+  The man that breathes the battle's breath
+    May live at last to know;
+  But the trumpeter lies sick to death
+    In the stifling dark below.
+
+  He hears the fight above him rave;
+    He fears his mates must yield;
+  He lies as in a narrow grave
+    Beneath a battle-field.
+
+  His fate will fall before the ship's,
+    Whate'er the ship betide;
+  He lifts the trumpet to his lips
+    As though he kissed a bride.
+
+  "Now blow thy best, blow thy last,
+    My trumpet, for the Right!"--
+  He has sent his soul in one strong blast,
+    To hearten them that fight.
+
+
+
+
+  COMRADES
+
+
+  "Oh, whither, whither, rider toward the west?"
+    "And whither, whither, rider toward the east?"
+  "I rode we ride upon the same high quest,
+    Whereon who enters may not be released;
+
+  "To seek the Cup whose form none ever saw,--
+    A nobler form than e'er was shapen yet,
+  Though million million cups without a flaw,
+    Afire with gems, on princes' boards are set;
+
+  "To seek the Wine whereof none ever had
+    One draught, though many a generous wine flows free,--
+  The spiritual blood that shall make glad
+    The hearts of mighty men that are to be."
+
+  "But shall one find it, brother? Where I ride,
+    Men mock and stare, who never had the dream,
+  Yet hope within my breast has never died."
+    "Nor ever died in mine that trembling gleam."
+
+  "Eastward, I deem: the sun and all good things
+    Are born to bless us of the Orient old."
+  "Westward, I deem: an untried ocean sings
+    Against that coast, 'New shores await the bold.'"
+
+  "God speed or thee or me, so coming men
+    But have the Cup!" "God speed!"--Not once before
+  Their eyes had met, nor ever met again,
+    Yet were they loving comrades evermore.
+
+
+
+
+  THE HOUSE OF HATE
+
+
+  Mine enemy builded well, with the soft blue  hills in sight;
+  But betwixt his house and the hills I builded a house for spite:
+  And the name thereof I set in the stone-work over the gate,
+  With a carving of bats and apes; and I called it the House of Hate.
+
+  And the front was alive with masks of malice and of despair;
+  Horned demons that leered in stone, and women with serpent hair;
+  That whenever his glance would rest on the soft hills far and blue,
+  It must fall on mine evil work, and my hatred should pierce
+        him through.
+
+  And I said, "I will dwell herein, for beholding my heart's desire
+  On my foe;" and I knelt, and fain had brightened the hearth with fire;
+  But the brands they would hiss and die, as with curses a strangled man,
+  And the hearth was cold from the day that the House of Hate began.
+
+  And I called at the open door, "Make ye merry, all friends of mine,
+  In the hall of my House of Hate, where is plentiful store and wine.
+  We will drink unhealth together unto him I have foiled and fooled!"
+  And they stared and they passed me by; but I scorned to be thereby
+        schooled.
+
+  And I ordered my board for feast; and I drank, in the topmost seat,
+  Choice grape from a curious cup; and the first it was wonder-sweet;
+  But the second was bitter indeed, and the third was bitter and black,
+  And the gloom of the grave came on me, and I cast the cup to wrack.
+
+  Alone, I was stark alone, and the shadows were each a fear;
+  And thinly I laughed, but once, for the echoes were strange to hear;
+  And the wind in the hallways howled as a green-eyed wolf might cry,
+  And I heard my heart: I must look on the face of a man, or die!
+
+  So I crept to my mirrored face, and I looked, and I saw it grown
+  (By the light in my shaking hand) to the like of the masks of stone;
+  And with horror I shrieked aloud as I flung my torch and fled,
+  And a fire-snake writhed where it fell; and at midnight
+        the sky was red.
+
+  And at morn, when the House of Hate was a ruin, despoiled of flame,
+  I fell at mine enemy's feet, and besought him to slay my shame;
+  But he looked in mine eyes and smiled, and his eyes were
+        calm and great:
+  "You rave, or have dreamed," he said; "I saw not your House of Hate."
+
+
+
+
+  THE ARROWMAKER
+
+
+  Day in, day out, or sun or rain,
+  Or sallow leaf, or summer grain,
+  Beneath a wintry morning moon
+  Or through red smouldering afternoon,
+  With simple joy, with careful pride,
+  He plies the craft he long has plied:
+  To shape the stave, to set the sting,
+  To fit the shaft with irised wing;
+  And farers by may hear him sing,
+    For still his door is wide:
+    "Laugh and sigh, live and die,--
+    The world swings round; I know not, I,
+    If north or south mine arrows fly!"
+
+  And sometimes, while he works, he dreams,
+  And on his soul a vision gleams:
+  Some storied field fought long ago,
+  Where arrows fell as thick as snow.
+  His breath comes fast, his eyes grow bright,
+  To think upon that ancient fight.
+  Oh, leaping from the strained string
+  Against an armored Wrong to ring,
+  Brave the songs that arrows sing!
+    He weighs the finished flight:
+    "Live and die; by and by
+    The sun kills dark; I know not, I,
+    In what good fight mine arrows fly!"
+
+  Or at the gray hour, weary grown,
+  When curfew o'er the wold is blown,
+  He sees, as in a magic glass,
+  Some lost and lonely mountain-pass;
+  And lo! a sign of deathful rout
+  The mocking vine has wound about,--
+  An earth-fixed arrow by a spring,
+  All greenly mossed, a mouldered thing;
+  That stifled shaft no more shall sing!
+    He shakes his head in doubt.
+    "Laugh and sigh, live and die,--
+    The hand is blind: I know not, I,
+    In what lost pass mine arrows lie!
+    One to east, one to west,
+    Another for the eagle's breast,--
+    The archer and the wind know best!"
+    The stars are in the sky;
+    He lays his arrows by.
+
+
+
+
+  A NEST IN A LYRE
+
+
+  As sign before a playhouse serves
+    A giant Lyre, ornately gilded,
+  On whose convenient coignes and curves
+    The pert brown sparrows late have builded.
+  They flit, and flirt, and prune their wings,
+    Not awed at all by golden glitter,
+  And make among the silent strings
+    Their satisfied ephemeral twitter.
+
+  Ah, somewhat so we perch and flit,
+    And spy some crumb and dash to win it,
+  And with a witty chirping twit
+    Our sheltering Time--there's nothing in it!
+  In Life's large frame, a glorious Lyre's,
+    We nest, content, our season flighty,
+  Nor guess we brush the powerful wires
+    Might witch the stars with music mighty.
+
+
+
+
+  THISBE
+
+
+  The garden within was shaded,
+    And guarded about from sight;
+  The fragrance flowed to the south wind,
+    The fountain leaped to the light.
+
+  And the street without was narrow,
+    And dusty, and hot, and mean;
+  But the bush that bore white roses,
+    She leaned to the fence between:
+
+  And softly she sought a crevice
+    In that barrier blank and tall,
+  And shyly she thrust out through it
+    Her loveliest bud of all.
+
+  And tender to touch, and gracious,
+    And pure as the moon's pure shine,
+  The full rose paled and was perfect,--
+    For whose eyes, for whose lips, but mine!
+
+
+
+
+  THE SPRING BEAUTIES
+
+
+  The Puritan Spring Beauties stood freshly clad for church;
+  A Thrush, white-breasted, o'er them sat singing on his perch.
+  "Happy be! for fair are ye!" the gentle singer told them,
+  But presently a buff-coat Bee came booming up to scold them.
+    "Vanity, oh, vanity!
+    Young maids, beware of vanity!"
+    Grumbled out the buff-coat Bee,
+    Half parson-like, half soldierly.
+
+  The sweet-faced maidens trembled, with pretty, pinky blushes,
+  Convinced that it was wicked to listen to the Thrushes;
+  And when, that shady afternoon, I chanced that way to pass,
+  They hung their little bonnets down and looked into the grass,
+    All because the buff-coat Bee
+    Lectured them so solemnly:--
+    "Vanity, oh, vanity!
+    Young maids, beware of vanity!"
+
+
+
+
+  KINSHIP
+
+
+  A lily grew in the tangle,
+    In a flame red garment dressed,
+  And many a ruby spangle
+    Besprinkled her tawny breast.
+
+  And the silken moth sailed by her
+    With a swift and a snow-white sail;
+  Not a gilt-girt bee came nigh her,
+    Nor a fly in his gay green mail.
+
+  And the bronze-brown wings and the golden,
+    O'er the billowing meadows blown,
+  Were still as by magic holden
+    From the lily that flamed alone;
+
+  Till over the fragrant tangle
+    A wanderer winging went,
+  And with many a ruby spangle
+    Were his tawny vans besprent.
+  And he hovered one moment stilly
+    O'er the thicket, her mazy bower,
+  Then he sank to the heart of the lily,
+    And they seemed but a single flower.
+
+
+
+
+  COMPENSATION
+
+
+  The brook ran laughing from the shade,
+    And in the sunshine danced all day:
+  The starlight and the moonlight made
+    Its glimmering path a Milky Way.
+
+  The blue sky burned, with summer fired;
+    For parching fields, for pining flowers,
+  The spirits of the air desired
+    The brook's bright life to shed in showers.
+
+  It gave its all that thirst to slake;
+    Its dusty channel lifeless lay;
+  Now softest flowers, white-foaming, make
+    Its winding bed a Milky Way.
+
+
+
+
+  WHEN WILLOWS GREEN
+
+
+  When goldenly the willows green,
+    And, mirrored in the sunset pool,
+  Hang wavering, wild-rose clouds between:
+    When robins call in twilights cool:
+        What is it we await?
+        Who lingers and is late?
+  What strange unrest, what yearning stirs us all
+  When willows green, when robins call?
+
+  When fields of flowering grass respire
+    A sweet that seems the breath of Peace,
+  And liquid-voiced the thrushes choir,
+    Oh, whence the sense of glad release?
+        What is it life uplifts?
+        Who entered, bearing gifts?
+  What floods from heaven the being overpower
+  When thrushes choir, when grasses flower?
+
+
+
+
+  AT THE PARTING OF THE WAYS
+
+  (AD COMITEM JUNIOREM)
+
+
+  Comrade Youth! Sit down with me
+  Underneath the summer tree,
+  Cool green dome whose shade is sweet,
+  Where the sunny roadways meet,
+  See, the ancient finger-post,
+  Silver-bleached with rain and shine,
+  Warns us like a noon-day ghost:
+  That way's yours, and this way's mine!
+  I would hold you with delays
+  Here at parting of the ways.
+
+  Hold you! I as well might look
+  To detain the racing brook
+  With regrets and grievance tender,
+  As my comrade swift and slender,
+  Shy, capricious, all of spring!
+  Catch the wind with blossoms laden,
+  Catch the wild bird on the wing,
+  Catch the heart of boy or maiden!
+
+  Yet I'll hold your image fast,
+  As this hour I saw you last,--
+  As with staff in hand you sat,
+  Soft curls putting forth defiant
+  From the tilted Mercury's hat,
+  Wreathen with the wilding grace
+  Of the fresh-leaved vine and pliant,
+  Stealing down to see your face.
+  Eyes of pleasance, lips of laughter,
+  I shall hoard you long hereafter;
+  Very dear shall be the days
+  Ere the parting of the ways!
+
+  Shall you deem them dear, in truth,
+  Days when we, o'er hill and hollow,
+  Trudged together, Comrade Youth?
+  Ah, you dream of days to follow!
+  Hand in hand we jogged along;
+  I would fetch from out my scrip,
+  Crust or jest or antique song,--
+  Live and lovely, on your lip,
+  Such poor needments as I had
+  Were as yours; you made me glad.
+  --Lo, the dial! No prayer stays
+  Time, at parting of the ways!
+
+  This gold memory--rings it true?
+  Half for me and half for you.
+  Cleave and share it. Now, good sooth,
+  God be with you, Comrade Youth!
+
+
+
+
+  THE FAIR GRAY LADY
+
+
+  When the charm at last is fled
+    From the woodland stark and pale,
+  And like shades of glad hours dead
+    Whirl the leaves before the gale:
+
+  When against the western fire
+    Darkens many an empty nest,
+  Like a thwarted heart's desire
+    That in prime was hardly guessed:
+
+  Then the fair gray Lady leans,
+    Lingering, o'er the faded grass,
+  Still the soul of all the scenes
+    Once she graced, a golden lass.
+
+  O'er the Year's discrownèd sleep,
+    Dear as in her earlier day,
+  She her bending watch doth keep,
+    She the Goldenrod grown gray.
+
+
+
+
+  THE ENCOUNTER
+
+
+  There's a wood-way winding high,
+  Roofed far up with light-green flicker,
+  Save one midmost star of sky.
+  Underfoot 'tis all pale brown
+  With the dead leaves matted down
+  One on other, thick and thicker;
+  Soft, but springing to the tread.
+  There a youth late met a maid
+  Running lightly,--oh, so fleetly!
+  "Whence art thou?" the herd-boy said.
+  Either side her long hair swayed,
+  Half a tress and half a braid,
+  Colored like the soft dead leaf,
+  As she answered, laughing sweetly,
+  On she ran, as flies the swallow;
+  He could not choose but follow
+  Though it had been to his grief.
+
+  "I have come up from the valley,--
+  From the valley!" Once he caught her,
+  Swerving down a sidelong alley,
+  For a moment, by the hand.
+  "Tell me, tell me," he besought her,
+  "Sweetest, I would understand
+  Why so cold thy palm, that slips
+  From me like the shy cold minnow?
+  The wood is warm, and smells of fern,
+  And below the meadows burn.
+  Hard to catch and hard to win, oh!
+  Why are those brown finger tips
+  Crinkled as with lines of water?"
+
+  Laughing while she featly footed,
+  With the herd-boy hasting after,
+  Sprang she on a trunk uprooted,
+  Clung she by a roping vine;
+  Leaped behind a birch, and told,
+  Still eluding, through its fine,
+  Mocking, slender, leafy laughter,
+  Why her finger tips were cold:
+
+  "I went down to tease the brook,
+  With her fishes, there below;
+  She comes dancing, thou must know,
+  And the bushes arch above her;
+  But the seeking sunbeams look,
+  Dodging through the wind-blown cover,
+  Find and kiss her into stars.
+  Silvery veins entwine and crook
+  Where a stone her tripping bars;
+  There be smooth, clear sweeps, and swirls
+  Bubbling up crisp drops like pearls.
+  There I lie, along the rocks
+  Thick with greenest slippery moss,
+  And I have in hand a strip
+  Of gray, pliant, dappled bark;
+  And I comb her liquid locks
+  Till her tangling currents cross;
+  And I have delight to hark
+  To the chiding of her lip,
+  Taking on the talking stone
+  With each turn another tone.
+  Oh, to set her wavelets bickering!
+  Oh, to hear her laughter simple,
+  See her fret and flash and dimple!
+  Ha, ha, ha!" The woodland rang
+  With the rippling through the flickering.
+  At the birch the herd-boy sprang.
+
+  On a sudden something wound
+  Vine-like round his throbbing throat;
+  On a sudden something smote
+  Sharply on his longing lips,
+  Stung him as the birch bough whips:
+  Was it kiss or was it blow?
+  Never after could he know;
+  She was gone without a sound.
+
+  Never after could he see
+  In the wood or in the mead,
+  Or in any company
+  Of the rustic mortal maids,
+  Her with acorn-colored braids;
+  Never came she to his need.
+  Never more the lad was merry,
+  Strayed apart, and learned to dream,
+  Feeding on the tart wild berry;
+  Murmuring words none understood,--
+  Words with music of the wood,
+  And with music of the stream.
+
+
+
+
+  SUMMER HOURS
+
+
+  Hours aimless-drifting as the milkweed's down
+    In seeming, still a seed of joy ye bear
+    That steals into the soul when unaware,
+  And springs up Memory in the stony town.
+
+
+
+
+  LOVE UNSUNG
+
+
+  Seven jewelled rays has the Sun fast bound
+      In his arrow of blinding sheen;
+  But he quickens the breast of the fruitful ground
+      With a subtlest ray unseen.
+
+  And the rainbow moods of this love of ours
+      I may blend in the song I bring;
+  But the magic that makes life laugh with flowers
+      Is the love that I cannot sing.
+
+
+
+
+  THE WISH FOR A CHAPLET
+
+
+  Vineleaf and rose I would my chaplet make:
+  I would my word were wine for all men's sake.
+  Pure from the pressing of the stainless feet
+  Of unblamed Hours, and for an altar meet.
+
+  Vineleaf and rose: I would, had I the art,
+  Distil, to lasting sweet, Joy's rosy heart,
+  That no sere autumn should its fragrance wrong,
+  Closed in the crystal glass of slender song.
+
+
+
+
+  SONNETS
+
+
+
+
+  THE TORCH-RACE
+
+
+  Brave racer, who hast sped the living light
+  With throat outstretched and every nerve a-strain,
+  Now on thy left hand labors gray-faced Pain,
+  And Death hangs close behind thee on the right.
+  Soon flag the flying feet, soon fails the sight,
+  With every pulse the gaunt pursuers gain;
+  And all thy splendor of strong life must wane
+  And set into the mystery of night.
+
+  Yet fear not, though in falling, blindness hide
+  Whose hand shall snatch, before it scars the sod,
+  The light thy lessening grasp no more controls:
+  Truth's rescuer, Truth shall instantly provide:
+  This is the torch-race game, that noblest souls
+  Play on through time beneath the eyes of God.
+
+
+
+
+  TO SLEEP
+
+
+  All slumb'rous images that be, combined,
+  To this white couch and cool shall woo thee, Sleep!
+  First will I think on fields of grasses deep
+  In gray-green flower, o'er which the transient wind
+  Runs like a smile; and next will call to mind
+  How glistening poplar-tops, when breezes creep
+  Among their leaves, a tender motion keep,
+  Stroking the sky, like touch of lovers kind.
+
+  Ah, having felt thy calm kiss on mine eyes,
+  All night inspiring thy divine pure breath,
+  I shall awake as into godhood born,
+  And with a fresh, undaunted soul arise,
+  Clear as the blue convolvulus at morn.
+  --Dear bedfellow, deals thus thy brother, Death?
+
+
+
+
+  SISTER SNOW
+
+
+  Praised be our Lord (to echo the sweet phrase
+  Of saintly Francis) for our sister Snow:
+  Whose soft, soft coming never man may know
+  By any sound; whose down-light touch allays
+  All fevers of worn earth. She clothes the days
+  In garments without spot, and hence doth go
+  Her noiseless shuttle swiftly to and fro,
+  And very pure, and pleasant, are her ways.
+
+  But yesterday, how loveless looked the skies!
+  How cold the sun's last glance, and unbenign,
+  Across the field forsaken, russet-leaved!
+  Now pearly peace on all the landscape lies.
+  --Wast thou not sent us, Sister, for a sign
+  Of that vast Mercy of God, else unconceived?
+
+
+
+
+  RETROSPECT
+
+
+  "Backward," he said, "dear heart I like to look
+  To those half-spring, half-winter days, when first
+  We drew together, ere the leaf-buds burst.
+  Sunbeams were silver yet, keen gusts yet shook
+  The boughs. Have you remembered that kind book,
+  That for our sake Galeotto's part rehearsed,
+  (The friend of lovers,--this time blessed, not cursed!)
+  And that best hour, when reading we forsook?"
+
+  She, listening, wore the smile a mother wears
+  At childish fancies needless to control;
+  Yet felt a fine, hid pain with pleasure blend.
+  Better it seemed to think that love of theirs,
+  Native as breath, eternal as the soul,
+  Knew no beginning, could not have an end.
+
+
+
+
+  THE CONTRAST
+
+
+  He loved her; having felt his love begin
+  With that first look,--as lover oft avers.
+  He made pale flowers his pleading ministers,
+  Impressed sweet music, drew the springtime in
+  To serve his suit; but when he could not win,
+  Forgot her face and those gray eyes of hers;
+  And at her name his pulse no longer stirs,
+  And life goes on as though she had not been.
+
+  She never loved him; but she loved Love so,
+  So reverenced Love, that all her being shook
+  At his demand whose entrance she denied.
+  Her thoughts of him such tender color took
+  As western skies that keep the afterglow.
+  The words he spoke were with her till she died.
+
+
+
+
+  A MYSTERY
+
+
+  That sunless day no living shadow swept
+  Across the hills, fleet shadow chasing light,
+  Twin of the sailing cloud: but, mists wool white,
+  Slow-stealing mists, on those heaved shoulders crept,
+  And wrought about the strong hills while they slept
+  In witches' wise, and rapt their forms from sight.
+  Dreams were they; less than dream, the noblest height
+  And farthest; and the chilly woodland wept.
+
+  A sunless day and sad: yet all the while
+  Within the grave green twilight of the wood,
+  inscrutable, immutable, apart,
+  Hearkening the brook, whose song she understood,
+  The secret birch-tree kept her silver smile,
+  Strange as the peace that gleams at sorrow's heart.
+
+
+
+
+  TRIUMPH
+
+
+  This windy sunlit morning after rain,
+  The wet bright laurel laughs with beckoning gleam
+  In the blown wood, whence breaks the wild white stream
+  Rushing and flashing, glorying in its gain;
+  Nor swerves nor parts, but with a swift disdain
+  O'erleaps the boulders lying in long dream,
+  Lapped in cold moss; and in its joy doth seem
+  A wood-born creature bursting from a chain.
+
+  And "Triumph, triumph, triumph!" is its hoarse
+  Fierce-whispered word. O fond, and dost not know
+  Thy triumph on another wise must be,--
+  To render all the tribute of thy force,
+  And lose thy little being in the flow
+  Of the unvaunting river toward the sea!
+
+
+
+
+  IN WINTER, WITH THE BOOK WE READ IN SPRING
+
+
+  The blackberry's bloom, when last we went this way,
+  Veiled all her bowsome rods with trembling white;
+  The robin's sunset breast gave forth delight
+  At sunset hour; the wind was warm with May.
+  Armored in ice the sere stems arch to-day,
+  Each tiny thorn encased and argent bright;
+  Where clung the birds that long have taken flight,
+  Dead songless leaves cling fluttering on the spray.
+
+  O hand in mine, that mak'st all paths the same,
+  Being paths of peace, where falls nor chill nor gloom,
+  Made sweet with ardors of an inward spring!
+  I hold thee--frozen skies to rosy flame
+  Are turned, and snows to living snows of bloom,
+  And once again the gold-brown thrushes sing.
+
+
+
+
+  SERE WISDOM
+
+
+  I had remembrance of a summer morn,
+  When all the glistening field was softly stirred
+  And like a child's in happy sleep I heard
+  The low and healthful breathing of the corn.
+  Late when the sumach's red was dulled and worn,
+  And fainter grew the trite and troublous word
+  Of tristful cricket, that replaced the bird,
+  I sought the slope, and found a waste forlorn.
+
+  Against that cold clear west, whence winter peers,
+  All spectral stood the bleached stalks thin-leaved,
+  Dry as papyrus kept a thousand years,
+  And hissing whispered to the wind that grieved,
+  _It was a dream--we have no goodly ears--
+  There was no summer-time--deceived! deceived!_
+
+
+
+
+  ISOLATION
+
+
+  White fog around, soft snow beneath the tread,
+  All sunless, windless, tranced, the morning lay;
+  All noiseless, trackless, new, the well-known way.
+  The silence weighed upon the sense; in dread,
+  "Alone, I am alone," I shuddering said,
+  "And wander in a region where no ray
+  Has ever shone, and as on earth's first day
+  Or last, my kind are not yet born or dead."
+
+  Yet not afar, meanwhile, there faltered feet
+  Like mine, through that wide mystery of the snow,
+  Nor could the old accustomed paths divine;
+  And even as mine, unheard spake voices low,
+  And hearts were near, that as my own heart beat,
+  Warm hands, and faces fashioned like to mine.
+
+
+
+
+  THE LOST DRYAD
+
+  (TO EDITH M. THOMAS)
+
+
+  Into what beech or silvern birch, O friend
+  Suspected ever of a dryad strain,
+  Hast crept at last, delighting to regain
+  Thy sylvan house? Now whither shall I wend,
+  Or by what wingèd post my greeting send,
+  Bird, butterfly, or bee? Shall three moons wane,
+  And yet not found?--Ah, surely it was pain
+  Of old, for mortal youth his heart to lend
+  To any hamadryad! In his hour
+  Of simple trust, wild impulse him bereaves:
+  She flees, she seeks her strait enmossèd bower
+  And while he, searching, softly calls, and grieves,
+  Oblivious, high above she laughs in leaves,
+  Or patters tripping talk to the quick shower.
+
+
+
+
+  A MEMORY
+
+
+  Though pent in stony streets, 'tis joy to know,
+  'Tis joy, although we breathe a fainter air,
+  The spirit of those places far and fair
+  That we have loved, abides; and fern-scents flow
+  Out of the wood's heart still, and shadows grow
+  Long on remembered roads as warm days wear;
+  And still the dark wild water, in its lair,
+  The narrow chasm, stirs blindly to and fro.
+
+  Delight is in the sea-gull's dancing wings,
+  And sunshine wakes to rose the ruddy hue
+  Of rocks; and from her tall wind-slanted stem
+  A soft bright plume the goldenrod outflings
+  Along the breeze, above a sea whose blue
+  Is like the light that kindles through a gem.
+
+
+
+
+  THE GIFTS OF THE OAK
+
+  (FOR THE SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL)
+
+
+  'There needs no crown to mark the forest's king.'
+  Thus, long ago thou sang'st the sound-heart tree
+  Sacred to sovereign Jove, and dear to thee
+  Since first, a venturous youth with eyes of spring,--
+  Whose pilgrim-staff each side put forth a wing,--
+  Beneath the oak thou lingeredst lovingly
+  To crave, as largess of his majesty,
+  Firm-rooted strength, and grace of leaves that sing.
+
+  He gave; we thank him! Graciousness as grave,
+  And power as easeful as his own he gave;
+  Long broodings rich with sun, and laughters kind;
+  And singing leaves, whose later bronze is dear
+  As the first amber of the budding year,--
+  Whose voices answer the autumnnal wind.
+
+
+
+
+  THE STRAYED SINGER
+
+  (MATTHEW ARNOLD)
+
+
+  He wandered from us long, oh, long ago,
+  Rare singer, with the note unsatisfied;
+  Into what charmèd wood, what shade star-eyed
+  With the wind's April darlings, none may know.
+  We lost him. Songless, one with seed to sow,
+  Keen-smiling toiler, came in place, and plied
+  His strength in furrowed field till eventide,
+  And passed to slumber when the sun was low.
+
+  But now,--as though Death spoke some mystic word
+  Solving a spell,--present to thought appears
+  The morn's estray, not him we saw but late;
+  And on his lips the strain that once we heard,
+  And in his hand, cool as with Springtime's tears,
+  The melancholy wood-flowers delicate.
+
+
+
+
+  THE IMMORTAL WORD
+
+
+  One soiled and shamed and foiled in this world's fight,
+  Deserter from the host of God, that here
+  Still darkly struggles,--waked from death in fear,
+  And strove to screen his forehead from the white
+  And blinding glory of the awful Light,
+  The revelation and reproach austere.
+  Then with strong hand outstretched a Shape drew near,
+  Bright-browed, majestic, armored like a knight.
+
+  "Great Angel, servant of the Highest, why
+  Stoop'st thou to me?" although his lips were mute,
+  His eyes inquired. The Shining One replied:
+  "Thy Book, thy birth, life of thy life am I,
+  Son of thy soul, thy youth's forgotten fruit.
+  We two go up to judgment side by side."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Ride to the Lady, by Helen Gray Cone
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Ride to the Lady, by Helen Gray Cone
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere 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
+
+
+Title: Ride to the Lady
+       and Other Poems
+
+Author: Helen Gray Cone
+
+Posting Date: August 16, 2012 [EBook #9559]
+Release Date: December, 2005
+First Posted: October 8, 2003
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RIDE TO THE LADY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Ted Garvin, Josephine Paolucci, and Project
+Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE RIDE TO THE LADY
+
+And Other Poems
+
+BY
+
+HELEN GRAY CONE
+
+1891
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  CONTENTS
+
+  The Ride to the Lady
+
+  The First Guest
+
+  Silence
+
+  Arraignment
+
+  The Going Out of the Tide
+
+  King Raedwald
+
+  Ivo of Chartres
+
+  Madonna Pia
+
+  Two Moods of Failure
+
+  The Story of the "Orient"
+
+  A Resurrection
+
+  The Glorious Company
+
+  The Trumpeter
+
+  Comrades
+
+  The House of Hate
+
+  The Arrowmaker
+
+  A Nest in a Lyre
+
+  Thisbe
+
+  The Spring Beauties
+
+  Kinship
+
+  Compensation
+
+  When Willows Green
+
+  At the Parting of the Ways
+
+  The Fair Gray Lady
+
+  The Encounter.
+
+  Summer Hours
+
+  Love Unsung
+
+  The Wish for a Chaplet
+
+  Sonnets:
+  The Torch Race
+  To Sleep
+  Sister Snow
+  The Contrast
+  A Mystery
+  Triumph
+  In Winter, with the Book we had in Spring
+  Sere Wisdom
+  Isolation
+  The Lost Dryad
+  The Gifts of the Oak
+  The Strayed Singer
+  The Immortal Word
+
+
+
+
+  THE RIDE TO THE LADY
+
+
+  "Now since mine even is come at last,--
+  For I have been the sport of steel,
+  And hot life ebbeth from me fast,
+  And I in saddle roll and reel,--
+  Come bind me, bind me on my steed!
+  Of fingering leech I have no need!"
+  The chaplain clasped his mailed knee.
+  "Nor need I more thy whine and thee!
+  No time is left my sins to tell;
+  But look ye bind me, bind me well!"
+  They bound him strong with leathern thong,
+  For the ride to the lady should be long.
+
+  Day was dying; the poplars fled,
+  Thin as ghosts, on a sky blood-red;
+  Out of the sky the fierce hue fell,
+  And made the streams as the streams of hell.
+  All his thoughts as a river flowed,
+  Flowed aflame as fleet he rode,
+  Onward flowed to her abode,
+  Ceased at her feet, mirrored her face.
+  (Viewless Death apace, apace,
+  Rode behind him in that race.)
+
+  "Face, mine own, mine alone,
+  Trembling lips my lips have known,
+  Birdlike stir of the dove-soft eyne
+  Under the kisses that make them mine!
+  Only of thee, of thee, my need!
+  Only to thee, to thee, I speed!"
+  The Cross flashed by at the highway's turn;
+  In a beam of the moon the Face shone stern.
+
+  Far behind had the fight's din died;
+  The shuddering stars in the welkin wide
+  Crowded, crowded, to see him ride.
+  The beating hearts of the stars aloof
+  kept time to the beat of the horse's hoof,
+  "What is the throb that thrills so sweet?
+  Heart of my lady, I feel it beat!"
+  But his own strong pulse the fainter fell,
+  Like the failing tongue of a hushing bell.
+  The flank of the great-limbed steed was wet
+  Not alone with the started sweat.
+
+  Fast, and fast, and the thick black wood
+  Arched its cowl like a black friar's hood;
+  Fast, and fast, and they plunged therein,--
+  But the viewless rider rode to win,
+  Out of the wood to the highway's light
+  Galloped the great-limbed steed in fright;
+  The mail clashed cold, and the sad owl cried,
+  And the weight of the dead oppressed his side.
+
+  Fast, and fast, by the road he knew;
+  And slow, and slow, the stars withdrew;
+  And the waiting heaven turned weirdly blue,
+  As a garment worn of a wizard grim.
+  He neighed at the gate in the morning dim.
+
+  She heard no sound before her gate,
+  Though very quiet was her bower.
+  All was as her hand had left it late:
+  The needle slept on the broidered vine,
+  Where the hammer and spikes of the passion-flower
+  Her fashioning did wait.
+  On the couch lay something fair,
+  With steadfast lips and veiled eyne;
+
+  But the lady was not there,
+  On the wings of shrift and prayer,
+  Pure as winds that winnow snow,
+  Her soul had risen twelve hours ago.
+  The burdened steed at the barred gate stood,
+  No whit the nearer to his goal.
+  Now God's great grace assoil the soul
+  That went out in the wood!
+
+
+
+
+  THE FIRST GUEST
+
+
+  When the house is finished, Death enters.
+  _Eastern Proverb_
+
+  Life's House being ready all,
+  Each chamber fair and dumb,
+  Ere life, the Lord, is come
+  With pomp into his hall,--
+  Ere Toil has trod the floors,
+  Ere Love has lit the fires,
+  Or young great-eyed Desires
+  Have, timid, tried the doors;
+  Or from east-window leaned
+  One Hope, to greet the sun,
+  Or one gray Sorrow screened
+  Her sight against the west,--
+  Then enters the first guest,
+  The House of life being done.
+
+  He waits there in the shade.
+  I deem he is Life's twin,
+  For whom the house was made.
+  Whatever his true name,
+  Be sure, to enter in
+  He has both key and claim.
+
+  The daybeams, free of fear,
+  Creep drowsy toward his feet;
+  His heart were heard to beat,
+  Were any there to hear;
+  Ah, not for ends malign,
+  Like wild thing crouched in lair,
+  Or watcher of a snare,
+  But with a friend's design
+  He lurks in shadow there!
+
+  He goes not to the gates
+  To welcome any other,
+  Nay, not Lord Life, his brother;
+  But still his hour awaits
+  Each several guest to find
+  Alone, yea, quite alone;
+  Pacing with pensive mind
+  The cloister's echoing stone,
+  Or singing, unaware,
+  At the turning of the stair
+  Tis truth, though we forget,
+  In Life's House enters none
+  Who shall that seeker shun,
+  Who shall not so be met.
+  "Is this mine hour?" each saith.
+  "So be it, gentle Death!"
+  Each has his way to end,
+  Encountering this friend.
+  Griefs die to memories mild;
+  Hope turns a weaned child;
+  Love shines a spirit white,
+  With eyes of deepened light.
+  When many a guest has passed,
+  Some day 'tis Life's at last
+  To front the face of Death.
+  Then, casements closed, men say:
+  "Lord Life is gone away;
+  He went, we trust and pray,
+  To God, who gave him breath."
+  Beginning, End, He is:
+  Are not these sons both His?
+  Lo, these with Him are one!
+  To phrase it so were best:
+  God's self is that first Guest,
+  The House of Life being done!
+
+
+
+
+  SILENCE
+
+
+  Why should I sing of earth or heaven? not rather rest,
+  Powerless to speak of that which hath my soul possessed,--
+  For full possession dumb? Yea, Silence, that were best.
+
+  And though for what it failed to sound I brake the string,
+  And dashed the sweet lute down, a too much fingered thing,
+  And found a wild new voice,--oh, still, why should I sing?
+
+  An earth-song could I make, strange as the breath of earth,
+  Filled with the great calm joy of life and death and birth?
+  Yet, were it less than this, the song were little worth.
+
+  For this the fields caress; brown clods tell each to each;
+  Sad-colored leaves have sense whereto I cannot reach;
+  Spiced everlasting-flowers outstrip my range of speech.
+
+  A heaven-song could I make, all fire that yet was peace,
+  And tenderness not lost, though glory did increase?
+  But were it less than this, 't were well the song should cease.
+
+  For this the still west saith, with plumy flames bestrewn;
+  Heaven's body sapphire-clear, at stirless height of noon;
+  The cloud where lightnings pulse, beside the untroubled moon.
+
+  I will not sing of earth or heaven, but rather rest,
+  Rapt by the face of heaven, and hold on earth's warm breast.
+  Hushed lips, a beating heart, yea, Silence, that were best.
+
+
+
+
+  ARRAIGNMENT
+
+
+  "Not ye who have stoned, not ye who have smitten us," cry
+  The sad, great souls, as they go out hence into dark,
+  "Not ye we accuse, though for you was our passion borne;
+  And ye we reproach not, who silently passed us by.
+  We forgive blind eyes and the ears that would not hark,
+  The careless and causeless hate and the shallow scorn.
+
+  "But ye, who have seemed to know us, have seen and heard;
+  Who have set us at feasts and have crowned with the costly rose;
+  Who have spread us the purple of praises beneath our feet;
+  Yet guessed not the word that we spake was a living word,
+  Applauding the sound,--we account you as worse than foes!
+  We sobbed you our message; ye said, 'It is song, and sweet!'"
+
+
+
+
+  THE GOING OUT OF THE TIDE
+
+
+  The eastern heaven was all faint amethyst,
+  Whereon the moon hung dreaming in the mist;
+  To north yet drifted one long delicate plume
+  Of roseate cloud; like snow the ocean-spume.
+
+  Now when the first foreboding swiftly ran
+  Through the loud-glorying sea that it began
+  To lose its late gained lordship of the land,
+  Uprose the billow like an angered man,
+  And flung its prone strength far along the sand;
+  Almost, almost to the old bound, the dark
+  And taunting triumph-mark.
+
+  But no, no, no! and slow, and slow, and slow,
+  Like a heart losing hold, this wave must go,--
+  Must go, must go,--dragged heavily back, back,
+  Beneath the next wave plunging on its track,
+  Charging, with thunderous and defiant shout,
+  To fore-determined rout.
+
+  Again, again the unexhausted main
+  Renews fierce effort, drawing force unguessed
+  From awful deeps of its mysterious breast:
+  Like arms of passionate protest, tossed in vain,
+  The spray upflings above the billow's crest.
+  Again the appulse, again the backward strain--
+  Till ocean must have rest.
+
+  With one abandoned movement, swift and wild,--
+  As though bowed head and outstretched arms it laid
+  On the earth's lap, soft sobbing,--hushed and stayed,
+  The great sea quiets, like a soothed child.
+  Ha! what sharp memory clove the calm, and drave
+  This last fleet furious wave?
+
+  On, on, endures the struggle into night,
+  Ancient as Time, yet fresh as the fresh hour;
+  As oft repeated since the birth of light
+  As the strong agony and mortal fight
+  Of human souls, blind-reaching, with the Power
+  Aloof, unmoved, impossible to cross,
+  Whose law is seeming loss.
+
+  Low-sunken from the longed-for triumph-mark;
+  The spent sea sighs as one that grieves in sleep.
+  The unveiled moon along the rippling plain
+  Casts many a keen, cold, shifting silvery spark,
+  Wild as the pulses of strange joy, that leap
+  Even in the quick of pain.
+
+  And she compelling, she that stands for law,--
+  As law for Will eternal,--perfect, clear,
+  And uncompassionate shines: to her appear
+  Vast sequences close-linked without a flaw.
+  All past despairs of ocean unforgot,
+  All raptures past, serene her light she gives,
+  The moon too high for pity, since she lives
+  Aware that loss is not.
+
+
+
+
+  KING RAEDWALD
+
+
+  Will you hear now the speech of King Raedwald,--heathen Raedwald,
+        the simple yet wise?
+  He, the ruler of North-folk and South-folk, a man open-browed
+        as the skies,
+  Held the eyes of the eager Italians with his blue, bold,
+        Englishman's eyes.
+
+  In his hall, on his throne, so he sat, with the light of the fire
+        on him full:
+  Colored bright as the ring of red gold on his hand, fit to buffet
+        a bull,
+  Was the mane that grew down on his neck, was the beard he would
+        pondering pull.
+
+  To the priests, to the eager Italians, thus fearless less he poured
+        his free speech;
+  "O my honey-tongued fathers, I turn not away from the faith that ye
+        teach!
+  Not the less hath a man many moods, and may ask a religion for each.
+
+  "Grant that all things are well with the realm on a delicate day
+        of the spring,
+  Easter month, time of hopes and of swallows!
+         The praises, the psalms that ye sing,
+  As in pleasant accord they float heavenward, are good in the ears
+        of the king.
+
+  "Then the heart bubbles forth with clear waters, to the time
+        of this wonder-word Peace,
+  From the chanting and preaching whereof ye who serve the
+        white Christ never cease;
+  And your curly, soft incense ascending enwraps my content
+        like a fleece.
+
+  "But a churl comes adrip from the rivers, pants me out, fallen
+        spent on the floor,
+  'O King Raedwald, Northumberland marches, and to-morrow knocks
+        hard at thy door,
+  Hot for melting thy crown on the hearth!'
+          Then commend me to Woden and Thor!
+
+  "Could I sit then and listen to preachments on turning the cheek
+        to the blow,
+  And saying a prayer for the smiter, and holding my seen treasure low
+  For the sake of a treasure unseen? By the sledge of the Thunderer, no!
+
+  "For my thought flashes out as a sword, cleaving counsel as
+        clottage of cream;
+  And your incense and chanting are but as the smoke of burnt
+        towns and the scream;
+  And I quaff me the thick mead of triumph from enemies' skulls
+        in my dream!
+
+  "And 'tis therefore this day I resolve me,--for King Raedwald
+        will cringe not, nor lie!--
+  I will bring back the altar  of Woden; in the temple will have it,
+        hard by
+  The new altar of this your white Christ. As my mood may decide,
+        worship I!"
+
+  So he spake in his large self-reliance,--he, a man open-browed
+        as the skies;
+  Would not measure his soul by a standard that was womanish-weak
+        to his eyes,
+  Smite his breast and go on with his sinning,--savage Raedwald,
+        the simple yet wise!
+
+  And the centuries bloom o'er his barrow. But for us,--have we
+        mastered it quite,
+  The old riddle, that sweet is strong's outcome, the old marvel,
+        that meekness is might,
+  That the child is the leader of lions, that forgiveness is force
+        at its height?
+
+  When we summon the shade of rude Raedwald, in his candor how
+        king-like he towers!
+  Have the centuries, over his slumber, only borne sterile falsehoods
+        for flowers?
+  Pray you, what if Christ found him the nobler, having weighed his
+        frank manhood with ours?
+
+
+
+
+  IVO OF CHARTRES
+
+
+  Now may it please my lord, Louis the king,
+    Lily of Christ and France! riding his quest,
+  I, Bishop Ivo, saw a wondrous thing.
+
+    There was no light of sun left in the west,
+  And slowly did the moon's new light increase.
+    Heaven, without cloud, above the near hill's crest,
+  Lay passion purple in a breathless peace.
+    Stars started like still tears, in rapture shed,
+  Which without consciousness the lids release.
+
+    All steadily, one little sparkle red,
+  Afar, drew close. A woman's form grew up
+    Out of the dimness, tall, with queen-like head,
+  And in one hand was fire; in one, a cup.
+    Of aspect grave she was, with eyes upraised,
+  As one whose thoughts perpetually did sup
+    At the Lord's table.
+
+                   While the cresset blazed,
+  Her I regarded. "Daughter, whither bent,
+    And wherefore?" As by speech of man amazed,
+  One moment her deep look to me she lent;
+    Then, in a voice of hymn-like, solemn fall,
+  Calm, as by role, she spake out her intent:
+
+    "I in my cruse bear water, wherewithal
+  To quench the flames of Hell; and with my fire
+    I Paradise would burn: that hence no small
+  Fear shall impel, and no mean hope shall hire,
+    Men to serve God as they have served of yore;
+  But to his will shall set their whole desire,
+    For love, love, love alone, forevermore!"
+
+  And "love, love, love," rang round her as she passed
+    From sight, with mystic murmurs o'er and o'er
+  Reverbed from hollow heaven, as from some vast,
+    Deep-colored, vaulted, ocean-answering shell.
+
+  I, Ivo, had no power to ban or bless,
+    But was as one withholden by a spell.
+  Forward she fared in lofty loneliness,
+  Urged on by an imperious inward stress,
+    To waste fair Eden, and to drown fierce Hell.
+
+
+
+
+  MADONNA PIA
+
+
+  Ricordati di me, che son la Pia.
+  Siena mi fe; disfecomi Maremma;
+  Salsi colui, che, inanellata pria,
+  Disposato m'avea colla sua gemma.
+
+  _Purgatorio_, Canto V.
+
+
+  To westward lies the unseen sea,
+    Blue sea the live winds wander o'er.
+  The many-colored sails can flee,
+    And leave the dead, low-lying shore.
+  Her longing does not seek the main,
+    Her face turns northward first at morn;
+  There, crowning all the wide champaign,
+    Siena stood, where she was born.
+
+  Siena stands, and still shall stand;
+    She ne'er shall see or town or tower.
+  Warm life and beauty, hand in hand,
+    Steal farther from her hour by hour.
+  Yet forth she leans, with trembling knees,
+    And northward will she stare and stare
+  Through that thick wall of cypress-trees,
+    And sigh adown the stirless air:
+
+  "Shall no remembrance in Siena linger
+    Of me, once fair, whom slow Maremma slays?
+  As well he knows, whose ring upon my finger
+    Hath sealed for his alone mine earthly days!"
+
+  From wilds where shudders through the weeds
+    The dull, mean-headed, silent snake,
+  Like voiceless doubt that creeps and breeds;
+    From swamps where sluggish waters take,
+  As lives unblest a passing love,
+    The flag-flower's image in the spring,
+  Or seem, when flits the bird above,
+    To stir within with shadowed wing,
+
+  A Presence mounts in pallid mist
+    To fold her close: she breathes its breath;
+  She waxes wan, by Fever kissed,
+    Who weds her for his master, Death,
+  Aside are set her dimmed hopes all,
+    She counts no more the uncurrent hoard;
+  On gray Death's neck she fain would fall,
+    To own him for her proper lord.
+
+  She minds the journey here by night:
+    When some red sudden torch would blaze,
+  She saw by fits, with childish fright,
+    The cork-trees twist beside the ways.
+  Like dancing demon shapes they showed,
+    With malice drunk; the bat beat by,
+  The owlet sobbed; on, on they rode,
+    She knew not where, she knows not why.
+
+  For Nello--when in piteous wise
+    She lifted up her look to ask,
+  Except the ever-burning eyes
+    His face was like a marble mask.
+  And so it always meets her now;
+    The tomb wherein at last he lies
+  Shall bear such carven lips and brow,
+    All save the ever-burning eyes.
+
+  Perchance it is his form alone
+    Doth stroke his hound, at meat doth sit,
+  And, for the soul that was his own,
+    A fiend awhile inhabits it;
+  While he sinks through the fiery throng,
+    Down, to fill an evil bond,
+  Since false conceit of others' wrong
+    Hath wrought him to a sin beyond.
+
+  But she--if when her years were glad
+    Vain fluttering thoughts were hers, that hid
+  Behind that gracious fame she had;
+    If e'er observance hard she did
+  That sinful men might call her saint,--
+    White-handed Pia, dovelike-eyed,--
+  The sick blank hours shall yet acquaint
+    Her heart with all her blameful pride.
+
+  And Death shall find her kneeling low,
+    And lift her to the porphyry stair,
+  And she from ledge to ledge shall go,
+    Stayed by the staff of that last prayer,
+  Until the high, sweet-singing wood
+    Whence folk are rapt to heaven, she win;
+  Therein the unpardoned never stood,
+    Nor may one Sorrow nest therein.
+
+  But through the Tuscan land shall beat
+    Her Sorrow, like a wounded bird;
+  And if her suit at Mary's feet
+    Avail, its moan shall yet be heard
+  By some just poet, who shall shed,
+    Whate'er the theme that leads his rhyme
+  Bright words like tears above her, dead,
+    Entreating of the after time:
+
+  "Among you let her mournful memory linger!
+    Siena bare her, whom Maremma slew;
+  And this dark lord, who gave her maiden finger
+    His ancient gem, the secret only knew."
+
+
+
+
+  TWO MOODS OF FAILURE
+
+  I
+
+  THE LAST CUP OF CANARY
+
+  Sir Harry Lovelock, 1645
+
+
+  So, the powder's low, and the larder's clean,
+    And surrender drapes, with its black impending,
+  All the stage for a sorry and sullen scene:
+    Yet indulge me my whim of a madcap ending!
+
+  Let us once more fill, ere the final chill,
+    Every vein with the glow of the rich canary!
+  Since the sweet hot liquor of life's to spill,
+    Of the last of the cellar what boots be chary?
+
+  Then hear the conclusion: I'll yield my breath,
+    But my leal old house and my good blade never!
+  Better one bitter kiss on the lips of Death
+    Than despoiled Defeat as a wife forever!
+
+  Let the faithful fire hold the walls in ward
+    Till the roof-tree crash! Be the smoke once riven
+  While we flash from the gate like a single sword,
+    True steel to the hilt, though in dull earth driven!
+
+  Do you frown, Sir Richard, above your ruff,
+    In the Holbein yonder? My deed ensures you!
+  For the flame like a fencer shall give rebuff
+    To your blades that blunder, you Roundhead boors, you!
+
+  And my ladies, a-row on the gallery wall,
+    Not a sing-song sergeant or corporal sainted
+  Shall pierce their breasts with his Puritan ball,
+    To annul the charms of the flesh, though painted!
+
+  I have worn like a jewel the life they gave;
+    As the ring in mine ear I can lightly lose it,
+  If my days be done, why, my days were brave!
+    If the end arrive, I as master choose it!
+
+  Then fill to the brim, and a health, I say,
+    To our liege King Charles, and I pray God bless him!
+  'T would amend worse vintage to drink dismay
+    To the clamorous mongrel pack that press him!
+
+  And a health to the fair women, past recall,
+    That like birds astray through the heart's hall flitted;
+  To the lean devil Failure last of all,
+    And the lees in his beard for a fiend outwitted!
+
+
+  II
+
+  THE YOUNG MAN CHARLES STUART REVIEWETH THE TROOPS ON BLACKHEATH
+
+  (Private Constant-in-Tribulation Joyce, _May_, 1660)
+
+
+  We were still as a wood without wind; as 't were set by a spell
+  Stayed the gleam on the steel cap, the glint on the slant petronel.
+  He to left of me drew down his grim grizzled lip with his teeth,--
+  I remember his look; so we grew like dumb trees on the heath.
+
+  But the people,--the people were mad as with store of new wine;
+  Oh, they cheered him, they capped him, they roared as he rode
+        down the line:
+  He that fled us at Worcester, the boy, the green brier-shoot, the son
+  Of the Stuart on whom for his sin the great judgment was done!
+
+  Swam before us the field of our shame, and our souls walked afar;
+  Saw the glory, the blaze of the sun bursting over Dunbar;
+  Saw the faces of friends, in the morn riding jocund to fight;
+  Saw the stern pallid faces again, as we saw them at night!
+
+  "O ye blessed, who died in the Lord! would to God that we too
+  Had so passed, only sad that we ceased his high justice to do,
+  With the words of the psalm on our lips that from Israel's once came,
+  How the Lord is a strong man of war; yea, the Lord is his name!
+
+  "Not for us, not for us! who have served for his kingdom seven years,
+  Yea, and yet other seven have we served, sweating blood, bleeding
+  tears,
+  For the kingdom of God and the saints! Rachel's beauty made bold,
+  Yet we bear but a Leah at last to a hearth that is cold!"
+
+  Burned the fire while I mused, while I gloomed; in the end came a call;
+  Settled o'er me a calm like a cloud, spake a voice still and small:
+  "Take thou Leah to bride, take thou Failure to bed and to board!
+  Thou shalt rear up new strengths at her knees; she is given
+        of the Lord!
+
+  "If with weight of his right hand, with power, he denieth to deal,
+  And the smoke clouds, and thunders of guns, and the lightnings
+        of steel,
+  Shall the cool silent dews of his grace, in a season of peace,
+  Not descend on the land, as of old, for a sign, on the fleece?
+
+  "Hath he cleft not the rock, to the yield of a stream that is sweet?
+  Hath he set in the ribs of the lion no honey for meat?
+  Can he bring not delight to the desert, and buds to the rod?
+  He will shine, he will visit his vine; he hath sworn, he is God!"
+
+  Then I thought of the gate I rode through on the roan that's
+        long dead,--
+  I remember the dawn was but pale, and the stars overhead;
+  Of the babe that is grown to a maid, and of Martha, my wife,
+  And the spring on the wolds far away, and gave thanks for my life!
+
+
+
+
+  THE STORY OF THE "ORIENT"
+
+
+  'T was a pleasant Sunday morning while the spring was in its glory,
+  English spring of gentle glory; smoking by his cottage door,
+  Florid-faced, the man-o'-war's-man told his white-head boy the story,
+  Noble story of Aboukir, told a hundred times before.
+
+  "Here, the _Theseus_--here, the _Vanguard_;" as he spoke
+        each name sonorous,--
+  _Minotaur, Defence, Majestic_, stanch old comrades of the brine,
+  That against the ships of Brucys made their broadsides roar
+       in chorus,--
+  Ranging daisies on his doorstone, deft he mapped the battle-line.
+
+  Mapped the curve of tall three-deckers, deft as might
+       a man left-handed,
+  Who had given an arm to England later on at Trafalgar.
+  While he poured the praise of Nelson to the child with eyes expanded,
+  Bright athwart his honest forehead blushed the scarlet cutlass-scar.
+
+  For he served aboard the _Vanguard_, saw the Admiral blind and bleeding
+  Borne below by silent sailors, borne to die as then they deemed.
+  Every stout heart sick but stubborn, fought the sea-dogs on unheeding,
+  Guns were cleared and manned and cleared, the battle thundered,
+        flashed, and screamed.
+
+  Till a cry swelled loud and louder,--towered on fire the
+        _Orient_ stately,
+  Brucys' flag-ship, she that carried guns a hundred and a score;
+  Then came groping up the hatchway he they counted dead but lately,
+  Came the little one-armed Admiral to guide the fight once more.
+
+  "'Lower the boats!' was Nelson's order."--
+          But the listening boy beside him,
+  Who had followed all his motions with an eager wide blue eye,
+  Nursed upon the name of Nelson till he half had deified him,
+  Here, with childhood's crude consistence, broke the tale
+        to question "Why?"
+
+  For by children facts go streaming in a throng that never pauses,
+  Noted not, till, of a sudden, thought, a sunbeam, gilds the motes,
+  All at once the known words quicken, and the child would deal
+        with causes.
+  Since to kill the French was righteous, why bade Nelson lower
+        the boats?
+
+  Quick the man put by the question. "But the _Orient_, none
+        could save her;
+  We could see the ships, the ensigns, clear as daylight by the flare;
+  And a many leaped and left her; but, God rest 'em! some were braver;
+  Some held by her, firing steady till she blew to God knows where."
+
+  At the shock, he said, the _Vanguard_ shook through all
+        her timbers oaken;
+  It was like the shock of Doomsday,--not a tar but shuddered hard.
+  All was hushed for one strange moment; then that awful calm was broken
+  By the heavy plash that answered the descent of mast and yard.
+
+  So, her cannon still defying, and her colors flaming, flying,
+  In her pit her wounded helpless, on her deck her Admiral dead,
+  Soared the _Orient_ into darkness with her living and her dying:
+  "Yet our lads made shift to rescue three-score souls," the seaman said.
+
+  Long the boy with knit brows wondered o'er that friending
+        of the foeman;
+  Long the man with shut lips pondered; powerless he to tell the cause
+  Why the brother in his bosom that desired the death of no man,
+  In the crash of battle wakened, snapped the bonds of hate like straws.
+
+  While he mused, his toddling maiden drew the daisies to a posy;
+  Mild the bells of Sunday morning rang across the church-yard sod;
+  And, helped on by tender hands, with sturdy feet all bare and rosy,
+  Climbed his babe to mother's breast, as climbs the slow world
+        up to God.
+
+
+
+  A RESURRECTION
+
+
+  _Neither would they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead_.
+
+  I was quick in the flesh, was warm, and the live heart shook my breast;
+    In the market I bought and sold, in the temple I bowed my head.
+  I had swathed me in shows and forms, and was honored above the rest
+    For the sake of the life I lived; nor did any esteem me dead.
+
+  But at last, when the hour was ripe--was it sudden-remembered word?
+    Was it sight of a bird that mounted, or sound of a strain that
+          stole?
+  I was 'ware of a spell that snapped, of an inward strength that
+        stirred,
+    Of a Presence that filled that place; and it shone, and I knew
+          my Soul.
+
+  And the dream I had called my life was a garment about my feet,
+    For the web of the years was rent with the throe of a
+          yearning strong.
+  With a sweep as of winds in heaven, with a rush as of flames that meet,
+    The Flesh and the Spirit clasped; and I cried, "Was I dead so long?"
+
+  I had glimpse of the Secret, flashed through the symbol obscure
+        and mean,
+    And I felt as a fire what erst I repeated with lips of clay;
+  And I knew for the things eternal the things eye hath not seen;
+    Yea, the heavens and the earth shall pass; but they never
+          shall pass away.
+
+  And the miracle on me wrought, in the streets I would straight
+        make known:
+    "When this marvel of mine is heard, without cavil shall men receive
+  Any legend of haloed saint, staring up through the sealed stone!"
+    So I spake in the trodden ways; but behold, there would none believe!
+
+
+
+
+  THE GLORIOUS COMPANY
+
+
+  "Faces, faces, faces of the streaming marching surge,
+    Streaming on the weary road, toward the awful steep,
+  Whence your glow and glory, as ye set to that sharp verge,
+    Faces lit as sunlit stars, shining as ye sweep?
+
+  "Whence this wondrous radiance that ye somehow catch and cast,
+    Faces rapt, that one discerns 'mid the dusky press
+  Herding in dull wonder, gathering fearful to the Vast?
+    Surely all is dark before, night of nothingness!"
+
+  _Lo, the Light!_ (they answer) _O the pure,
+        the pulsing Light,
+    Beating like a heart of life, like a heart of love,
+  Soaring, searching, filling all the breadth and depth and height,
+    Welling, whelming with its peace worlds below, above!_
+
+  "O my soul, how art thou to that living Splendor blind,
+    Sick with thy desire to see even as these men see!--
+  Yet to look upon them is to know that God hath shined:
+    Faces lit as sunlit stars, be all my light to me!"
+
+
+
+
+  THE TRUMPETER
+
+
+  Two ships, alone in sky and sea,
+    Hang clinched, with crash and roar;
+  There is but one--whiche'er it be--
+    Will ever come to shore.
+
+  And will it be the grim black bulk,
+    That towers so evil now?
+  Or will it be The Grace of God,
+    With the angel at her prow?
+
+  The man that breathes the battle's breath
+    May live at last to know;
+  But the trumpeter lies sick to death
+    In the stifling dark below.
+
+  He hears the fight above him rave;
+    He fears his mates must yield;
+  He lies as in a narrow grave
+    Beneath a battle-field.
+
+  His fate will fall before the ship's,
+    Whate'er the ship betide;
+  He lifts the trumpet to his lips
+    As though he kissed a bride.
+
+  "Now blow thy best, blow thy last,
+    My trumpet, for the Right!"--
+  He has sent his soul in one strong blast,
+    To hearten them that fight.
+
+
+
+
+  COMRADES
+
+
+  "Oh, whither, whither, rider toward the west?"
+    "And whither, whither, rider toward the east?"
+  "I rode we ride upon the same high quest,
+    Whereon who enters may not be released;
+
+  "To seek the Cup whose form none ever saw,--
+    A nobler form than e'er was shapen yet,
+  Though million million cups without a flaw,
+    Afire with gems, on princes' boards are set;
+
+  "To seek the Wine whereof none ever had
+    One draught, though many a generous wine flows free,--
+  The spiritual blood that shall make glad
+    The hearts of mighty men that are to be."
+
+  "But shall one find it, brother? Where I ride,
+    Men mock and stare, who never had the dream,
+  Yet hope within my breast has never died."
+    "Nor ever died in mine that trembling gleam."
+
+  "Eastward, I deem: the sun and all good things
+    Are born to bless us of the Orient old."
+  "Westward, I deem: an untried ocean sings
+    Against that coast, 'New shores await the bold.'"
+
+  "God speed or thee or me, so coming men
+    But have the Cup!" "God speed!"--Not once before
+  Their eyes had met, nor ever met again,
+    Yet were they loving comrades evermore.
+
+
+
+
+  THE HOUSE OF HATE
+
+
+  Mine enemy builded well, with the soft blue  hills in sight;
+  But betwixt his house and the hills I builded a house for spite:
+  And the name thereof I set in the stone-work over the gate,
+  With a carving of bats and apes; and I called it the House of Hate.
+
+  And the front was alive with masks of malice and of despair;
+  Horned demons that leered in stone, and women with serpent hair;
+  That whenever his glance would rest on the soft hills far and blue,
+  It must fall on mine evil work, and my hatred should pierce
+        him through.
+
+  And I said, "I will dwell herein, for beholding my heart's desire
+  On my foe;" and I knelt, and fain had brightened the hearth with fire;
+  But the brands they would hiss and die, as with curses a strangled man,
+  And the hearth was cold from the day that the House of Hate began.
+
+  And I called at the open door, "Make ye merry, all friends of mine,
+  In the hall of my House of Hate, where is plentiful store and wine.
+  We will drink unhealth together unto him I have foiled and fooled!"
+  And they stared and they passed me by; but I scorned to be thereby
+        schooled.
+
+  And I ordered my board for feast; and I drank, in the topmost seat,
+  Choice grape from a curious cup; and the first it was wonder-sweet;
+  But the second was bitter indeed, and the third was bitter and black,
+  And the gloom of the grave came on me, and I cast the cup to wrack.
+
+  Alone, I was stark alone, and the shadows were each a fear;
+  And thinly I laughed, but once, for the echoes were strange to hear;
+  And the wind in the hallways howled as a green-eyed wolf might cry,
+  And I heard my heart: I must look on the face of a man, or die!
+
+  So I crept to my mirrored face, and I looked, and I saw it grown
+  (By the light in my shaking hand) to the like of the masks of stone;
+  And with horror I shrieked aloud as I flung my torch and fled,
+  And a fire-snake writhed where it fell; and at midnight
+        the sky was red.
+
+  And at morn, when the House of Hate was a ruin, despoiled of flame,
+  I fell at mine enemy's feet, and besought him to slay my shame;
+  But he looked in mine eyes and smiled, and his eyes were
+        calm and great:
+  "You rave, or have dreamed," he said; "I saw not your House of Hate."
+
+
+
+
+  THE ARROWMAKER
+
+
+  Day in, day out, or sun or rain,
+  Or sallow leaf, or summer grain,
+  Beneath a wintry morning moon
+  Or through red smouldering afternoon,
+  With simple joy, with careful pride,
+  He plies the craft he long has plied:
+  To shape the stave, to set the sting,
+  To fit the shaft with irised wing;
+  And farers by may hear him sing,
+    For still his door is wide:
+    "Laugh and sigh, live and die,--
+    The world swings round; I know not, I,
+    If north or south mine arrows fly!"
+
+  And sometimes, while he works, he dreams,
+  And on his soul a vision gleams:
+  Some storied field fought long ago,
+  Where arrows fell as thick as snow.
+  His breath comes fast, his eyes grow bright,
+  To think upon that ancient fight.
+  Oh, leaping from the strained string
+  Against an armored Wrong to ring,
+  Brave the songs that arrows sing!
+    He weighs the finished flight:
+    "Live and die; by and by
+    The sun kills dark; I know not, I,
+    In what good fight mine arrows fly!"
+
+  Or at the gray hour, weary grown,
+  When curfew o'er the wold is blown,
+  He sees, as in a magic glass,
+  Some lost and lonely mountain-pass;
+  And lo! a sign of deathful rout
+  The mocking vine has wound about,--
+  An earth-fixed arrow by a spring,
+  All greenly mossed, a mouldered thing;
+  That stifled shaft no more shall sing!
+    He shakes his head in doubt.
+    "Laugh and sigh, live and die,--
+    The hand is blind: I know not, I,
+    In what lost pass mine arrows lie!
+    One to east, one to west,
+    Another for the eagle's breast,--
+    The archer and the wind know best!"
+    The stars are in the sky;
+    He lays his arrows by.
+
+
+
+
+  A NEST IN A LYRE
+
+
+  As sign before a playhouse serves
+    A giant Lyre, ornately gilded,
+  On whose convenient coignes and curves
+    The pert brown sparrows late have builded.
+  They flit, and flirt, and prune their wings,
+    Not awed at all by golden glitter,
+  And make among the silent strings
+    Their satisfied ephemeral twitter.
+
+  Ah, somewhat so we perch and flit,
+    And spy some crumb and dash to win it,
+  And with a witty chirping twit
+    Our sheltering Time--there's nothing in it!
+  In Life's large frame, a glorious Lyre's,
+    We nest, content, our season flighty,
+  Nor guess we brush the powerful wires
+    Might witch the stars with music mighty.
+
+
+
+
+  THISBE
+
+
+  The garden within was shaded,
+    And guarded about from sight;
+  The fragrance flowed to the south wind,
+    The fountain leaped to the light.
+
+  And the street without was narrow,
+    And dusty, and hot, and mean;
+  But the bush that bore white roses,
+    She leaned to the fence between:
+
+  And softly she sought a crevice
+    In that barrier blank and tall,
+  And shyly she thrust out through it
+    Her loveliest bud of all.
+
+  And tender to touch, and gracious,
+    And pure as the moon's pure shine,
+  The full rose paled and was perfect,--
+    For whose eyes, for whose lips, but mine!
+
+
+
+
+  THE SPRING BEAUTIES
+
+
+  The Puritan Spring Beauties stood freshly clad for church;
+  A Thrush, white-breasted, o'er them sat singing on his perch.
+  "Happy be! for fair are ye!" the gentle singer told them,
+  But presently a buff-coat Bee came booming up to scold them.
+    "Vanity, oh, vanity!
+    Young maids, beware of vanity!"
+    Grumbled out the buff-coat Bee,
+    Half parson-like, half soldierly.
+
+  The sweet-faced maidens trembled, with pretty, pinky blushes,
+  Convinced that it was wicked to listen to the Thrushes;
+  And when, that shady afternoon, I chanced that way to pass,
+  They hung their little bonnets down and looked into the grass,
+    All because the buff-coat Bee
+    Lectured them so solemnly:--
+    "Vanity, oh, vanity!
+    Young maids, beware of vanity!"
+
+
+
+
+  KINSHIP
+
+
+  A lily grew in the tangle,
+    In a flame red garment dressed,
+  And many a ruby spangle
+    Besprinkled her tawny breast.
+
+  And the silken moth sailed by her
+    With a swift and a snow-white sail;
+  Not a gilt-girt bee came nigh her,
+    Nor a fly in his gay green mail.
+
+  And the bronze-brown wings and the golden,
+    O'er the billowing meadows blown,
+  Were still as by magic holden
+    From the lily that flamed alone;
+
+  Till over the fragrant tangle
+    A wanderer winging went,
+  And with many a ruby spangle
+    Were his tawny vans besprent.
+  And he hovered one moment stilly
+    O'er the thicket, her mazy bower,
+  Then he sank to the heart of the lily,
+    And they seemed but a single flower.
+
+
+
+
+  COMPENSATION
+
+
+  The brook ran laughing from the shade,
+    And in the sunshine danced all day:
+  The starlight and the moonlight made
+    Its glimmering path a Milky Way.
+
+  The blue sky burned, with summer fired;
+    For parching fields, for pining flowers,
+  The spirits of the air desired
+    The brook's bright life to shed in showers.
+
+  It gave its all that thirst to slake;
+    Its dusty channel lifeless lay;
+  Now softest flowers, white-foaming, make
+    Its winding bed a Milky Way.
+
+
+
+
+  WHEN WILLOWS GREEN
+
+
+  When goldenly the willows green,
+    And, mirrored in the sunset pool,
+  Hang wavering, wild-rose clouds between:
+    When robins call in twilights cool:
+        What is it we await?
+        Who lingers and is late?
+  What strange unrest, what yearning stirs us all
+  When willows green, when robins call?
+
+  When fields of flowering grass respire
+    A sweet that seems the breath of Peace,
+  And liquid-voiced the thrushes choir,
+    Oh, whence the sense of glad release?
+        What is it life uplifts?
+        Who entered, bearing gifts?
+  What floods from heaven the being overpower
+  When thrushes choir, when grasses flower?
+
+
+
+
+  AT THE PARTING OF THE WAYS
+
+  (AD COMITEM JUNIOREM)
+
+
+  Comrade Youth! Sit down with me
+  Underneath the summer tree,
+  Cool green dome whose shade is sweet,
+  Where the sunny roadways meet,
+  See, the ancient finger-post,
+  Silver-bleached with rain and shine,
+  Warns us like a noon-day ghost:
+  That way's yours, and this way's mine!
+  I would hold you with delays
+  Here at parting of the ways.
+
+  Hold you! I as well might look
+  To detain the racing brook
+  With regrets and grievance tender,
+  As my comrade swift and slender,
+  Shy, capricious, all of spring!
+  Catch the wind with blossoms laden,
+  Catch the wild bird on the wing,
+  Catch the heart of boy or maiden!
+
+  Yet I'll hold your image fast,
+  As this hour I saw you last,--
+  As with staff in hand you sat,
+  Soft curls putting forth defiant
+  From the tilted Mercury's hat,
+  Wreathen with the wilding grace
+  Of the fresh-leaved vine and pliant,
+  Stealing down to see your face.
+  Eyes of pleasance, lips of laughter,
+  I shall hoard you long hereafter;
+  Very dear shall be the days
+  Ere the parting of the ways!
+
+  Shall you deem them dear, in truth,
+  Days when we, o'er hill and hollow,
+  Trudged together, Comrade Youth?
+  Ah, you dream of days to follow!
+  Hand in hand we jogged along;
+  I would fetch from out my scrip,
+  Crust or jest or antique song,--
+  Live and lovely, on your lip,
+  Such poor needments as I had
+  Were as yours; you made me glad.
+  --Lo, the dial! No prayer stays
+  Time, at parting of the ways!
+
+  This gold memory--rings it true?
+  Half for me and half for you.
+  Cleave and share it. Now, good sooth,
+  God be with you, Comrade Youth!
+
+
+
+
+  THE FAIR GRAY LADY
+
+
+  When the charm at last is fled
+    From the woodland stark and pale,
+  And like shades of glad hours dead
+    Whirl the leaves before the gale:
+
+  When against the western fire
+    Darkens many an empty nest,
+  Like a thwarted heart's desire
+    That in prime was hardly guessed:
+
+  Then the fair gray Lady leans,
+    Lingering, o'er the faded grass,
+  Still the soul of all the scenes
+    Once she graced, a golden lass.
+
+  O'er the Year's discrowned sleep,
+    Dear as in her earlier day,
+  She her bending watch doth keep,
+    She the Goldenrod grown gray.
+
+
+
+
+  THE ENCOUNTER
+
+
+  There's a wood-way winding high,
+  Roofed far up with light-green flicker,
+  Save one midmost star of sky.
+  Underfoot 'tis all pale brown
+  With the dead leaves matted down
+  One on other, thick and thicker;
+  Soft, but springing to the tread.
+  There a youth late met a maid
+  Running lightly,--oh, so fleetly!
+  "Whence art thou?" the herd-boy said.
+  Either side her long hair swayed,
+  Half a tress and half a braid,
+  Colored like the soft dead leaf,
+  As she answered, laughing sweetly,
+  On she ran, as flies the swallow;
+  He could not choose but follow
+  Though it had been to his grief.
+
+  "I have come up from the valley,--
+  From the valley!" Once he caught her,
+  Swerving down a sidelong alley,
+  For a moment, by the hand.
+  "Tell me, tell me," he besought her,
+  "Sweetest, I would understand
+  Why so cold thy palm, that slips
+  From me like the shy cold minnow?
+  The wood is warm, and smells of fern,
+  And below the meadows burn.
+  Hard to catch and hard to win, oh!
+  Why are those brown finger tips
+  Crinkled as with lines of water?"
+
+  Laughing while she featly footed,
+  With the herd-boy hasting after,
+  Sprang she on a trunk uprooted,
+  Clung she by a roping vine;
+  Leaped behind a birch, and told,
+  Still eluding, through its fine,
+  Mocking, slender, leafy laughter,
+  Why her finger tips were cold:
+
+  "I went down to tease the brook,
+  With her fishes, there below;
+  She comes dancing, thou must know,
+  And the bushes arch above her;
+  But the seeking sunbeams look,
+  Dodging through the wind-blown cover,
+  Find and kiss her into stars.
+  Silvery veins entwine and crook
+  Where a stone her tripping bars;
+  There be smooth, clear sweeps, and swirls
+  Bubbling up crisp drops like pearls.
+  There I lie, along the rocks
+  Thick with greenest slippery moss,
+  And I have in hand a strip
+  Of gray, pliant, dappled bark;
+  And I comb her liquid locks
+  Till her tangling currents cross;
+  And I have delight to hark
+  To the chiding of her lip,
+  Taking on the talking stone
+  With each turn another tone.
+  Oh, to set her wavelets bickering!
+  Oh, to hear her laughter simple,
+  See her fret and flash and dimple!
+  Ha, ha, ha!" The woodland rang
+  With the rippling through the flickering.
+  At the birch the herd-boy sprang.
+
+  On a sudden something wound
+  Vine-like round his throbbing throat;
+  On a sudden something smote
+  Sharply on his longing lips,
+  Stung him as the birch bough whips:
+  Was it kiss or was it blow?
+  Never after could he know;
+  She was gone without a sound.
+
+  Never after could he see
+  In the wood or in the mead,
+  Or in any company
+  Of the rustic mortal maids,
+  Her with acorn-colored braids;
+  Never came she to his need.
+  Never more the lad was merry,
+  Strayed apart, and learned to dream,
+  Feeding on the tart wild berry;
+  Murmuring words none understood,--
+  Words with music of the wood,
+  And with music of the stream.
+
+
+
+
+  SUMMER HOURS
+
+
+  Hours aimless-drifting as the milkweed's down
+    In seeming, still a seed of joy ye bear
+    That steals into the soul when unaware,
+  And springs up Memory in the stony town.
+
+
+
+
+  LOVE UNSUNG
+
+
+  Seven jewelled rays has the Sun fast bound
+      In his arrow of blinding sheen;
+  But he quickens the breast of the fruitful ground
+      With a subtlest ray unseen.
+
+  And the rainbow moods of this love of ours
+      I may blend in the song I bring;
+  But the magic that makes life laugh with flowers
+      Is the love that I cannot sing.
+
+
+
+
+  THE WISH FOR A CHAPLET
+
+
+  Vineleaf and rose I would my chaplet make:
+  I would my word were wine for all men's sake.
+  Pure from the pressing of the stainless feet
+  Of unblamed Hours, and for an altar meet.
+
+  Vineleaf and rose: I would, had I the art,
+  Distil, to lasting sweet, Joy's rosy heart,
+  That no sere autumn should its fragrance wrong,
+  Closed in the crystal glass of slender song.
+
+
+
+
+  SONNETS
+
+
+
+
+  THE TORCH-RACE
+
+
+  Brave racer, who hast sped the living light
+  With throat outstretched and every nerve a-strain,
+  Now on thy left hand labors gray-faced Pain,
+  And Death hangs close behind thee on the right.
+  Soon flag the flying feet, soon fails the sight,
+  With every pulse the gaunt pursuers gain;
+  And all thy splendor of strong life must wane
+  And set into the mystery of night.
+
+  Yet fear not, though in falling, blindness hide
+  Whose hand shall snatch, before it scars the sod,
+  The light thy lessening grasp no more controls:
+  Truth's rescuer, Truth shall instantly provide:
+  This is the torch-race game, that noblest souls
+  Play on through time beneath the eyes of God.
+
+
+
+
+  TO SLEEP
+
+
+  All slumb'rous images that be, combined,
+  To this white couch and cool shall woo thee, Sleep!
+  First will I think on fields of grasses deep
+  In gray-green flower, o'er which the transient wind
+  Runs like a smile; and next will call to mind
+  How glistening poplar-tops, when breezes creep
+  Among their leaves, a tender motion keep,
+  Stroking the sky, like touch of lovers kind.
+
+  Ah, having felt thy calm kiss on mine eyes,
+  All night inspiring thy divine pure breath,
+  I shall awake as into godhood born,
+  And with a fresh, undaunted soul arise,
+  Clear as the blue convolvulus at morn.
+  --Dear bedfellow, deals thus thy brother, Death?
+
+
+
+
+  SISTER SNOW
+
+
+  Praised be our Lord (to echo the sweet phrase
+  Of saintly Francis) for our sister Snow:
+  Whose soft, soft coming never man may know
+  By any sound; whose down-light touch allays
+  All fevers of worn earth. She clothes the days
+  In garments without spot, and hence doth go
+  Her noiseless shuttle swiftly to and fro,
+  And very pure, and pleasant, are her ways.
+
+  But yesterday, how loveless looked the skies!
+  How cold the sun's last glance, and unbenign,
+  Across the field forsaken, russet-leaved!
+  Now pearly peace on all the landscape lies.
+  --Wast thou not sent us, Sister, for a sign
+  Of that vast Mercy of God, else unconceived?
+
+
+
+
+  RETROSPECT
+
+
+  "Backward," he said, "dear heart I like to look
+  To those half-spring, half-winter days, when first
+  We drew together, ere the leaf-buds burst.
+  Sunbeams were silver yet, keen gusts yet shook
+  The boughs. Have you remembered that kind book,
+  That for our sake Galeotto's part rehearsed,
+  (The friend of lovers,--this time blessed, not cursed!)
+  And that best hour, when reading we forsook?"
+
+  She, listening, wore the smile a mother wears
+  At childish fancies needless to control;
+  Yet felt a fine, hid pain with pleasure blend.
+  Better it seemed to think that love of theirs,
+  Native as breath, eternal as the soul,
+  Knew no beginning, could not have an end.
+
+
+
+
+  THE CONTRAST
+
+
+  He loved her; having felt his love begin
+  With that first look,--as lover oft avers.
+  He made pale flowers his pleading ministers,
+  Impressed sweet music, drew the springtime in
+  To serve his suit; but when he could not win,
+  Forgot her face and those gray eyes of hers;
+  And at her name his pulse no longer stirs,
+  And life goes on as though she had not been.
+
+  She never loved him; but she loved Love so,
+  So reverenced Love, that all her being shook
+  At his demand whose entrance she denied.
+  Her thoughts of him such tender color took
+  As western skies that keep the afterglow.
+  The words he spoke were with her till she died.
+
+
+
+
+  A MYSTERY
+
+
+  That sunless day no living shadow swept
+  Across the hills, fleet shadow chasing light,
+  Twin of the sailing cloud: but, mists wool white,
+  Slow-stealing mists, on those heaved shoulders crept,
+  And wrought about the strong hills while they slept
+  In witches' wise, and rapt their forms from sight.
+  Dreams were they; less than dream, the noblest height
+  And farthest; and the chilly woodland wept.
+
+  A sunless day and sad: yet all the while
+  Within the grave green twilight of the wood,
+  inscrutable, immutable, apart,
+  Hearkening the brook, whose song she understood,
+  The secret birch-tree kept her silver smile,
+  Strange as the peace that gleams at sorrow's heart.
+
+
+
+
+  TRIUMPH
+
+
+  This windy sunlit morning after rain,
+  The wet bright laurel laughs with beckoning gleam
+  In the blown wood, whence breaks the wild white stream
+  Rushing and flashing, glorying in its gain;
+  Nor swerves nor parts, but with a swift disdain
+  O'erleaps the boulders lying in long dream,
+  Lapped in cold moss; and in its joy doth seem
+  A wood-born creature bursting from a chain.
+
+  And "Triumph, triumph, triumph!" is its hoarse
+  Fierce-whispered word. O fond, and dost not know
+  Thy triumph on another wise must be,--
+  To render all the tribute of thy force,
+  And lose thy little being in the flow
+  Of the unvaunting river toward the sea!
+
+
+
+
+  IN WINTER, WITH THE BOOK WE READ IN SPRING
+
+
+  The blackberry's bloom, when last we went this way,
+  Veiled all her bowsome rods with trembling white;
+  The robin's sunset breast gave forth delight
+  At sunset hour; the wind was warm with May.
+  Armored in ice the sere stems arch to-day,
+  Each tiny thorn encased and argent bright;
+  Where clung the birds that long have taken flight,
+  Dead songless leaves cling fluttering on the spray.
+
+  O hand in mine, that mak'st all paths the same,
+  Being paths of peace, where falls nor chill nor gloom,
+  Made sweet with ardors of an inward spring!
+  I hold thee--frozen skies to rosy flame
+  Are turned, and snows to living snows of bloom,
+  And once again the gold-brown thrushes sing.
+
+
+
+
+  SERE WISDOM
+
+
+  I had remembrance of a summer morn,
+  When all the glistening field was softly stirred
+  And like a child's in happy sleep I heard
+  The low and healthful breathing of the corn.
+  Late when the sumach's red was dulled and worn,
+  And fainter grew the trite and troublous word
+  Of tristful cricket, that replaced the bird,
+  I sought the slope, and found a waste forlorn.
+
+  Against that cold clear west, whence winter peers,
+  All spectral stood the bleached stalks thin-leaved,
+  Dry as papyrus kept a thousand years,
+  And hissing whispered to the wind that grieved,
+  _It was a dream--we have no goodly ears--
+  There was no summer-time--deceived! deceived!_
+
+
+
+
+  ISOLATION
+
+
+  White fog around, soft snow beneath the tread,
+  All sunless, windless, tranced, the morning lay;
+  All noiseless, trackless, new, the well-known way.
+  The silence weighed upon the sense; in dread,
+  "Alone, I am alone," I shuddering said,
+  "And wander in a region where no ray
+  Has ever shone, and as on earth's first day
+  Or last, my kind are not yet born or dead."
+
+  Yet not afar, meanwhile, there faltered feet
+  Like mine, through that wide mystery of the snow,
+  Nor could the old accustomed paths divine;
+  And even as mine, unheard spake voices low,
+  And hearts were near, that as my own heart beat,
+  Warm hands, and faces fashioned like to mine.
+
+
+
+
+  THE LOST DRYAD
+
+  (TO EDITH M. THOMAS)
+
+
+  Into what beech or silvern birch, O friend
+  Suspected ever of a dryad strain,
+  Hast crept at last, delighting to regain
+  Thy sylvan house? Now whither shall I wend,
+  Or by what winged post my greeting send,
+  Bird, butterfly, or bee? Shall three moons wane,
+  And yet not found?--Ah, surely it was pain
+  Of old, for mortal youth his heart to lend
+  To any hamadryad! In his hour
+  Of simple trust, wild impulse him bereaves:
+  She flees, she seeks her strait enmossed bower
+  And while he, searching, softly calls, and grieves,
+  Oblivious, high above she laughs in leaves,
+  Or patters tripping talk to the quick shower.
+
+
+
+
+  A MEMORY
+
+
+  Though pent in stony streets, 'tis joy to know,
+  'Tis joy, although we breathe a fainter air,
+  The spirit of those places far and fair
+  That we have loved, abides; and fern-scents flow
+  Out of the wood's heart still, and shadows grow
+  Long on remembered roads as warm days wear;
+  And still the dark wild water, in its lair,
+  The narrow chasm, stirs blindly to and fro.
+
+  Delight is in the sea-gull's dancing wings,
+  And sunshine wakes to rose the ruddy hue
+  Of rocks; and from her tall wind-slanted stem
+  A soft bright plume the goldenrod outflings
+  Along the breeze, above a sea whose blue
+  Is like the light that kindles through a gem.
+
+
+
+
+  THE GIFTS OF THE OAK
+
+  (FOR THE SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL)
+
+
+  'There needs no crown to mark the forest's king.'
+  Thus, long ago thou sang'st the sound-heart tree
+  Sacred to sovereign Jove, and dear to thee
+  Since first, a venturous youth with eyes of spring,--
+  Whose pilgrim-staff each side put forth a wing,--
+  Beneath the oak thou lingeredst lovingly
+  To crave, as largess of his majesty,
+  Firm-rooted strength, and grace of leaves that sing.
+
+  He gave; we thank him! Graciousness as grave,
+  And power as easeful as his own he gave;
+  Long broodings rich with sun, and laughters kind;
+  And singing leaves, whose later bronze is dear
+  As the first amber of the budding year,--
+  Whose voices answer the autumnnal wind.
+
+
+
+
+  THE STRAYED SINGER
+
+  (MATTHEW ARNOLD)
+
+
+  He wandered from us long, oh, long ago,
+  Rare singer, with the note unsatisfied;
+  Into what charmed wood, what shade star-eyed
+  With the wind's April darlings, none may know.
+  We lost him. Songless, one with seed to sow,
+  Keen-smiling toiler, came in place, and plied
+  His strength in furrowed field till eventide,
+  And passed to slumber when the sun was low.
+
+  But now,--as though Death spoke some mystic word
+  Solving a spell,--present to thought appears
+  The morn's estray, not him we saw but late;
+  And on his lips the strain that once we heard,
+  And in his hand, cool as with Springtime's tears,
+  The melancholy wood-flowers delicate.
+
+
+
+
+  THE IMMORTAL WORD
+
+
+  One soiled and shamed and foiled in this world's fight,
+  Deserter from the host of God, that here
+  Still darkly struggles,--waked from death in fear,
+  And strove to screen his forehead from the white
+  And blinding glory of the awful Light,
+  The revelation and reproach austere.
+  Then with strong hand outstretched a Shape drew near,
+  Bright-browed, majestic, armored like a knight.
+
+  "Great Angel, servant of the Highest, why
+  Stoop'st thou to me?" although his lips were mute,
+  His eyes inquired. The Shining One replied:
+  "Thy Book, thy birth, life of thy life am I,
+  Son of thy soul, thy youth's forgotten fruit.
+  We two go up to judgment side by side."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Ride to the Lady, by Helen Gray Cone
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Ride to the Lady, by Helen Gray Cone
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+Title: Ride to the Lady
+
+Author: Helen Gray Cone
+
+Release Date: December, 2005  [EBook #9559]
+[This file was first posted on October 8, 2003]
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+Language: English
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+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, RIDE TO THE LADY ***
+
+
+
+
+E-text prepared by Ted Garvin, Josephine Paolucci, and Project Gutenberg
+Distributed Proofreaders
+
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+
+
+THE RIDE TO THE LADY
+
+And Other Poems
+
+BY
+
+HELEN GRAY CONE
+
+1891
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+The Ride to the Lady
+
+The First Guest
+
+Silence
+
+Arraignment
+
+The Going Out of the Tide
+
+King Raedwald
+
+Ivo of Chartres
+
+Madonna Pia
+
+Two Moods of Failure
+
+The Story of the "Orient"
+
+A Resurrection
+
+The Glorious Company
+
+The Trumpeter
+
+Comrades
+
+The House of Hate
+
+The Arrowmaker
+
+A Nest in a Lyre
+
+Thisbe
+
+The Spring Beauties
+
+Kinship
+
+Compensation
+
+When Willows Green
+
+At the Parting of the Ways
+
+The Fair Gray Lady
+
+The Encounter.
+
+Summer Hours
+
+Love Unsung
+
+The Wish for a Chaplet
+
+Sonnets:
+The Torch Race
+To Sleep
+Sister Snow
+The Contrast
+A Mystery
+Triumph
+In Winter, with the Book we had in Spring
+Sere Wisdom
+Isolation
+The Lost Dryad
+The Gifts of the Oak
+The Strayed Singer
+The Immortal Word
+
+
+
+
+THE RIDE TO THE LADY
+
+
+"Now since mine even is come at last,--
+For I have been the sport of steel,
+And hot life ebbeth from me fast,
+And I in saddle roll and reel,--
+Come bind me, bind me on my steed!
+Of fingering leech I have no need!"
+The chaplain clasped his mailed knee.
+"Nor need I more thy whine and thee!
+No time is left my sins to tell;
+But look ye bind me, bind me well!"
+They bound him strong with leathern thong,
+For the ride to the lady should be long.
+
+Day was dying; the poplars fled,
+Thin as ghosts, on a sky blood-red;
+Out of the sky the fierce hue fell,
+And made the streams as the streams of hell.
+All his thoughts as a river flowed,
+Flowed aflame as fleet he rode,
+Onward flowed to her abode,
+Ceased at her feet, mirrored her face.
+(Viewless Death apace, apace,
+Rode behind him in that race.)
+
+"Face, mine own, mine alone,
+Trembling lips my lips have known,
+Birdlike stir of the dove-soft eyne
+Under the kisses that make them mine!
+Only of thee, of thee, my need!
+Only to thee, to thee, I speed!"
+The Cross flashed by at the highway's turn;
+In a beam of the moon the Face shone stern.
+
+Far behind had the fight's din died;
+The shuddering stars in the welkin wide
+Crowded, crowded, to see him ride.
+The beating hearts of the stars aloof
+kept time to the beat of the horse's hoof,
+"What is the throb that thrills so sweet?
+Heart of my lady, I feel it beat!"
+But his own strong pulse the fainter fell,
+Like the failing tongue of a hushing bell.
+The flank of the great-limbed steed was wet
+Not alone with the started sweat.
+
+Fast, and fast, and the thick black wood
+Arched its cowl like a black friar's hood;
+Fast, and fast, and they plunged therein,--
+But the viewless rider rode to win,
+Out of the wood to the highway's light
+Galloped the great-limbed steed in fright;
+The mail clashed cold, and the sad owl cried,
+And the weight of the dead oppressed his side.
+
+Fast, and fast, by the road he knew;
+And slow, and slow, the stars withdrew;
+And the waiting heaven turned weirdly blue,
+As a garment worn of a wizard grim.
+He neighed at the gate in the morning dim.
+
+She heard no sound before her gate,
+Though very quiet was her bower.
+All was as her hand had left it late:
+The needle slept on the broidered vine,
+Where the hammer and spikes of the passion-flower
+Her fashioning did wait.
+On the couch lay something fair,
+With steadfast lips and veiled eyne;
+
+But the lady was not there,
+On the wings of shrift and prayer,
+Pure as winds that winnow snow,
+Her soul had risen twelve hours ago.
+The burdened steed at the barred gate stood,
+No whit the nearer to his goal.
+Now God's great grace assoil the soul
+That went out in the wood!
+
+
+
+
+THE FIRST GUEST
+
+
+When the house is finished, Death enters.
+_Eastern Proverb_
+
+Life's House being ready all,
+Each chamber fair and dumb,
+Ere life, the Lord, is come
+With pomp into his hall,--
+Ere Toil has trod the floors,
+Ere Love has lit the fires,
+Or young great-eyed Desires
+Have, timid, tried the doors;
+Or from east-window leaned
+One Hope, to greet the sun,
+Or one gray Sorrow screened
+Her sight against the west,--
+Then enters the first guest,
+The House of life being done.
+
+He waits there in the shade.
+I deem he is Life's twin,
+For whom the house was made.
+Whatever his true name,
+Be sure, to enter in
+He has both key and claim.
+
+The daybeams, free of fear,
+Creep drowsy toward his feet;
+His heart were heard to beat,
+Were any there to hear;
+Ah, not for ends malign,
+Like wild thing crouched in lair,
+Or watcher of a snare,
+But with a friend's design
+He lurks in shadow there!
+
+He goes not to the gates
+To welcome any other,
+Nay, not Lord Life, his brother;
+But still his hour awaits
+Each several guest to find
+Alone, yea, quite alone;
+Pacing with pensive mind
+The cloister's echoing stone,
+Or singing, unaware,
+At the turning of the stair
+Tis truth, though we forget,
+In Life's House enters none
+Who shall that seeker shun,
+Who shall not so be met.
+"Is this mine hour?" each saith.
+"So be it, gentle Death!"
+Each has his way to end,
+Encountering this friend.
+Griefs die to memories mild;
+Hope turns a weaned child;
+Love shines a spirit white,
+With eyes of deepened light.
+When many a guest has passed,
+Some day 'tis Life's at last
+To front the face of Death.
+Then, casements closed, men say:
+"Lord Life is gone away;
+He went, we trust and pray,
+To God, who gave him breath."
+Beginning, End, He is:
+Are not these sons both His?
+Lo, these with Him are one!
+To phrase it so were best:
+God's self is that first Guest,
+The House of Life being done!
+
+
+
+
+SILENCE
+
+
+Why should I sing of earth or heaven? not rather rest,
+Powerless to speak of that which hath my soul possessed,--
+For full possession dumb? Yea, Silence, that were best.
+
+And though for what it failed to sound I brake the string,
+And dashed the sweet lute down, a too much fingered thing,
+And found a wild new voice,--oh, still, why should I sing?
+
+An earth-song could I make, strange as the breath of earth,
+Filled with the great calm joy of life and death and birth?
+Yet, were it less than this, the song were little worth.
+
+For this the fields caress; brown clods tell each to each;
+Sad-colored leaves have sense whereto I cannot reach;
+Spiced everlasting-flowers outstrip my range of speech.
+
+A heaven-song could I make, all fire that yet was peace,
+And tenderness not lost, though glory did increase?
+But were it less than this, 't were well the song should cease.
+
+For this the still west saith, with plumy flames bestrewn;
+Heaven's body sapphire-clear, at stirless height of noon;
+The cloud where lightnings pulse, beside the untroubled moon.
+
+I will not sing of earth or heaven, but rather rest,
+Rapt by the face of heaven, and hold on earth's warm breast.
+Hushed lips, a beating heart, yea, Silence, that were best.
+
+
+
+
+ARRAIGNMENT
+
+
+"Not ye who have stoned, not ye who have smitten us," cry
+The sad, great souls, as they go out hence into dark,
+"Not ye we accuse, though for you was our passion borne;
+And ye we reproach not, who silently passed us by.
+We forgive blind eyes and the ears that would not hark,
+The careless and causeless hate and the shallow scorn.
+
+"But ye, who have seemed to know us, have seen and heard;
+Who have set us at feasts and have crowned with the costly rose;
+Who have spread us the purple of praises beneath our feet;
+Yet guessed not the word that we spake was a living word,
+Applauding the sound,--we account you as worse than foes!
+We sobbed you our message; ye said, 'It is song, and sweet!'"
+
+
+
+
+THE GOING OUT OF THE TIDE
+
+
+The eastern heaven was all faint amethyst,
+Whereon the moon hung dreaming in the mist;
+To north yet drifted one long delicate plume
+Of roseate cloud; like snow the ocean-spume.
+
+Now when the first foreboding swiftly ran
+Through the loud-glorying sea that it began
+To lose its late gained lordship of the land,
+Uprose the billow like an angered man,
+And flung its prone strength far along the sand;
+Almost, almost to the old bound, the dark
+And taunting triumph-mark.
+
+But no, no, no! and slow, and slow, and slow,
+Like a heart losing hold, this wave must go,--
+Must go, must go,--dragged heavily back, back,
+Beneath the next wave plunging on its track,
+Charging, with thunderous and defiant shout,
+To fore-determined rout.
+
+Again, again the unexhausted main
+Renews fierce effort, drawing force unguessed
+From awful deeps of its mysterious breast:
+Like arms of passionate protest, tossed in vain,
+The spray upflings above the billow's crest.
+Again the appulse, again the backward strain--
+Till ocean must have rest.
+
+With one abandoned movement, swift and wild,--
+As though bowed head and outstretched arms it laid
+On the earth's lap, soft sobbing,--hushed and stayed,
+The great sea quiets, like a soothed child.
+Ha! what sharp memory clove the calm, and drave
+This last fleet furious wave?
+
+On, on, endures the struggle into night,
+Ancient as Time, yet fresh as the fresh hour;
+As oft repeated since the birth of light
+As the strong agony and mortal fight
+Of human souls, blind-reaching, with the Power
+Aloof, unmoved, impossible to cross,
+Whose law is seeming loss.
+
+Low-sunken from the longed-for triumph-mark;
+The spent sea sighs as one that grieves in sleep.
+The unveiled moon along the rippling plain
+Casts many a keen, cold, shifting silvery spark,
+Wild as the pulses of strange joy, that leap
+Even in the quick of pain.
+
+And she compelling, she that stands for law,--
+As law for Will eternal,--perfect, clear,
+And uncompassionate shines: to her appear
+Vast sequences close-linked without a flaw.
+All past despairs of ocean unforgot,
+All raptures past, serene her light she gives,
+The moon too high for pity, since she lives
+Aware that loss is not.
+
+
+
+
+KING RAEDWALD
+
+
+Will you hear now the speech of King Raedwald,--heathen Raedwald,
+      the simple yet wise?
+He, the ruler of North-folk and South-folk, a man open-browed
+      as the skies,
+Held the eyes of the eager Italians with his blue, bold,
+      Englishman's eyes.
+
+In his hall, on his throne, so he sat, with the light of the fire
+      on him full:
+Colored bright as the ring of red gold on his hand, fit to buffet
+      a bull,
+Was the mane that grew down on his neck, was the beard he would
+      pondering pull.
+
+To the priests, to the eager Italians, thus fearless less he poured
+      his free speech;
+"O my honey-tongued fathers, I turn not away from the faith that ye
+      teach!
+Not the less hath a man many moods, and may ask a religion for each.
+
+"Grant that all things are well with the realm on a delicate day
+      of the spring,
+Easter month, time of hopes and of swallows!
+       The praises, the psalms that ye sing,
+As in pleasant accord they float heavenward, are good in the ears
+      of the king.
+
+"Then the heart bubbles forth with clear waters, to the time
+      of this wonder-word Peace,
+From the chanting and preaching whereof ye who serve the
+      white Christ never cease;
+And your curly, soft incense ascending enwraps my content
+      like a fleece.
+
+"But a churl comes adrip from the rivers, pants me out, fallen
+      spent on the floor,
+'O King Raedwald, Northumberland marches, and to-morrow knocks
+      hard at thy door,
+Hot for melting thy crown on the hearth!'
+        Then commend me to Woden and Thor!
+
+"Could I sit then and listen to preachments on turning the cheek
+      to the blow,
+And saying a prayer for the smiter, and holding my seen treasure low
+For the sake of a treasure unseen? By the sledge of the Thunderer, no!
+
+"For my thought flashes out as a sword, cleaving counsel as
+      clottage of cream;
+And your incense and chanting are but as the smoke of burnt
+      towns and the scream;
+And I quaff me the thick mead of triumph from enemies' skulls
+      in my dream!
+
+"And 'tis therefore this day I resolve me,--for King Raedwald
+      will cringe not, nor lie!--
+I will bring back the altar  of Woden; in the temple will have it,
+      hard by
+The new altar of this your white Christ. As my mood may decide,
+      worship I!"
+
+So he spake in his large self-reliance,--he, a man open-browed
+      as the skies;
+Would not measure his soul by a standard that was womanish-weak
+      to his eyes,
+Smite his breast and go on with his sinning,--savage Raedwald,
+      the simple yet wise!
+
+And the centuries bloom o'er his barrow. But for us,--have we
+      mastered it quite,
+The old riddle, that sweet is strong's outcome, the old marvel,
+      that meekness is might,
+That the child is the leader of lions, that forgiveness is force
+      at its height?
+
+When we summon the shade of rude Raedwald, in his candor how
+      king-like he towers!
+Have the centuries, over his slumber, only borne sterile falsehoods
+      for flowers?
+Pray you, what if Christ found him the nobler, having weighed his
+      frank manhood with ours?
+
+
+
+
+IVO OF CHARTRES
+
+
+Now may it please my lord, Louis the king,
+  Lily of Christ and France! riding his quest,
+I, Bishop Ivo, saw a wondrous thing.
+
+  There was no light of sun left in the west,
+And slowly did the moon's new light increase.
+  Heaven, without cloud, above the near hill's crest,
+Lay passion purple in a breathless peace.
+  Stars started like still tears, in rapture shed,
+Which without consciousness the lids release.
+
+  All steadily, one little sparkle red,
+Afar, drew close. A woman's form grew up
+  Out of the dimness, tall, with queen-like head,
+And in one hand was fire; in one, a cup.
+  Of aspect grave she was, with eyes upraised,
+As one whose thoughts perpetually did sup
+  At the Lord's table.
+
+                 While the cresset blazed,
+Her I regarded. "Daughter, whither bent,
+  And wherefore?" As by speech of man amazed,
+One moment her deep look to me she lent;
+  Then, in a voice of hymn-like, solemn fall,
+Calm, as by role, she spake out her intent:
+
+  "I in my cruse bear water, wherewithal
+To quench the flames of Hell; and with my fire
+  I Paradise would burn: that hence no small
+Fear shall impel, and no mean hope shall hire,
+  Men to serve God as they have served of yore;
+But to his will shall set their whole desire,
+  For love, love, love alone, forevermore!"
+
+And "love, love, love," rang round her as she passed
+  From sight, with mystic murmurs o'er and o'er
+Reverbed from hollow heaven, as from some vast,
+  Deep-colored, vaulted, ocean-answering shell.
+
+I, Ivo, had no power to ban or bless,
+  But was as one withholden by a spell.
+Forward she fared in lofty loneliness,
+Urged on by an imperious inward stress,
+  To waste fair Eden, and to drown fierce Hell.
+
+
+
+
+MADONNA PIA
+
+
+Ricordati di me, che son la Pia.
+Siena mi fe; disfecomi Maremma;
+Salsi colui, che, inanellata pria,
+Disposato m'avea colla sua gemma.
+
+_Purgatorio_, Canto V.
+
+
+To westward lies the unseen sea,
+  Blue sea the live winds wander o'er.
+The many-colored sails can flee,
+  And leave the dead, low-lying shore.
+Her longing does not seek the main,
+  Her face turns northward first at morn;
+There, crowning all the wide champaign,
+  Siena stood, where she was born.
+
+Siena stands, and still shall stand;
+  She ne'er shall see or town or tower.
+Warm life and beauty, hand in hand,
+  Steal farther from her hour by hour.
+Yet forth she leans, with trembling knees,
+  And northward will she stare and stare
+Through that thick wall of cypress-trees,
+  And sigh adown the stirless air:
+
+"Shall no remembrance in Siena linger
+  Of me, once fair, whom slow Maremma slays?
+As well he knows, whose ring upon my finger
+  Hath sealed for his alone mine earthly days!"
+
+From wilds where shudders through the weeds
+  The dull, mean-headed, silent snake,
+Like voiceless doubt that creeps and breeds;
+  From swamps where sluggish waters take,
+As lives unblest a passing love,
+  The flag-flower's image in the spring,
+Or seem, when flits the bird above,
+  To stir within with shadowed wing,
+
+A Presence mounts in pallid mist
+  To fold her close: she breathes its breath;
+She waxes wan, by Fever kissed,
+  Who weds her for his master, Death,
+Aside are set her dimmed hopes all,
+  She counts no more the uncurrent hoard;
+On gray Death's neck she fain would fall,
+  To own him for her proper lord.
+
+She minds the journey here by night:
+  When some red sudden torch would blaze,
+She saw by fits, with childish fright,
+  The cork-trees twist beside the ways.
+Like dancing demon shapes they showed,
+  With malice drunk; the bat beat by,
+The owlet sobbed; on, on they rode,
+  She knew not where, she knows not why.
+
+For Nello--when in piteous wise
+  She lifted up her look to ask,
+Except the ever-burning eyes
+  His face was like a marble mask.
+And so it always meets her now;
+  The tomb wherein at last he lies
+Shall bear such carven lips and brow,
+  All save the ever-burning eyes.
+
+Perchance it is his form alone
+  Doth stroke his hound, at meat doth sit,
+And, for the soul that was his own,
+  A fiend awhile inhabits it;
+While he sinks through the fiery throng,
+  Down, to fill an evil bond,
+Since false conceit of others' wrong
+  Hath wrought him to a sin beyond.
+
+But she--if when her years were glad
+  Vain fluttering thoughts were hers, that hid
+Behind that gracious fame she had;
+  If e'er observance hard she did
+That sinful men might call her saint,--
+  White-handed Pia, dovelike-eyed,--
+The sick blank hours shall yet acquaint
+  Her heart with all her blameful pride.
+
+And Death shall find her kneeling low,
+  And lift her to the porphyry stair,
+And she from ledge to ledge shall go,
+  Stayed by the staff of that last prayer,
+Until the high, sweet-singing wood
+  Whence folk are rapt to heaven, she win;
+Therein the unpardoned never stood,
+  Nor may one Sorrow nest therein.
+
+But through the Tuscan land shall beat
+  Her Sorrow, like a wounded bird;
+And if her suit at Mary's feet
+  Avail, its moan shall yet be heard
+By some just poet, who shall shed,
+  Whate'er the theme that leads his rhyme
+Bright words like tears above her, dead,
+  Entreating of the after time:
+
+"Among you let her mournful memory linger!
+  Siena bare her, whom Maremma slew;
+And this dark lord, who gave her maiden finger
+  His ancient gem, the secret only knew."
+
+
+
+
+TWO MOODS OF FAILURE
+
+I
+
+THE LAST CUP OF CANARY
+
+Sir Harry Lovelock, 1645
+
+
+So, the powder's low, and the larder's clean,
+  And surrender drapes, with its black impending,
+All the stage for a sorry and sullen scene:
+  Yet indulge me my whim of a madcap ending!
+
+Let us once more fill, ere the final chill,
+  Every vein with the glow of the rich canary!
+Since the sweet hot liquor of life's to spill,
+  Of the last of the cellar what boots be chary?
+
+Then hear the conclusion: I'll yield my breath,
+  But my leal old house and my good blade never!
+Better one bitter kiss on the lips of Death
+  Than despoiled Defeat as a wife forever!
+
+Let the faithful fire hold the walls in ward
+  Till the roof-tree crash! Be the smoke once riven
+While we flash from the gate like a single sword,
+  True steel to the hilt, though in dull earth driven!
+
+Do you frown, Sir Richard, above your ruff,
+  In the Holbein yonder? My deed ensures you!
+For the flame like a fencer shall give rebuff
+  To your blades that blunder, you Roundhead boors, you!
+
+And my ladies, a-row on the gallery wall,
+  Not a sing-song sergeant or corporal sainted
+Shall pierce their breasts with his Puritan ball,
+  To annul the charms of the flesh, though painted!
+
+I have worn like a jewel the life they gave;
+  As the ring in mine ear I can lightly lose it,
+If my days be done, why, my days were brave!
+  If the end arrive, I as master choose it!
+
+Then fill to the brim, and a health, I say,
+  To our liege King Charles, and I pray God bless him!
+'T would amend worse vintage to drink dismay
+  To the clamorous mongrel pack that press him!
+
+And a health to the fair women, past recall,
+  That like birds astray through the heart's hall flitted;
+To the lean devil Failure last of all,
+  And the lees in his beard for a fiend outwitted!
+
+
+II
+
+THE YOUNG MAN CHARLES STUART REVIEWETH THE TROOPS ON BLACKHEATH
+
+(Private Constant-in-Tribulation Joyce, _May_, 1660)
+
+
+We were still as a wood without wind; as 't were set by a spell
+Stayed the gleam on the steel cap, the glint on the slant petronel.
+He to left of me drew down his grim grizzled lip with his teeth,--
+I remember his look; so we grew like dumb trees on the heath.
+
+But the people,--the people were mad as with store of new wine;
+Oh, they cheered him, they capped him, they roared as he rode
+      down the line:
+He that fled us at Worcester, the boy, the green brier-shoot, the son
+Of the Stuart on whom for his sin the great judgment was done!
+
+Swam before us the field of our shame, and our souls walked afar;
+Saw the glory, the blaze of the sun bursting over Dunbar;
+Saw the faces of friends, in the morn riding jocund to fight;
+Saw the stern pallid faces again, as we saw them at night!
+
+"O ye blessed, who died in the Lord! would to God that we too
+Had so passed, only sad that we ceased his high justice to do,
+With the words of the psalm on our lips that from Israel's once came,
+How the Lord is a strong man of war; yea, the Lord is his name!
+
+"Not for us, not for us! who have served for his kingdom seven years,
+Yea, and yet other seven have we served, sweating blood, bleeding
+tears,
+For the kingdom of God and the saints! Rachel's beauty made bold,
+Yet we bear but a Leah at last to a hearth that is cold!"
+
+Burned the fire while I mused, while I gloomed; in the end came a call;
+Settled o'er me a calm like a cloud, spake a voice still and small:
+"Take thou Leah to bride, take thou Failure to bed and to board!
+Thou shalt rear up new strengths at her knees; she is given
+      of the Lord!
+
+"If with weight of his right hand, with power, he denieth to deal,
+And the smoke clouds, and thunders of guns, and the lightnings
+      of steel,
+Shall the cool silent dews of his grace, in a season of peace,
+Not descend on the land, as of old, for a sign, on the fleece?
+
+"Hath he cleft not the rock, to the yield of a stream that is sweet?
+Hath he set in the ribs of the lion no honey for meat?
+Can he bring not delight to the desert, and buds to the rod?
+He will shine, he will visit his vine; he hath sworn, he is God!"
+
+Then I thought of the gate I rode through on the roan that's
+      long dead,--
+I remember the dawn was but pale, and the stars overhead;
+Of the babe that is grown to a maid, and of Martha, my wife,
+And the spring on the wolds far away, and gave thanks for my life!
+
+
+
+
+THE STORY OF THE "ORIENT"
+
+
+'T was a pleasant Sunday morning while the spring was in its glory,
+English spring of gentle glory; smoking by his cottage door,
+Florid-faced, the man-o'-war's-man told his white-head boy the story,
+Noble story of Aboukir, told a hundred times before.
+
+"Here, the _Theseus_--here, the _Vanguard_;" as he spoke
+      each name sonorous,--
+_Minotaur, Defence, Majestic_, stanch old comrades of the brine,
+That against the ships of Brucys made their broadsides roar
+     in chorus,--
+Ranging daisies on his doorstone, deft he mapped the battle-line.
+
+Mapped the curve of tall three-deckers, deft as might
+     a man left-handed,
+Who had given an arm to England later on at Trafalgar.
+While he poured the praise of Nelson to the child with eyes expanded,
+Bright athwart his honest forehead blushed the scarlet cutlass-scar.
+
+For he served aboard the _Vanguard_, saw the Admiral blind and bleeding
+Borne below by silent sailors, borne to die as then they deemed.
+Every stout heart sick but stubborn, fought the sea-dogs on unheeding,
+Guns were cleared and manned and cleared, the battle thundered,
+      flashed, and screamed.
+
+Till a cry swelled loud and louder,--towered on fire the
+      _Orient_ stately,
+Brucys' flag-ship, she that carried guns a hundred and a score;
+Then came groping up the hatchway he they counted dead but lately,
+Came the little one-armed Admiral to guide the fight once more.
+
+"'Lower the boats!' was Nelson's order."--
+        But the listening boy beside him,
+Who had followed all his motions with an eager wide blue eye,
+Nursed upon the name of Nelson till he half had deified him,
+Here, with childhood's crude consistence, broke the tale
+      to question "Why?"
+
+For by children facts go streaming in a throng that never pauses,
+Noted not, till, of a sudden, thought, a sunbeam, gilds the motes,
+All at once the known words quicken, and the child would deal
+      with causes.
+Since to kill the French was righteous, why bade Nelson lower
+      the boats?
+
+Quick the man put by the question. "But the _Orient_, none
+      could save her;
+We could see the ships, the ensigns, clear as daylight by the flare;
+And a many leaped and left her; but, God rest 'em! some were braver;
+Some held by her, firing steady till she blew to God knows where."
+
+At the shock, he said, the _Vanguard_ shook through all
+      her timbers oaken;
+It was like the shock of Doomsday,--not a tar but shuddered hard.
+All was hushed for one strange moment; then that awful calm was broken
+By the heavy plash that answered the descent of mast and yard.
+
+So, her cannon still defying, and her colors flaming, flying,
+In her pit her wounded helpless, on her deck her Admiral dead,
+Soared the _Orient_ into darkness with her living and her dying:
+"Yet our lads made shift to rescue three-score souls," the seaman said.
+
+Long the boy with knit brows wondered o'er that friending
+      of the foeman;
+Long the man with shut lips pondered; powerless he to tell the cause
+Why the brother in his bosom that desired the death of no man,
+In the crash of battle wakened, snapped the bonds of hate like straws.
+
+While he mused, his toddling maiden drew the daisies to a posy;
+Mild the bells of Sunday morning rang across the church-yard sod;
+And, helped on by tender hands, with sturdy feet all bare and rosy,
+Climbed his babe to mother's breast, as climbs the slow world
+      up to God.
+
+
+
+A RESURRECTION
+
+
+_Neither would they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead_.
+
+I was quick in the flesh, was warm, and the live heart shook my breast;
+  In the market I bought and sold, in the temple I bowed my head.
+I had swathed me in shows and forms, and was honored above the rest
+  For the sake of the life I lived; nor did any esteem me dead.
+
+But at last, when the hour was ripe--was it sudden-remembered word?
+  Was it sight of a bird that mounted, or sound of a strain that
+        stole?
+I was 'ware of a spell that snapped, of an inward strength that
+      stirred,
+  Of a Presence that filled that place; and it shone, and I knew
+        my Soul.
+
+And the dream I had called my life was a garment about my feet,
+  For the web of the years was rent with the throe of a
+        yearning strong.
+With a sweep as of winds in heaven, with a rush as of flames that meet,
+  The Flesh and the Spirit clasped; and I cried, "Was I dead so long?"
+
+I had glimpse of the Secret, flashed through the symbol obscure
+      and mean,
+  And I felt as a fire what erst I repeated with lips of clay;
+And I knew for the things eternal the things eye hath not seen;
+  Yea, the heavens and the earth shall pass; but they never
+        shall pass away.
+
+And the miracle on me wrought, in the streets I would straight
+      make known:
+  "When this marvel of mine is heard, without cavil shall men receive
+Any legend of haloed saint, staring up through the sealed stone!"
+  So I spake in the trodden ways; but behold, there would none believe!
+
+
+
+
+THE GLORIOUS COMPANY
+
+
+"Faces, faces, faces of the streaming marching surge,
+  Streaming on the weary road, toward the awful steep,
+Whence your glow and glory, as ye set to that sharp verge,
+  Faces lit as sunlit stars, shining as ye sweep?
+
+"Whence this wondrous radiance that ye somehow catch and cast,
+  Faces rapt, that one discerns 'mid the dusky press
+Herding in dull wonder, gathering fearful to the Vast?
+  Surely all is dark before, night of nothingness!"
+
+_Lo, the Light!_ (they answer) _O the pure,
+      the pulsing Light,
+  Beating like a heart of life, like a heart of love,
+Soaring, searching, filling all the breadth and depth and height,
+  Welling, whelming with its peace worlds below, above!_
+
+"O my soul, how art thou to that living Splendor blind,
+  Sick with thy desire to see even as these men see!--
+Yet to look upon them is to know that God hath shined:
+  Faces lit as sunlit stars, be all my light to me!"
+
+
+
+
+THE TRUMPETER
+
+
+Two ships, alone in sky and sea,
+  Hang clinched, with crash and roar;
+There is but one--whiche'er it be--
+  Will ever come to shore.
+
+And will it be the grim black bulk,
+  That towers so evil now?
+Or will it be The Grace of God,
+  With the angel at her prow?
+
+The man that breathes the battle's breath
+  May live at last to know;
+But the trumpeter lies sick to death
+  In the stifling dark below.
+
+He hears the fight above him rave;
+  He fears his mates must yield;
+He lies as in a narrow grave
+  Beneath a battle-field.
+
+His fate will fall before the ship's,
+  Whate'er the ship betide;
+He lifts the trumpet to his lips
+  As though he kissed a bride.
+
+"Now blow thy best, blow thy last,
+  My trumpet, for the Right!"--
+He has sent his soul in one strong blast,
+  To hearten them that fight.
+
+
+
+
+COMRADES
+
+
+"Oh, whither, whither, rider toward the west?"
+  "And whither, whither, rider toward the east?"
+"I rode we ride upon the same high quest,
+  Whereon who enters may not be released;
+
+"To seek the Cup whose form none ever saw,--
+  A nobler form than e'er was shapen yet,
+Though million million cups without a flaw,
+  Afire with gems, on princes' boards are set;
+
+"To seek the Wine whereof none ever had
+  One draught, though many a generous wine flows free,--
+The spiritual blood that shall make glad
+  The hearts of mighty men that are to be."
+
+"But shall one find it, brother? Where I ride,
+  Men mock and stare, who never had the dream,
+Yet hope within my breast has never died."
+  "Nor ever died in mine that trembling gleam."
+
+"Eastward, I deem: the sun and all good things
+  Are born to bless us of the Orient old."
+"Westward, I deem: an untried ocean sings
+  Against that coast, 'New shores await the bold.'"
+
+"God speed or thee or me, so coming men
+  But have the Cup!" "God speed!"--Not once before
+Their eyes had met, nor ever met again,
+  Yet were they loving comrades evermore.
+
+
+
+
+THE HOUSE OF HATE
+
+
+Mine enemy builded well, with the soft blue  hills in sight;
+But betwixt his house and the hills I builded a house for spite:
+And the name thereof I set in the stone-work over the gate,
+With a carving of bats and apes; and I called it the House of Hate.
+
+And the front was alive with masks of malice and of despair;
+Horned demons that leered in stone, and women with serpent hair;
+That whenever his glance would rest on the soft hills far and blue,
+It must fall on mine evil work, and my hatred should pierce
+      him through.
+
+And I said, "I will dwell herein, for beholding my heart's desire
+On my foe;" and I knelt, and fain had brightened the hearth with fire;
+But the brands they would hiss and die, as with curses a strangled man,
+And the hearth was cold from the day that the House of Hate began.
+
+And I called at the open door, "Make ye merry, all friends of mine,
+In the hall of my House of Hate, where is plentiful store and wine.
+We will drink unhealth together unto him I have foiled and fooled!"
+And they stared and they passed me by; but I scorned to be thereby
+      schooled.
+
+And I ordered my board for feast; and I drank, in the topmost seat,
+Choice grape from a curious cup; and the first it was wonder-sweet;
+But the second was bitter indeed, and the third was bitter and black,
+And the gloom of the grave came on me, and I cast the cup to wrack.
+
+Alone, I was stark alone, and the shadows were each a fear;
+And thinly I laughed, but once, for the echoes were strange to hear;
+And the wind in the hallways howled as a green-eyed wolf might cry,
+And I heard my heart: I must look on the face of a man, or die!
+
+So I crept to my mirrored face, and I looked, and I saw it grown
+(By the light in my shaking hand) to the like of the masks of stone;
+And with horror I shrieked aloud as I flung my torch and fled,
+And a fire-snake writhed where it fell; and at midnight
+      the sky was red.
+
+And at morn, when the House of Hate was a ruin, despoiled of flame,
+I fell at mine enemy's feet, and besought him to slay my shame;
+But he looked in mine eyes and smiled, and his eyes were
+      calm and great:
+"You rave, or have dreamed," he said; "I saw not your House of Hate."
+
+
+
+
+THE ARROWMAKER
+
+
+Day in, day out, or sun or rain,
+Or sallow leaf, or summer grain,
+Beneath a wintry morning moon
+Or through red smouldering afternoon,
+With simple joy, with careful pride,
+He plies the craft he long has plied:
+To shape the stave, to set the sting,
+To fit the shaft with irised wing;
+And farers by may hear him sing,
+  For still his door is wide:
+  "Laugh and sigh, live and die,--
+  The world swings round; I know not, I,
+  If north or south mine arrows fly!"
+
+And sometimes, while he works, he dreams,
+And on his soul a vision gleams:
+Some storied field fought long ago,
+Where arrows fell as thick as snow.
+His breath comes fast, his eyes grow bright,
+To think upon that ancient fight.
+Oh, leaping from the strained string
+Against an armored Wrong to ring,
+Brave the songs that arrows sing!
+  He weighs the finished flight:
+  "Live and die; by and by
+  The sun kills dark; I know not, I,
+  In what good fight mine arrows fly!"
+
+Or at the gray hour, weary grown,
+When curfew o'er the wold is blown,
+He sees, as in a magic glass,
+Some lost and lonely mountain-pass;
+And lo! a sign of deathful rout
+The mocking vine has wound about,--
+An earth-fixed arrow by a spring,
+All greenly mossed, a mouldered thing;
+That stifled shaft no more shall sing!
+  He shakes his head in doubt.
+  "Laugh and sigh, live and die,--
+  The hand is blind: I know not, I,
+  In what lost pass mine arrows lie!
+  One to east, one to west,
+  Another for the eagle's breast,--
+  The archer and the wind know best!"
+  The stars are in the sky;
+  He lays his arrows by.
+
+
+
+
+A NEST IN A LYRE
+
+
+As sign before a playhouse serves
+  A giant Lyre, ornately gilded,
+On whose convenient coignes and curves
+  The pert brown sparrows late have builded.
+They flit, and flirt, and prune their wings,
+  Not awed at all by golden glitter,
+And make among the silent strings
+  Their satisfied ephemeral twitter.
+
+Ah, somewhat so we perch and flit,
+  And spy some crumb and dash to win it,
+And with a witty chirping twit
+  Our sheltering Time--there's nothing in it!
+In Life's large frame, a glorious Lyre's,
+  We nest, content, our season flighty,
+Nor guess we brush the powerful wires
+  Might witch the stars with music mighty.
+
+
+
+
+THISBE
+
+
+The garden within was shaded,
+  And guarded about from sight;
+The fragrance flowed to the south wind,
+  The fountain leaped to the light.
+
+And the street without was narrow,
+  And dusty, and hot, and mean;
+But the bush that bore white roses,
+  She leaned to the fence between:
+
+And softly she sought a crevice
+  In that barrier blank and tall,
+And shyly she thrust out through it
+  Her loveliest bud of all.
+
+And tender to touch, and gracious,
+  And pure as the moon's pure shine,
+The full rose paled and was perfect,--
+  For whose eyes, for whose lips, but mine!
+
+
+
+
+THE SPRING BEAUTIES
+
+
+The Puritan Spring Beauties stood freshly clad for church;
+A Thrush, white-breasted, o'er them sat singing on his perch.
+"Happy be! for fair are ye!" the gentle singer told them,
+But presently a buff-coat Bee came booming up to scold them.
+  "Vanity, oh, vanity!
+  Young maids, beware of vanity!"
+  Grumbled out the buff-coat Bee,
+  Half parson-like, half soldierly.
+
+The sweet-faced maidens trembled, with pretty, pinky blushes,
+Convinced that it was wicked to listen to the Thrushes;
+And when, that shady afternoon, I chanced that way to pass,
+They hung their little bonnets down and looked into the grass,
+  All because the buff-coat Bee
+  Lectured them so solemnly:--
+  "Vanity, oh, vanity!
+  Young maids, beware of vanity!"
+
+
+
+
+KINSHIP
+
+
+A lily grew in the tangle,
+  In a flame red garment dressed,
+And many a ruby spangle
+  Besprinkled her tawny breast.
+
+And the silken moth sailed by her
+  With a swift and a snow-white sail;
+Not a gilt-girt bee came nigh her,
+  Nor a fly in his gay green mail.
+
+And the bronze-brown wings and the golden,
+  O'er the billowing meadows blown,
+Were still as by magic holden
+  From the lily that flamed alone;
+
+Till over the fragrant tangle
+  A wanderer winging went,
+And with many a ruby spangle
+  Were his tawny vans besprent.
+And he hovered one moment stilly
+  O'er the thicket, her mazy bower,
+Then he sank to the heart of the lily,
+  And they seemed but a single flower.
+
+
+
+
+COMPENSATION
+
+
+The brook ran laughing from the shade,
+  And in the sunshine danced all day:
+The starlight and the moonlight made
+  Its glimmering path a Milky Way.
+
+The blue sky burned, with summer fired;
+  For parching fields, for pining flowers,
+The spirits of the air desired
+  The brook's bright life to shed in showers.
+
+It gave its all that thirst to slake;
+  Its dusty channel lifeless lay;
+Now softest flowers, white-foaming, make
+  Its winding bed a Milky Way.
+
+
+
+
+WHEN WILLOWS GREEN
+
+
+When goldenly the willows green,
+  And, mirrored in the sunset pool,
+Hang wavering, wild-rose clouds between:
+  When robins call in twilights cool:
+      What is it we await?
+      Who lingers and is late?
+What strange unrest, what yearning stirs us all
+When willows green, when robins call?
+
+When fields of flowering grass respire
+  A sweet that seems the breath of Peace,
+And liquid-voiced the thrushes choir,
+  Oh, whence the sense of glad release?
+      What is it life uplifts?
+      Who entered, bearing gifts?
+What floods from heaven the being overpower
+When thrushes choir, when grasses flower?
+
+
+
+
+AT THE PARTING OF THE WAYS
+
+(AD COMITEM JUNIOREM)
+
+
+Comrade Youth! Sit down with me
+Underneath the summer tree,
+Cool green dome whose shade is sweet,
+Where the sunny roadways meet,
+See, the ancient finger-post,
+Silver-bleached with rain and shine,
+Warns us like a noon-day ghost:
+That way's yours, and this way's mine!
+I would hold you with delays
+Here at parting of the ways.
+
+Hold you! I as well might look
+To detain the racing brook
+With regrets and grievance tender,
+As my comrade swift and slender,
+Shy, capricious, all of spring!
+Catch the wind with blossoms laden,
+Catch the wild bird on the wing,
+Catch the heart of boy or maiden!
+
+Yet I'll hold your image fast,
+As this hour I saw you last,--
+As with staff in hand you sat,
+Soft curls putting forth defiant
+From the tilted Mercury's hat,
+Wreathen with the wilding grace
+Of the fresh-leaved vine and pliant,
+Stealing down to see your face.
+Eyes of pleasance, lips of laughter,
+I shall hoard you long hereafter;
+Very dear shall be the days
+Ere the parting of the ways!
+
+Shall you deem them dear, in truth,
+Days when we, o'er hill and hollow,
+Trudged together, Comrade Youth?
+Ah, you dream of days to follow!
+Hand in hand we jogged along;
+I would fetch from out my scrip,
+Crust or jest or antique song,--
+Live and lovely, on your lip,
+Such poor needments as I had
+Were as yours; you made me glad.
+--Lo, the dial! No prayer stays
+Time, at parting of the ways!
+
+This gold memory--rings it true?
+Half for me and half for you.
+Cleave and share it. Now, good sooth,
+God be with you, Comrade Youth!
+
+
+
+
+THE FAIR GRAY LADY
+
+
+When the charm at last is fled
+  From the woodland stark and pale,
+And like shades of glad hours dead
+  Whirl the leaves before the gale:
+
+When against the western fire
+  Darkens many an empty nest,
+Like a thwarted heart's desire
+  That in prime was hardly guessed:
+
+Then the fair gray Lady leans,
+  Lingering, o'er the faded grass,
+Still the soul of all the scenes
+  Once she graced, a golden lass.
+
+O'er the Year's discrowned sleep,
+  Dear as in her earlier day,
+She her bending watch doth keep,
+  She the Goldenrod grown gray.
+
+
+
+
+THE ENCOUNTER
+
+
+There's a wood-way winding high,
+Roofed far up with light-green flicker,
+Save one midmost star of sky.
+Underfoot 'tis all pale brown
+With the dead leaves matted down
+One on other, thick and thicker;
+Soft, but springing to the tread.
+There a youth late met a maid
+Running lightly,--oh, so fleetly!
+"Whence art thou?" the herd-boy said.
+Either side her long hair swayed,
+Half a tress and half a braid,
+Colored like the soft dead leaf,
+As she answered, laughing sweetly,
+On she ran, as flies the swallow;
+He could not choose but follow
+Though it had been to his grief.
+
+"I have come up from the valley,--
+From the valley!" Once he caught her,
+Swerving down a sidelong alley,
+For a moment, by the hand.
+"Tell me, tell me," he besought her,
+"Sweetest, I would understand
+Why so cold thy palm, that slips
+From me like the shy cold minnow?
+The wood is warm, and smells of fern,
+And below the meadows burn.
+Hard to catch and hard to win, oh!
+Why are those brown finger tips
+Crinkled as with lines of water?"
+
+Laughing while she featly footed,
+With the herd-boy hasting after,
+Sprang she on a trunk uprooted,
+Clung she by a roping vine;
+Leaped behind a birch, and told,
+Still eluding, through its fine,
+Mocking, slender, leafy laughter,
+Why her finger tips were cold:
+
+"I went down to tease the brook,
+With her fishes, there below;
+She comes dancing, thou must know,
+And the bushes arch above her;
+But the seeking sunbeams look,
+Dodging through the wind-blown cover,
+Find and kiss her into stars.
+Silvery veins entwine and crook
+Where a stone her tripping bars;
+There be smooth, clear sweeps, and swirls
+Bubbling up crisp drops like pearls.
+There I lie, along the rocks
+Thick with greenest slippery moss,
+And I have in hand a strip
+Of gray, pliant, dappled bark;
+And I comb her liquid locks
+Till her tangling currents cross;
+And I have delight to hark
+To the chiding of her lip,
+Taking on the talking stone
+With each turn another tone.
+Oh, to set her wavelets bickering!
+Oh, to hear her laughter simple,
+See her fret and flash and dimple!
+Ha, ha, ha!" The woodland rang
+With the rippling through the flickering.
+At the birch the herd-boy sprang.
+
+On a sudden something wound
+Vine-like round his throbbing throat;
+On a sudden something smote
+Sharply on his longing lips,
+Stung him as the birch bough whips:
+Was it kiss or was it blow?
+Never after could he know;
+She was gone without a sound.
+
+Never after could he see
+In the wood or in the mead,
+Or in any company
+Of the rustic mortal maids,
+Her with acorn-colored braids;
+Never came she to his need.
+Never more the lad was merry,
+Strayed apart, and learned to dream,
+Feeding on the tart wild berry;
+Murmuring words none understood,--
+Words with music of the wood,
+And with music of the stream.
+
+
+
+
+SUMMER HOURS
+
+
+Hours aimless-drifting as the milkweed's down
+  In seeming, still a seed of joy ye bear
+  That steals into the soul when unaware,
+And springs up Memory in the stony town.
+
+
+
+
+LOVE UNSUNG
+
+
+Seven jewelled rays has the Sun fast bound
+    In his arrow of blinding sheen;
+But he quickens the breast of the fruitful ground
+    With a subtlest ray unseen.
+
+And the rainbow moods of this love of ours
+    I may blend in the song I bring;
+But the magic that makes life laugh with flowers
+    Is the love that I cannot sing.
+
+
+
+
+THE WISH FOR A CHAPLET
+
+
+Vineleaf and rose I would my chaplet make:
+I would my word were wine for all men's sake.
+Pure from the pressing of the stainless feet
+Of unblamed Hours, and for an altar meet.
+
+Vineleaf and rose: I would, had I the art,
+Distil, to lasting sweet, Joy's rosy heart,
+That no sere autumn should its fragrance wrong,
+Closed in the crystal glass of slender song.
+
+
+
+
+SONNETS
+
+
+
+
+THE TORCH-RACE
+
+
+Brave racer, who hast sped the living light
+With throat outstretched and every nerve a-strain,
+Now on thy left hand labors gray-faced Pain,
+And Death hangs close behind thee on the right.
+Soon flag the flying feet, soon fails the sight,
+With every pulse the gaunt pursuers gain;
+And all thy splendor of strong life must wane
+And set into the mystery of night.
+
+Yet fear not, though in falling, blindness hide
+Whose hand shall snatch, before it scars the sod,
+The light thy lessening grasp no more controls:
+Truth's rescuer, Truth shall instantly provide:
+This is the torch-race game, that noblest souls
+Play on through time beneath the eyes of God.
+
+
+
+
+TO SLEEP
+
+
+All slumb'rous images that be, combined,
+To this white couch and cool shall woo thee, Sleep!
+First will I think on fields of grasses deep
+In gray-green flower, o'er which the transient wind
+Runs like a smile; and next will call to mind
+How glistening poplar-tops, when breezes creep
+Among their leaves, a tender motion keep,
+Stroking the sky, like touch of lovers kind.
+
+Ah, having felt thy calm kiss on mine eyes,
+All night inspiring thy divine pure breath,
+I shall awake as into godhood born,
+And with a fresh, undaunted soul arise,
+Clear as the blue convolvulus at morn.
+--Dear bedfellow, deals thus thy brother, Death?
+
+
+
+
+SISTER SNOW
+
+
+Praised be our Lord (to echo the sweet phrase
+Of saintly Francis) for our sister Snow:
+Whose soft, soft coming never man may know
+By any sound; whose down-light touch allays
+All fevers of worn earth. She clothes the days
+In garments without spot, and hence doth go
+Her noiseless shuttle swiftly to and fro,
+And very pure, and pleasant, are her ways.
+
+But yesterday, how loveless looked the skies!
+How cold the sun's last glance, and unbenign,
+Across the field forsaken, russet-leaved!
+Now pearly peace on all the landscape lies.
+--Wast thou not sent us, Sister, for a sign
+Of that vast Mercy of God, else unconceived?
+
+
+
+
+RETROSPECT
+
+
+"Backward," he said, "dear heart I like to look
+To those half-spring, half-winter days, when first
+We drew together, ere the leaf-buds burst.
+Sunbeams were silver yet, keen gusts yet shook
+The boughs. Have you remembered that kind book,
+That for our sake Galeotto's part rehearsed,
+(The friend of lovers,--this time blessed, not cursed!)
+And that best hour, when reading we forsook?"
+
+She, listening, wore the smile a mother wears
+At childish fancies needless to control;
+Yet felt a fine, hid pain with pleasure blend.
+Better it seemed to think that love of theirs,
+Native as breath, eternal as the soul,
+Knew no beginning, could not have an end.
+
+
+
+
+THE CONTRAST
+
+
+He loved her; having felt his love begin
+With that first look,--as lover oft avers.
+He made pale flowers his pleading ministers,
+Impressed sweet music, drew the springtime in
+To serve his suit; but when he could not win,
+Forgot her face and those gray eyes of hers;
+And at her name his pulse no longer stirs,
+And life goes on as though she had not been.
+
+She never loved him; but she loved Love so,
+So reverenced Love, that all her being shook
+At his demand whose entrance she denied.
+Her thoughts of him such tender color took
+As western skies that keep the afterglow.
+The words he spoke were with her till she died.
+
+
+
+
+A MYSTERY
+
+
+That sunless day no living shadow swept
+Across the hills, fleet shadow chasing light,
+Twin of the sailing cloud: but, mists wool white,
+Slow-stealing mists, on those heaved shoulders crept,
+And wrought about the strong hills while they slept
+In witches' wise, and rapt their forms from sight.
+Dreams were they; less than dream, the noblest height
+And farthest; and the chilly woodland wept.
+
+A sunless day and sad: yet all the while
+Within the grave green twilight of the wood,
+inscrutable, immutable, apart,
+Hearkening the brook, whose song she understood,
+The secret birch-tree kept her silver smile,
+Strange as the peace that gleams at sorrow's heart.
+
+
+
+
+TRIUMPH
+
+
+This windy sunlit morning after rain,
+The wet bright laurel laughs with beckoning gleam
+In the blown wood, whence breaks the wild white stream
+Rushing and flashing, glorying in its gain;
+Nor swerves nor parts, but with a swift disdain
+O'erleaps the boulders lying in long dream,
+Lapped in cold moss; and in its joy doth seem
+A wood-born creature bursting from a chain.
+
+And "Triumph, triumph, triumph!" is its hoarse
+Fierce-whispered word. O fond, and dost not know
+Thy triumph on another wise must be,--
+To render all the tribute of thy force,
+And lose thy little being in the flow
+Of the unvaunting river toward the sea!
+
+
+
+
+IN WINTER, WITH THE BOOK WE READ IN SPRING
+
+
+The blackberry's bloom, when last we went this way,
+Veiled all her bowsome rods with trembling white;
+The robin's sunset breast gave forth delight
+At sunset hour; the wind was warm with May.
+Armored in ice the sere stems arch to-day,
+Each tiny thorn encased and argent bright;
+Where clung the birds that long have taken flight,
+Dead songless leaves cling fluttering on the spray.
+
+O hand in mine, that mak'st all paths the same,
+Being paths of peace, where falls nor chill nor gloom,
+Made sweet with ardors of an inward spring!
+I hold thee--frozen skies to rosy flame
+Are turned, and snows to living snows of bloom,
+And once again the gold-brown thrushes sing.
+
+
+
+
+SERE WISDOM
+
+
+I had remembrance of a summer morn,
+When all the glistening field was softly stirred
+And like a child's in happy sleep I heard
+The low and healthful breathing of the corn.
+Late when the sumach's red was dulled and worn,
+And fainter grew the trite and troublous word
+Of tristful cricket, that replaced the bird,
+I sought the slope, and found a waste forlorn.
+
+Against that cold clear west, whence winter peers,
+All spectral stood the bleached stalks thin-leaved,
+Dry as papyrus kept a thousand years,
+And hissing whispered to the wind that grieved,
+_It was a dream--we have no goodly ears--
+There was no summer-time--deceived! deceived!_
+
+
+
+
+ISOLATION
+
+
+White fog around, soft snow beneath the tread,
+All sunless, windless, tranced, the morning lay;
+All noiseless, trackless, new, the well-known way.
+The silence weighed upon the sense; in dread,
+"Alone, I am alone," I shuddering said,
+"And wander in a region where no ray
+Has ever shone, and as on earth's first day
+Or last, my kind are not yet born or dead."
+
+Yet not afar, meanwhile, there faltered feet
+Like mine, through that wide mystery of the snow,
+Nor could the old accustomed paths divine;
+And even as mine, unheard spake voices low,
+And hearts were near, that as my own heart beat,
+Warm hands, and faces fashioned like to mine.
+
+
+
+
+THE LOST DRYAD
+
+(TO EDITH M. THOMAS)
+
+
+Into what beech or silvern birch, O friend
+Suspected ever of a dryad strain,
+Hast crept at last, delighting to regain
+Thy sylvan house? Now whither shall I wend,
+Or by what winged post my greeting send,
+Bird, butterfly, or bee? Shall three moons wane,
+And yet not found?--Ah, surely it was pain
+Of old, for mortal youth his heart to lend
+To any hamadryad! In his hour
+Of simple trust, wild impulse him bereaves:
+She flees, she seeks her strait enmossed bower
+And while he, searching, softly calls, and grieves,
+Oblivious, high above she laughs in leaves,
+Or patters tripping talk to the quick shower.
+
+
+
+
+A MEMORY
+
+
+Though pent in stony streets, 'tis joy to know,
+'Tis joy, although we breathe a fainter air,
+The spirit of those places far and fair
+That we have loved, abides; and fern-scents flow
+Out of the wood's heart still, and shadows grow
+Long on remembered roads as warm days wear;
+And still the dark wild water, in its lair,
+The narrow chasm, stirs blindly to and fro.
+
+Delight is in the sea-gull's dancing wings,
+And sunshine wakes to rose the ruddy hue
+Of rocks; and from her tall wind-slanted stem
+A soft bright plume the goldenrod outflings
+Along the breeze, above a sea whose blue
+Is like the light that kindles through a gem.
+
+
+
+
+THE GIFTS OF THE OAK
+
+(FOR THE SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL)
+
+
+'There needs no crown to mark the forest's king.'
+Thus, long ago thou sang'st the sound-heart tree
+Sacred to sovereign Jove, and dear to thee
+Since first, a venturous youth with eyes of spring,--
+Whose pilgrim-staff each side put forth a wing,--
+Beneath the oak thou lingeredst lovingly
+To crave, as largess of his majesty,
+Firm-rooted strength, and grace of leaves that sing.
+
+He gave; we thank him! Graciousness as grave,
+And power as easeful as his own he gave;
+Long broodings rich with sun, and laughters kind;
+And singing leaves, whose later bronze is dear
+As the first amber of the budding year,--
+Whose voices answer the autumnnal wind.
+
+
+
+
+THE STRAYED SINGER
+
+(MATTHEW ARNOLD)
+
+
+He wandered from us long, oh, long ago,
+Rare singer, with the note unsatisfied;
+Into what charmed wood, what shade star-eyed
+With the wind's April darlings, none may know.
+We lost him. Songless, one with seed to sow,
+Keen-smiling toiler, came in place, and plied
+His strength in furrowed field till eventide,
+And passed to slumber when the sun was low.
+
+But now,--as though Death spoke some mystic word
+Solving a spell,--present to thought appears
+The morn's estray, not him we saw but late;
+And on his lips the strain that once we heard,
+And in his hand, cool as with Springtime's tears,
+The melancholy wood-flowers delicate.
+
+
+
+
+THE IMMORTAL WORD
+
+
+One soiled and shamed and foiled in this world's fight,
+Deserter from the host of God, that here
+Still darkly struggles,--waked from death in fear,
+And strove to screen his forehead from the white
+And blinding glory of the awful Light,
+The revelation and reproach austere.
+Then with strong hand outstretched a Shape drew near,
+Bright-browed, majestic, armored like a knight.
+
+"Great Angel, servant of the Highest, why
+Stoop'st thou to me?" although his lips were mute,
+His eyes inquired. The Shining One replied:
+"Thy Book, thy birth, life of thy life am I,
+Son of thy soul, thy youth's forgotten fruit.
+We two go up to judgment side by side."
+
+
+
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Ride to the Lady, by Helen Gray Cone
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+Title: Ride to the Lady
+
+Author: Helen Gray Cone
+
+Release Date: December, 2005  [EBook #9559]
+[This file was first posted on October 8, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, RIDE TO THE LADY ***
+
+
+
+
+E-text prepared by Ted Garvin, Josephine Paolucci, and Project Gutenberg
+Distributed Proofreaders
+
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+
+
+THE RIDE TO THE LADY
+
+And Other Poems
+
+BY
+
+HELEN GRAY CONE
+
+1891
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+The Ride to the Lady
+
+The First Guest
+
+Silence
+
+Arraignment
+
+The Going Out of the Tide
+
+King Raedwald
+
+Ivo of Chartres
+
+Madonna Pia
+
+Two Moods of Failure
+
+The Story of the "Orient"
+
+A Resurrection
+
+The Glorious Company
+
+The Trumpeter
+
+Comrades
+
+The House of Hate
+
+The Arrowmaker
+
+A Nest in a Lyre
+
+Thisbe
+
+The Spring Beauties
+
+Kinship
+
+Compensation
+
+When Willows Green
+
+At the Parting of the Ways
+
+The Fair Gray Lady
+
+The Encounter.
+
+Summer Hours
+
+Love Unsung
+
+The Wish for a Chaplet
+
+Sonnets:
+The Torch Race
+To Sleep
+Sister Snow
+The Contrast
+A Mystery
+Triumph
+In Winter, with the Book we had in Spring
+Sere Wisdom
+Isolation
+The Lost Dryad
+The Gifts of the Oak
+The Strayed Singer
+The Immortal Word
+
+
+
+
+THE RIDE TO THE LADY
+
+
+"Now since mine even is come at last,--
+For I have been the sport of steel,
+And hot life ebbeth from me fast,
+And I in saddle roll and reel,--
+Come bind me, bind me on my steed!
+Of fingering leech I have no need!"
+The chaplain clasped his mailed knee.
+"Nor need I more thy whine and thee!
+No time is left my sins to tell;
+But look ye bind me, bind me well!"
+They bound him strong with leathern thong,
+For the ride to the lady should be long.
+
+Day was dying; the poplars fled,
+Thin as ghosts, on a sky blood-red;
+Out of the sky the fierce hue fell,
+And made the streams as the streams of hell.
+All his thoughts as a river flowed,
+Flowed aflame as fleet he rode,
+Onward flowed to her abode,
+Ceased at her feet, mirrored her face.
+(Viewless Death apace, apace,
+Rode behind him in that race.)
+
+"Face, mine own, mine alone,
+Trembling lips my lips have known,
+Birdlike stir of the dove-soft eyne
+Under the kisses that make them mine!
+Only of thee, of thee, my need!
+Only to thee, to thee, I speed!"
+The Cross flashed by at the highway's turn;
+In a beam of the moon the Face shone stern.
+
+Far behind had the fight's din died;
+The shuddering stars in the welkin wide
+Crowded, crowded, to see him ride.
+The beating hearts of the stars aloof
+kept time to the beat of the horse's hoof,
+"What is the throb that thrills so sweet?
+Heart of my lady, I feel it beat!"
+But his own strong pulse the fainter fell,
+Like the failing tongue of a hushing bell.
+The flank of the great-limbed steed was wet
+Not alone with the started sweat.
+
+Fast, and fast, and the thick black wood
+Arched its cowl like a black friar's hood;
+Fast, and fast, and they plunged therein,--
+But the viewless rider rode to win,
+Out of the wood to the highway's light
+Galloped the great-limbed steed in fright;
+The mail clashed cold, and the sad owl cried,
+And the weight of the dead oppressed his side.
+
+Fast, and fast, by the road he knew;
+And slow, and slow, the stars withdrew;
+And the waiting heaven turned weirdly blue,
+As a garment worn of a wizard grim.
+He neighed at the gate in the morning dim.
+
+She heard no sound before her gate,
+Though very quiet was her bower.
+All was as her hand had left it late:
+The needle slept on the broidered vine,
+Where the hammer and spikes of the passion-flower
+Her fashioning did wait.
+On the couch lay something fair,
+With steadfast lips and veiled eyne;
+
+But the lady was not there,
+On the wings of shrift and prayer,
+Pure as winds that winnow snow,
+Her soul had risen twelve hours ago.
+The burdened steed at the barred gate stood,
+No whit the nearer to his goal.
+Now God's great grace assoil the soul
+That went out in the wood!
+
+
+
+
+THE FIRST GUEST
+
+
+When the house is finished, Death enters.
+_Eastern Proverb_
+
+Life's House being ready all,
+Each chamber fair and dumb,
+Ere life, the Lord, is come
+With pomp into his hall,--
+Ere Toil has trod the floors,
+Ere Love has lit the fires,
+Or young great-eyed Desires
+Have, timid, tried the doors;
+Or from east-window leaned
+One Hope, to greet the sun,
+Or one gray Sorrow screened
+Her sight against the west,--
+Then enters the first guest,
+The House of life being done.
+
+He waits there in the shade.
+I deem he is Life's twin,
+For whom the house was made.
+Whatever his true name,
+Be sure, to enter in
+He has both key and claim.
+
+The daybeams, free of fear,
+Creep drowsy toward his feet;
+His heart were heard to beat,
+Were any there to hear;
+Ah, not for ends malign,
+Like wild thing crouched in lair,
+Or watcher of a snare,
+But with a friend's design
+He lurks in shadow there!
+
+He goes not to the gates
+To welcome any other,
+Nay, not Lord Life, his brother;
+But still his hour awaits
+Each several guest to find
+Alone, yea, quite alone;
+Pacing with pensive mind
+The cloister's echoing stone,
+Or singing, unaware,
+At the turning of the stair
+Tis truth, though we forget,
+In Life's House enters none
+Who shall that seeker shun,
+Who shall not so be met.
+"Is this mine hour?" each saith.
+"So be it, gentle Death!"
+Each has his way to end,
+Encountering this friend.
+Griefs die to memories mild;
+Hope turns a weanèd child;
+Love shines a spirit white,
+With eyes of deepened light.
+When many a guest has passed,
+Some day 'tis Life's at last
+To front the face of Death.
+Then, casements closed, men say:
+"Lord Life is gone away;
+He went, we trust and pray,
+To God, who gave him breath."
+Beginning, End, He is:
+Are not these sons both His?
+Lo, these with Him are one!
+To phrase it so were best:
+God's self is that first Guest,
+The House of Life being done!
+
+
+
+
+SILENCE
+
+
+Why should I sing of earth or heaven? not rather rest,
+Powerless to speak of that which hath my soul possessed,--
+For full possession dumb? Yea, Silence, that were best.
+
+And though for what it failed to sound I brake the string,
+And dashed the sweet lute down, a too much fingered thing,
+And found a wild new voice,--oh, still, why should I sing?
+
+An earth-song could I make, strange as the breath of earth,
+Filled with the great calm joy of life and death and birth?
+Yet, were it less than this, the song were little worth.
+
+For this the fields caress; brown clods tell each to each;
+Sad-colored leaves have sense whereto I cannot reach;
+Spiced everlasting-flowers outstrip my range of speech.
+
+A heaven-song could I make, all fire that yet was peace,
+And tenderness not lost, though glory did increase?
+But were it less than this, 't were well the song should cease.
+
+For this the still west saith, with plumy flames bestrewn;
+Heaven's body sapphire-clear, at stirless height of noon;
+The cloud where lightnings pulse, beside the untroubled moon.
+
+I will not sing of earth or heaven, but rather rest,
+Rapt by the face of heaven, and hold on earth's warm breast.
+Hushed lips, a beating heart, yea, Silence, that were best.
+
+
+
+
+ARRAIGNMENT
+
+
+"Not ye who have stoned, not ye who have smitten us," cry
+The sad, great souls, as they go out hence into dark,
+"Not ye we accuse, though for you was our passion borne;
+And ye we reproach not, who silently passed us by.
+We forgive blind eyes and the ears that would not hark,
+The careless and causeless hate and the shallow scorn.
+
+"But ye, who have seemed to know us, have seen and heard;
+Who have set us at feasts and have crowned with the costly rose;
+Who have spread us the purple of praises beneath our feet;
+Yet guessed not the word that we spake was a living word,
+Applauding the sound,--we account you as worse than foes!
+We sobbed you our message; ye said, 'It is song, and sweet!'"
+
+
+
+
+THE GOING OUT OF THE TIDE
+
+
+The eastern heaven was all faint amethyst,
+Whereon the moon hung dreaming in the mist;
+To north yet drifted one long delicate plume
+Of roseate cloud; like snow the ocean-spume.
+
+Now when the first foreboding swiftly ran
+Through the loud-glorying sea that it began
+To lose its late gained lordship of the land,
+Uprose the billow like an angered man,
+And flung its prone strength far along the sand;
+Almost, almost to the old bound, the dark
+And taunting triumph-mark.
+
+But no, no, no! and slow, and slow, and slow,
+Like a heart losing hold, this wave must go,--
+Must go, must go,--dragged heavily back, back,
+Beneath the next wave plunging on its track,
+Charging, with thunderous and defiant shout,
+To fore-determined rout.
+
+Again, again the unexhausted main
+Renews fierce effort, drawing force unguessed
+From awful deeps of its mysterious breast:
+Like arms of passionate protest, tossed in vain,
+The spray upflings above the billow's crest.
+Again the appulse, again the backward strain--
+Till ocean must have rest.
+
+With one abandoned movement, swift and wild,--
+As though bowed head and outstretched arms it laid
+On the earth's lap, soft sobbing,--hushed and stayed,
+The great sea quiets, like a soothed child.
+Ha! what sharp memory clove the calm, and drave
+This last fleet furious wave?
+
+On, on, endures the struggle into night,
+Ancient as Time, yet fresh as the fresh hour;
+As oft repeated since the birth of light
+As the strong agony and mortal fight
+Of human souls, blind-reaching, with the Power
+Aloof, unmoved, impossible to cross,
+Whose law is seeming loss.
+
+Low-sunken from the longed-for triumph-mark;
+The spent sea sighs as one that grieves in sleep.
+The unveiled moon along the rippling plain
+Casts many a keen, cold, shifting silvery spark,
+Wild as the pulses of strange joy, that leap
+Even in the quick of pain.
+
+And she compelling, she that stands for law,--
+As law for Will eternal,--perfect, clear,
+And uncompassionate shines: to her appear
+Vast sequences close-linked without a flaw.
+All past despairs of ocean unforgot,
+All raptures past, serene her light she gives,
+The moon too high for pity, since she lives
+Aware that loss is not.
+
+
+
+
+KING RAEDWALD
+
+
+Will you hear now the speech of King Raedwald,--heathen Raedwald,
+      the simple yet wise?
+He, the ruler of North-folk and South-folk, a man open-browed
+      as the skies,
+Held the eyes of the eager Italians with his blue, bold,
+      Englishman's eyes.
+
+In his hall, on his throne, so he sat, with the light of the fire
+      on him full:
+Colored bright as the ring of red gold on his hand, fit to buffet
+      a bull,
+Was the mane that grew down on his neck, was the beard he would
+      pondering pull.
+
+To the priests, to the eager Italians, thus fearless less he poured
+      his free speech;
+"O my honey-tongued fathers, I turn not away from the faith that ye
+      teach!
+Not the less hath a man many moods, and may ask a religion for each.
+
+"Grant that all things are well with the realm on a delicate day
+      of the spring,
+Easter month, time of hopes and of swallows!
+       The praises, the psalms that ye sing,
+As in pleasant accord they float heavenward, are good in the ears
+      of the king.
+
+"Then the heart bubbles forth with clear waters, to the time
+      of this wonder-word Peace,
+From the chanting and preaching whereof ye who serve the
+      white Christ never cease;
+And your curly, soft incense ascending enwraps my content
+      like a fleece.
+
+"But a churl comes adrip from the rivers, pants me out, fallen
+      spent on the floor,
+'O King Raedwald, Northumberland marches, and to-morrow knocks
+      hard at thy door,
+Hot for melting thy crown on the hearth!'
+        Then commend me to Woden and Thor!
+
+"Could I sit then and listen to preachments on turning the cheek
+      to the blow,
+And saying a prayer for the smiter, and holding my seen treasure low
+For the sake of a treasure unseen? By the sledge of the Thunderer, no!
+
+"For my thought flashes out as a sword, cleaving counsel as
+      clottage of cream;
+And your incense and chanting are but as the smoke of burnt
+      towns and the scream;
+And I quaff me the thick mead of triumph from enemies' skulls
+      in my dream!
+
+"And 'tis therefore this day I resolve me,--for King Raedwald
+      will cringe not, nor lie!--
+I will bring back the altar  of Woden; in the temple will have it,
+      hard by
+The new altar of this your white Christ. As my mood may decide,
+      worship I!"
+
+So he spake in his large self-reliance,--he, a man open-browed
+      as the skies;
+Would not measure his soul by a standard that was womanish-weak
+      to his eyes,
+Smite his breast and go on with his sinning,--savage Raedwald,
+      the simple yet wise!
+
+And the centuries bloom o'er his barrow. But for us,--have we
+      mastered it quite,
+The old riddle, that sweet is strong's outcome, the old marvel,
+      that meekness is might,
+That the child is the leader of lions, that forgiveness is force
+      at its height?
+
+When we summon the shade of rude Raedwald, in his candor how
+      king-like he towers!
+Have the centuries, over his slumber, only borne sterile falsehoods
+      for flowers?
+Pray you, what if Christ found him the nobler, having weighed his
+      frank manhood with ours?
+
+
+
+
+IVO OF CHARTRES
+
+
+Now may it please my lord, Louis the king,
+  Lily of Christ and France! riding his quest,
+I, Bishop Ivo, saw a wondrous thing.
+
+  There was no light of sun left in the west,
+And slowly did the moon's new light increase.
+  Heaven, without cloud, above the near hill's crest,
+Lay passion purple in a breathless peace.
+  Stars started like still tears, in rapture shed,
+Which without consciousness the lids release.
+
+  All steadily, one little sparkle red,
+Afar, drew close. A woman's form grew up
+  Out of the dimness, tall, with queen-like head,
+And in one hand was fire; in one, a cup.
+  Of aspect grave she was, with eyes upraised,
+As one whose thoughts perpetually did sup
+  At the Lord's table.
+
+                 While the cresset blazed,
+Her I regarded. "Daughter, whither bent,
+  And wherefore?" As by speech of man amazed,
+One moment her deep look to me she lent;
+  Then, in a voice of hymn-like, solemn fall,
+Calm, as by role, she spake out her intent:
+
+  "I in my cruse bear water, wherewithal
+To quench the flames of Hell; and with my fire
+  I Paradise would burn: that hence no small
+Fear shall impel, and no mean hope shall hire,
+  Men to serve God as they have served of yore;
+But to his will shall set their whole desire,
+  For love, love, love alone, forevermore!"
+
+And "love, love, love," rang round her as she passed
+  From sight, with mystic murmurs o'er and o'er
+Reverbed from hollow heaven, as from some vast,
+  Deep-colored, vaulted, ocean-answering shell.
+
+I, Ivo, had no power to ban or bless,
+  But was as one withholden by a spell.
+Forward she fared in lofty loneliness,
+Urged on by an imperious inward stress,
+  To waste fair Eden, and to drown fierce Hell.
+
+
+
+
+MADONNA PIA
+
+
+Ricordati di me, che son la Pia.
+Siena mi fe; disfecomi Maremma;
+Salsi colui, che, inanellata pria,
+Disposato m'avea colla sua gemma.
+
+_Purgatorio_, Canto V.
+
+
+To westward lies the unseen sea,
+  Blue sea the live winds wander o'er.
+The many-colored sails can flee,
+  And leave the dead, low-lying shore.
+Her longing does not seek the main,
+  Her face turns northward first at morn;
+There, crowning all the wide champaign,
+  Siena stood, where she was born.
+
+Siena stands, and still shall stand;
+  She ne'er shall see or town or tower.
+Warm life and beauty, hand in hand,
+  Steal farther from her hour by hour.
+Yet forth she leans, with trembling knees,
+  And northward will she stare and stare
+Through that thick wall of cypress-trees,
+  And sigh adown the stirless air:
+
+"Shall no remembrance in Siena linger
+  Of me, once fair, whom slow Maremma slays?
+As well he knows, whose ring upon my finger
+  Hath sealed for his alone mine earthly days!"
+
+From wilds where shudders through the weeds
+  The dull, mean-headed, silent snake,
+Like voiceless doubt that creeps and breeds;
+  From swamps where sluggish waters take,
+As lives unblest a passing love,
+  The flag-flower's image in the spring,
+Or seem, when flits the bird above,
+  To stir within with shadowed wing,
+
+A Presence mounts in pallid mist
+  To fold her close: she breathes its breath;
+She waxes wan, by Fever kissed,
+  Who weds her for his master, Death,
+Aside are set her dimmed hopes all,
+  She counts no more the uncurrent hoard;
+On gray Death's neck she fain would fall,
+  To own him for her proper lord.
+
+She minds the journey here by night:
+  When some red sudden torch would blaze,
+She saw by fits, with childish fright,
+  The cork-trees twist beside the ways.
+Like dancing demon shapes they showed,
+  With malice drunk; the bat beat by,
+The owlet sobbed; on, on they rode,
+  She knew not where, she knows not why.
+
+For Nello--when in piteous wise
+  She lifted up her look to ask,
+Except the ever-burning eyes
+  His face was like a marble mask.
+And so it always meets her now;
+  The tomb wherein at last he lies
+Shall bear such carven lips and brow,
+  All save the ever-burning eyes.
+
+Perchance it is his form alone
+  Doth stroke his hound, at meat doth sit,
+And, for the soul that was his own,
+  A fiend awhile inhabits it;
+While he sinks through the fiery throng,
+  Down, to fill an evil bond,
+Since false conceit of others' wrong
+  Hath wrought him to a sin beyond.
+
+But she--if when her years were glad
+  Vain fluttering thoughts were hers, that hid
+Behind that gracious fame she had;
+  If e'er observance hard she did
+That sinful men might call her saint,--
+  White-handed Pia, dovelike-eyed,--
+The sick blank hours shall yet acquaint
+  Her heart with all her blameful pride.
+
+And Death shall find her kneeling low,
+  And lift her to the porphyry stair,
+And she from ledge to ledge shall go,
+  Stayed by the staff of that last prayer,
+Until the high, sweet-singing wood
+  Whence folk are rapt to heaven, she win;
+Therein the unpardoned never stood,
+  Nor may one Sorrow nest therein.
+
+But through the Tuscan land shall beat
+  Her Sorrow, like a wounded bird;
+And if her suit at Mary's feet
+  Avail, its moan shall yet be heard
+By some just poet, who shall shed,
+  Whate'er the theme that leads his rhyme
+Bright words like tears above her, dead,
+  Entreating of the after time:
+
+"Among you let her mournful memory linger!
+  Siena bare her, whom Maremma slew;
+And this dark lord, who gave her maiden finger
+  His ancient gem, the secret only knew."
+
+
+
+
+TWO MOODS OF FAILURE
+
+I
+
+THE LAST CUP OF CANARY
+
+Sir Harry Lovelock, 1645
+
+
+So, the powder's low, and the larder's clean,
+  And surrender drapes, with its black impending,
+All the stage for a sorry and sullen scene:
+  Yet indulge me my whim of a madcap ending!
+
+Let us once more fill, ere the final chill,
+  Every vein with the glow of the rich canary!
+Since the sweet hot liquor of life's to spill,
+  Of the last of the cellar what boots be chary?
+
+Then hear the conclusion: I'll yield my breath,
+  But my leal old house and my good blade never!
+Better one bitter kiss on the lips of Death
+  Than despoiled Defeat as a wife forever!
+
+Let the faithful fire hold the walls in ward
+  Till the roof-tree crash! Be the smoke once riven
+While we flash from the gate like a single sword,
+  True steel to the hilt, though in dull earth driven!
+
+Do you frown, Sir Richard, above your ruff,
+  In the Holbein yonder? My deed ensures you!
+For the flame like a fencer shall give rebuff
+  To your blades that blunder, you Roundhead boors, you!
+
+And my ladies, a-row on the gallery wall,
+  Not a sing-song sergeant or corporal sainted
+Shall pierce their breasts with his Puritan ball,
+  To annul the charms of the flesh, though painted!
+
+I have worn like a jewel the life they gave;
+  As the ring in mine ear I can lightly lose it,
+If my days be done, why, my days were brave!
+  If the end arrive, I as master choose it!
+
+Then fill to the brim, and a health, I say,
+  To our liege King Charles, and I pray God bless him!
+'T would amend worse vintage to drink dismay
+  To the clamorous mongrel pack that press him!
+
+And a health to the fair women, past recall,
+  That like birds astray through the heart's hall flitted;
+To the lean devil Failure last of all,
+  And the lees in his beard for a fiend outwitted!
+
+
+II
+
+THE YOUNG MAN CHARLES STUART REVIEWETH THE TROOPS ON BLACKHEATH
+
+(Private Constant-in-Tribulation Joyce, _May_, 1660)
+
+
+We were still as a wood without wind; as 't were set by a spell
+Stayed the gleam on the steel cap, the glint on the slant petronel.
+He to left of me drew down his grim grizzled lip with his teeth,--
+I remember his look; so we grew like dumb trees on the heath.
+
+But the people,--the people were mad as with store of new wine;
+Oh, they cheered him, they capped him, they roared as he rode
+      down the line:
+He that fled us at Worcester, the boy, the green brier-shoot, the son
+Of the Stuart on whom for his sin the great judgment was done!
+
+Swam before us the field of our shame, and our souls walked afar;
+Saw the glory, the blaze of the sun bursting over Dunbar;
+Saw the faces of friends, in the morn riding jocund to fight;
+Saw the stern pallid faces again, as we saw them at night!
+
+"O ye blessed, who died in the Lord! would to God that we too
+Had so passed, only sad that we ceased his high justice to do,
+With the words of the psalm on our lips that from Israel's once came,
+How the Lord is a strong man of war; yea, the Lord is his name!
+
+"Not for us, not for us! who have served for his kingdom seven years,
+Yea, and yet other seven have we served, sweating blood, bleeding
+tears,
+For the kingdom of God and the saints! Rachel's beauty made bold,
+Yet we bear but a Leah at last to a hearth that is cold!"
+
+Burned the fire while I mused, while I gloomed; in the end came a call;
+Settled o'er me a calm like a cloud, spake a voice still and small:
+"Take thou Leah to bride, take thou Failure to bed and to board!
+Thou shalt rear up new strengths at her knees; she is given
+      of the Lord!
+
+"If with weight of his right hand, with power, he denieth to deal,
+And the smoke clouds, and thunders of guns, and the lightnings
+      of steel,
+Shall the cool silent dews of his grace, in a season of peace,
+Not descend on the land, as of old, for a sign, on the fleece?
+
+"Hath he cleft not the rock, to the yield of a stream that is sweet?
+Hath he set in the ribs of the lion no honey for meat?
+Can he bring not delight to the desert, and buds to the rod?
+He will shine, he will visit his vine; he hath sworn, he is God!"
+
+Then I thought of the gate I rode through on the roan that's
+      long dead,--
+I remember the dawn was but pale, and the stars overhead;
+Of the babe that is grown to a maid, and of Martha, my wife,
+And the spring on the wolds far away, and gave thanks for my life!
+
+
+
+
+THE STORY OF THE "ORIENT"
+
+
+'T was a pleasant Sunday morning while the spring was in its glory,
+English spring of gentle glory; smoking by his cottage door,
+Florid-faced, the man-o'-war's-man told his white-head boy the story,
+Noble story of Aboukir, told a hundred times before.
+
+"Here, the _Theseus_--here, the _Vanguard_;" as he spoke
+      each name sonorous,--
+_Minotaur, Defence, Majestic_, stanch old comrades of the brine,
+That against the ships of Brucys made their broadsides roar
+     in chorus,--
+Ranging daisies on his doorstone, deft he mapped the battle-line.
+
+Mapped the curve of tall three-deckers, deft as might
+     a man left-handed,
+Who had given an arm to England later on at Trafalgar.
+While he poured the praise of Nelson to the child with eyes expanded,
+Bright athwart his honest forehead blushed the scarlet cutlass-scar.
+
+For he served aboard the _Vanguard_, saw the Admiral blind and bleeding
+Borne below by silent sailors, borne to die as then they deemed.
+Every stout heart sick but stubborn, fought the sea-dogs on unheeding,
+Guns were cleared and manned and cleared, the battle thundered,
+      flashed, and screamed.
+
+Till a cry swelled loud and louder,--towered on fire the
+      _Orient_ stately,
+Brucys' flag-ship, she that carried guns a hundred and a score;
+Then came groping up the hatchway he they counted dead but lately,
+Came the little one-armed Admiral to guide the fight once more.
+
+"'Lower the boats!' was Nelson's order."--
+        But the listening boy beside him,
+Who had followed all his motions with an eager wide blue eye,
+Nursed upon the name of Nelson till he half had deified him,
+Here, with childhood's crude consistence, broke the tale
+      to question "Why?"
+
+For by children facts go streaming in a throng that never pauses,
+Noted not, till, of a sudden, thought, a sunbeam, gilds the motes,
+All at once the known words quicken, and the child would deal
+      with causes.
+Since to kill the French was righteous, why bade Nelson lower
+      the boats?
+
+Quick the man put by the question. "But the _Orient_, none
+      could save her;
+We could see the ships, the ensigns, clear as daylight by the flare;
+And a many leaped and left her; but, God rest 'em! some were braver;
+Some held by her, firing steady till she blew to God knows where."
+
+At the shock, he said, the _Vanguard_ shook through all
+      her timbers oaken;
+It was like the shock of Doomsday,--not a tar but shuddered hard.
+All was hushed for one strange moment; then that awful calm was broken
+By the heavy plash that answered the descent of mast and yard.
+
+So, her cannon still defying, and her colors flaming, flying,
+In her pit her wounded helpless, on her deck her Admiral dead,
+Soared the _Orient_ into darkness with her living and her dying:
+"Yet our lads made shift to rescue three-score souls," the seaman said.
+
+Long the boy with knit brows wondered o'er that friending
+      of the foeman;
+Long the man with shut lips pondered; powerless he to tell the cause
+Why the brother in his bosom that desired the death of no man,
+In the crash of battle wakened, snapped the bonds of hate like straws.
+
+While he mused, his toddling maiden drew the daisies to a posy;
+Mild the bells of Sunday morning rang across the church-yard sod;
+And, helped on by tender hands, with sturdy feet all bare and rosy,
+Climbed his babe to mother's breast, as climbs the slow world
+      up to God.
+
+
+
+A RESURRECTION
+
+
+_Neither would they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead_.
+
+I was quick in the flesh, was warm, and the live heart shook my breast;
+  In the market I bought and sold, in the temple I bowed my head.
+I had swathed me in shows and forms, and was honored above the rest
+  For the sake of the life I lived; nor did any esteem me dead.
+
+But at last, when the hour was ripe--was it sudden-remembered word?
+  Was it sight of a bird that mounted, or sound of a strain that
+        stole?
+I was 'ware of a spell that snapped, of an inward strength that
+      stirred,
+  Of a Presence that filled that place; and it shone, and I knew
+        my Soul.
+
+And the dream I had called my life was a garment about my feet,
+  For the web of the years was rent with the throe of a
+        yearning strong.
+With a sweep as of winds in heaven, with a rush as of flames that meet,
+  The Flesh and the Spirit clasped; and I cried, "Was I dead so long?"
+
+I had glimpse of the Secret, flashed through the symbol obscure
+      and mean,
+  And I felt as a fire what erst I repeated with lips of clay;
+And I knew for the things eternal the things eye hath not seen;
+  Yea, the heavens and the earth shall pass; but they never
+        shall pass away.
+
+And the miracle on me wrought, in the streets I would straight
+      make known:
+  "When this marvel of mine is heard, without cavil shall men receive
+Any legend of haloed saint, staring up through the sealèd stone!"
+  So I spake in the trodden ways; but behold, there would none believe!
+
+
+
+
+THE GLORIOUS COMPANY
+
+
+"Faces, faces, faces of the streaming marching surge,
+  Streaming on the weary road, toward the awful steep,
+Whence your glow and glory, as ye set to that sharp verge,
+  Faces lit as sunlit stars, shining as ye sweep?
+
+"Whence this wondrous radiance that ye somehow catch and cast,
+  Faces rapt, that one discerns 'mid the dusky press
+Herding in dull wonder, gathering fearful to the Vast?
+  Surely all is dark before, night of nothingness!"
+
+_Lo, the Light!_ (they answer) _O the pure,
+      the pulsing Light,
+  Beating like a heart of life, like a heart of love,
+Soaring, searching, filling all the breadth and depth and height,
+  Welling, whelming with its peace worlds below, above!_
+
+"O my soul, how art thou to that living Splendor blind,
+  Sick with thy desire to see even as these men see!--
+Yet to look upon them is to know that God hath shined:
+  Faces lit as sunlit stars, be all my light to me!"
+
+
+
+
+THE TRUMPETER
+
+
+Two ships, alone in sky and sea,
+  Hang clinched, with crash and roar;
+There is but one--whiche'er it be--
+  Will ever come to shore.
+
+And will it be the grim black bulk,
+  That towers so evil now?
+Or will it be The Grace of God,
+  With the angel at her prow?
+
+The man that breathes the battle's breath
+  May live at last to know;
+But the trumpeter lies sick to death
+  In the stifling dark below.
+
+He hears the fight above him rave;
+  He fears his mates must yield;
+He lies as in a narrow grave
+  Beneath a battle-field.
+
+His fate will fall before the ship's,
+  Whate'er the ship betide;
+He lifts the trumpet to his lips
+  As though he kissed a bride.
+
+"Now blow thy best, blow thy last,
+  My trumpet, for the Right!"--
+He has sent his soul in one strong blast,
+  To hearten them that fight.
+
+
+
+
+COMRADES
+
+
+"Oh, whither, whither, rider toward the west?"
+  "And whither, whither, rider toward the east?"
+"I rode we ride upon the same high quest,
+  Whereon who enters may not be released;
+
+"To seek the Cup whose form none ever saw,--
+  A nobler form than e'er was shapen yet,
+Though million million cups without a flaw,
+  Afire with gems, on princes' boards are set;
+
+"To seek the Wine whereof none ever had
+  One draught, though many a generous wine flows free,--
+The spiritual blood that shall make glad
+  The hearts of mighty men that are to be."
+
+"But shall one find it, brother? Where I ride,
+  Men mock and stare, who never had the dream,
+Yet hope within my breast has never died."
+  "Nor ever died in mine that trembling gleam."
+
+"Eastward, I deem: the sun and all good things
+  Are born to bless us of the Orient old."
+"Westward, I deem: an untried ocean sings
+  Against that coast, 'New shores await the bold.'"
+
+"God speed or thee or me, so coming men
+  But have the Cup!" "God speed!"--Not once before
+Their eyes had met, nor ever met again,
+  Yet were they loving comrades evermore.
+
+
+
+
+THE HOUSE OF HATE
+
+
+Mine enemy builded well, with the soft blue  hills in sight;
+But betwixt his house and the hills I builded a house for spite:
+And the name thereof I set in the stone-work over the gate,
+With a carving of bats and apes; and I called it the House of Hate.
+
+And the front was alive with masks of malice and of despair;
+Horned demons that leered in stone, and women with serpent hair;
+That whenever his glance would rest on the soft hills far and blue,
+It must fall on mine evil work, and my hatred should pierce
+      him through.
+
+And I said, "I will dwell herein, for beholding my heart's desire
+On my foe;" and I knelt, and fain had brightened the hearth with fire;
+But the brands they would hiss and die, as with curses a strangled man,
+And the hearth was cold from the day that the House of Hate began.
+
+And I called at the open door, "Make ye merry, all friends of mine,
+In the hall of my House of Hate, where is plentiful store and wine.
+We will drink unhealth together unto him I have foiled and fooled!"
+And they stared and they passed me by; but I scorned to be thereby
+      schooled.
+
+And I ordered my board for feast; and I drank, in the topmost seat,
+Choice grape from a curious cup; and the first it was wonder-sweet;
+But the second was bitter indeed, and the third was bitter and black,
+And the gloom of the grave came on me, and I cast the cup to wrack.
+
+Alone, I was stark alone, and the shadows were each a fear;
+And thinly I laughed, but once, for the echoes were strange to hear;
+And the wind in the hallways howled as a green-eyed wolf might cry,
+And I heard my heart: I must look on the face of a man, or die!
+
+So I crept to my mirrored face, and I looked, and I saw it grown
+(By the light in my shaking hand) to the like of the masks of stone;
+And with horror I shrieked aloud as I flung my torch and fled,
+And a fire-snake writhed where it fell; and at midnight
+      the sky was red.
+
+And at morn, when the House of Hate was a ruin, despoiled of flame,
+I fell at mine enemy's feet, and besought him to slay my shame;
+But he looked in mine eyes and smiled, and his eyes were
+      calm and great:
+"You rave, or have dreamed," he said; "I saw not your House of Hate."
+
+
+
+
+THE ARROWMAKER
+
+
+Day in, day out, or sun or rain,
+Or sallow leaf, or summer grain,
+Beneath a wintry morning moon
+Or through red smouldering afternoon,
+With simple joy, with careful pride,
+He plies the craft he long has plied:
+To shape the stave, to set the sting,
+To fit the shaft with irised wing;
+And farers by may hear him sing,
+  For still his door is wide:
+  "Laugh and sigh, live and die,--
+  The world swings round; I know not, I,
+  If north or south mine arrows fly!"
+
+And sometimes, while he works, he dreams,
+And on his soul a vision gleams:
+Some storied field fought long ago,
+Where arrows fell as thick as snow.
+His breath comes fast, his eyes grow bright,
+To think upon that ancient fight.
+Oh, leaping from the strained string
+Against an armored Wrong to ring,
+Brave the songs that arrows sing!
+  He weighs the finished flight:
+  "Live and die; by and by
+  The sun kills dark; I know not, I,
+  In what good fight mine arrows fly!"
+
+Or at the gray hour, weary grown,
+When curfew o'er the wold is blown,
+He sees, as in a magic glass,
+Some lost and lonely mountain-pass;
+And lo! a sign of deathful rout
+The mocking vine has wound about,--
+An earth-fixed arrow by a spring,
+All greenly mossed, a mouldered thing;
+That stifled shaft no more shall sing!
+  He shakes his head in doubt.
+  "Laugh and sigh, live and die,--
+  The hand is blind: I know not, I,
+  In what lost pass mine arrows lie!
+  One to east, one to west,
+  Another for the eagle's breast,--
+  The archer and the wind know best!"
+  The stars are in the sky;
+  He lays his arrows by.
+
+
+
+
+A NEST IN A LYRE
+
+
+As sign before a playhouse serves
+  A giant Lyre, ornately gilded,
+On whose convenient coignes and curves
+  The pert brown sparrows late have builded.
+They flit, and flirt, and prune their wings,
+  Not awed at all by golden glitter,
+And make among the silent strings
+  Their satisfied ephemeral twitter.
+
+Ah, somewhat so we perch and flit,
+  And spy some crumb and dash to win it,
+And with a witty chirping twit
+  Our sheltering Time--there's nothing in it!
+In Life's large frame, a glorious Lyre's,
+  We nest, content, our season flighty,
+Nor guess we brush the powerful wires
+  Might witch the stars with music mighty.
+
+
+
+
+THISBE
+
+
+The garden within was shaded,
+  And guarded about from sight;
+The fragrance flowed to the south wind,
+  The fountain leaped to the light.
+
+And the street without was narrow,
+  And dusty, and hot, and mean;
+But the bush that bore white roses,
+  She leaned to the fence between:
+
+And softly she sought a crevice
+  In that barrier blank and tall,
+And shyly she thrust out through it
+  Her loveliest bud of all.
+
+And tender to touch, and gracious,
+  And pure as the moon's pure shine,
+The full rose paled and was perfect,--
+  For whose eyes, for whose lips, but mine!
+
+
+
+
+THE SPRING BEAUTIES
+
+
+The Puritan Spring Beauties stood freshly clad for church;
+A Thrush, white-breasted, o'er them sat singing on his perch.
+"Happy be! for fair are ye!" the gentle singer told them,
+But presently a buff-coat Bee came booming up to scold them.
+  "Vanity, oh, vanity!
+  Young maids, beware of vanity!"
+  Grumbled out the buff-coat Bee,
+  Half parson-like, half soldierly.
+
+The sweet-faced maidens trembled, with pretty, pinky blushes,
+Convinced that it was wicked to listen to the Thrushes;
+And when, that shady afternoon, I chanced that way to pass,
+They hung their little bonnets down and looked into the grass,
+  All because the buff-coat Bee
+  Lectured them so solemnly:--
+  "Vanity, oh, vanity!
+  Young maids, beware of vanity!"
+
+
+
+
+KINSHIP
+
+
+A lily grew in the tangle,
+  In a flame red garment dressed,
+And many a ruby spangle
+  Besprinkled her tawny breast.
+
+And the silken moth sailed by her
+  With a swift and a snow-white sail;
+Not a gilt-girt bee came nigh her,
+  Nor a fly in his gay green mail.
+
+And the bronze-brown wings and the golden,
+  O'er the billowing meadows blown,
+Were still as by magic holden
+  From the lily that flamed alone;
+
+Till over the fragrant tangle
+  A wanderer winging went,
+And with many a ruby spangle
+  Were his tawny vans besprent.
+And he hovered one moment stilly
+  O'er the thicket, her mazy bower,
+Then he sank to the heart of the lily,
+  And they seemed but a single flower.
+
+
+
+
+COMPENSATION
+
+
+The brook ran laughing from the shade,
+  And in the sunshine danced all day:
+The starlight and the moonlight made
+  Its glimmering path a Milky Way.
+
+The blue sky burned, with summer fired;
+  For parching fields, for pining flowers,
+The spirits of the air desired
+  The brook's bright life to shed in showers.
+
+It gave its all that thirst to slake;
+  Its dusty channel lifeless lay;
+Now softest flowers, white-foaming, make
+  Its winding bed a Milky Way.
+
+
+
+
+WHEN WILLOWS GREEN
+
+
+When goldenly the willows green,
+  And, mirrored in the sunset pool,
+Hang wavering, wild-rose clouds between:
+  When robins call in twilights cool:
+      What is it we await?
+      Who lingers and is late?
+What strange unrest, what yearning stirs us all
+When willows green, when robins call?
+
+When fields of flowering grass respire
+  A sweet that seems the breath of Peace,
+And liquid-voiced the thrushes choir,
+  Oh, whence the sense of glad release?
+      What is it life uplifts?
+      Who entered, bearing gifts?
+What floods from heaven the being overpower
+When thrushes choir, when grasses flower?
+
+
+
+
+AT THE PARTING OF THE WAYS
+
+(AD COMITEM JUNIOREM)
+
+
+Comrade Youth! Sit down with me
+Underneath the summer tree,
+Cool green dome whose shade is sweet,
+Where the sunny roadways meet,
+See, the ancient finger-post,
+Silver-bleached with rain and shine,
+Warns us like a noon-day ghost:
+That way's yours, and this way's mine!
+I would hold you with delays
+Here at parting of the ways.
+
+Hold you! I as well might look
+To detain the racing brook
+With regrets and grievance tender,
+As my comrade swift and slender,
+Shy, capricious, all of spring!
+Catch the wind with blossoms laden,
+Catch the wild bird on the wing,
+Catch the heart of boy or maiden!
+
+Yet I'll hold your image fast,
+As this hour I saw you last,--
+As with staff in hand you sat,
+Soft curls putting forth defiant
+From the tilted Mercury's hat,
+Wreathen with the wilding grace
+Of the fresh-leaved vine and pliant,
+Stealing down to see your face.
+Eyes of pleasance, lips of laughter,
+I shall hoard you long hereafter;
+Very dear shall be the days
+Ere the parting of the ways!
+
+Shall you deem them dear, in truth,
+Days when we, o'er hill and hollow,
+Trudged together, Comrade Youth?
+Ah, you dream of days to follow!
+Hand in hand we jogged along;
+I would fetch from out my scrip,
+Crust or jest or antique song,--
+Live and lovely, on your lip,
+Such poor needments as I had
+Were as yours; you made me glad.
+--Lo, the dial! No prayer stays
+Time, at parting of the ways!
+
+This gold memory--rings it true?
+Half for me and half for you.
+Cleave and share it. Now, good sooth,
+God be with you, Comrade Youth!
+
+
+
+
+THE FAIR GRAY LADY
+
+
+When the charm at last is fled
+  From the woodland stark and pale,
+And like shades of glad hours dead
+  Whirl the leaves before the gale:
+
+When against the western fire
+  Darkens many an empty nest,
+Like a thwarted heart's desire
+  That in prime was hardly guessed:
+
+Then the fair gray Lady leans,
+  Lingering, o'er the faded grass,
+Still the soul of all the scenes
+  Once she graced, a golden lass.
+
+O'er the Year's discrownèd sleep,
+  Dear as in her earlier day,
+She her bending watch doth keep,
+  She the Goldenrod grown gray.
+
+
+
+
+THE ENCOUNTER
+
+
+There's a wood-way winding high,
+Roofed far up with light-green flicker,
+Save one midmost star of sky.
+Underfoot 'tis all pale brown
+With the dead leaves matted down
+One on other, thick and thicker;
+Soft, but springing to the tread.
+There a youth late met a maid
+Running lightly,--oh, so fleetly!
+"Whence art thou?" the herd-boy said.
+Either side her long hair swayed,
+Half a tress and half a braid,
+Colored like the soft dead leaf,
+As she answered, laughing sweetly,
+On she ran, as flies the swallow;
+He could not choose but follow
+Though it had been to his grief.
+
+"I have come up from the valley,--
+From the valley!" Once he caught her,
+Swerving down a sidelong alley,
+For a moment, by the hand.
+"Tell me, tell me," he besought her,
+"Sweetest, I would understand
+Why so cold thy palm, that slips
+From me like the shy cold minnow?
+The wood is warm, and smells of fern,
+And below the meadows burn.
+Hard to catch and hard to win, oh!
+Why are those brown finger tips
+Crinkled as with lines of water?"
+
+Laughing while she featly footed,
+With the herd-boy hasting after,
+Sprang she on a trunk uprooted,
+Clung she by a roping vine;
+Leaped behind a birch, and told,
+Still eluding, through its fine,
+Mocking, slender, leafy laughter,
+Why her finger tips were cold:
+
+"I went down to tease the brook,
+With her fishes, there below;
+She comes dancing, thou must know,
+And the bushes arch above her;
+But the seeking sunbeams look,
+Dodging through the wind-blown cover,
+Find and kiss her into stars.
+Silvery veins entwine and crook
+Where a stone her tripping bars;
+There be smooth, clear sweeps, and swirls
+Bubbling up crisp drops like pearls.
+There I lie, along the rocks
+Thick with greenest slippery moss,
+And I have in hand a strip
+Of gray, pliant, dappled bark;
+And I comb her liquid locks
+Till her tangling currents cross;
+And I have delight to hark
+To the chiding of her lip,
+Taking on the talking stone
+With each turn another tone.
+Oh, to set her wavelets bickering!
+Oh, to hear her laughter simple,
+See her fret and flash and dimple!
+Ha, ha, ha!" The woodland rang
+With the rippling through the flickering.
+At the birch the herd-boy sprang.
+
+On a sudden something wound
+Vine-like round his throbbing throat;
+On a sudden something smote
+Sharply on his longing lips,
+Stung him as the birch bough whips:
+Was it kiss or was it blow?
+Never after could he know;
+She was gone without a sound.
+
+Never after could he see
+In the wood or in the mead,
+Or in any company
+Of the rustic mortal maids,
+Her with acorn-colored braids;
+Never came she to his need.
+Never more the lad was merry,
+Strayed apart, and learned to dream,
+Feeding on the tart wild berry;
+Murmuring words none understood,--
+Words with music of the wood,
+And with music of the stream.
+
+
+
+
+SUMMER HOURS
+
+
+Hours aimless-drifting as the milkweed's down
+  In seeming, still a seed of joy ye bear
+  That steals into the soul when unaware,
+And springs up Memory in the stony town.
+
+
+
+
+LOVE UNSUNG
+
+
+Seven jewelled rays has the Sun fast bound
+    In his arrow of blinding sheen;
+But he quickens the breast of the fruitful ground
+    With a subtlest ray unseen.
+
+And the rainbow moods of this love of ours
+    I may blend in the song I bring;
+But the magic that makes life laugh with flowers
+    Is the love that I cannot sing.
+
+
+
+
+THE WISH FOR A CHAPLET
+
+
+Vineleaf and rose I would my chaplet make:
+I would my word were wine for all men's sake.
+Pure from the pressing of the stainless feet
+Of unblamed Hours, and for an altar meet.
+
+Vineleaf and rose: I would, had I the art,
+Distil, to lasting sweet, Joy's rosy heart,
+That no sere autumn should its fragrance wrong,
+Closed in the crystal glass of slender song.
+
+
+
+
+SONNETS
+
+
+
+
+THE TORCH-RACE
+
+
+Brave racer, who hast sped the living light
+With throat outstretched and every nerve a-strain,
+Now on thy left hand labors gray-faced Pain,
+And Death hangs close behind thee on the right.
+Soon flag the flying feet, soon fails the sight,
+With every pulse the gaunt pursuers gain;
+And all thy splendor of strong life must wane
+And set into the mystery of night.
+
+Yet fear not, though in falling, blindness hide
+Whose hand shall snatch, before it scars the sod,
+The light thy lessening grasp no more controls:
+Truth's rescuer, Truth shall instantly provide:
+This is the torch-race game, that noblest souls
+Play on through time beneath the eyes of God.
+
+
+
+
+TO SLEEP
+
+
+All slumb'rous images that be, combined,
+To this white couch and cool shall woo thee, Sleep!
+First will I think on fields of grasses deep
+In gray-green flower, o'er which the transient wind
+Runs like a smile; and next will call to mind
+How glistening poplar-tops, when breezes creep
+Among their leaves, a tender motion keep,
+Stroking the sky, like touch of lovers kind.
+
+Ah, having felt thy calm kiss on mine eyes,
+All night inspiring thy divine pure breath,
+I shall awake as into godhood born,
+And with a fresh, undaunted soul arise,
+Clear as the blue convolvulus at morn.
+--Dear bedfellow, deals thus thy brother, Death?
+
+
+
+
+SISTER SNOW
+
+
+Praised be our Lord (to echo the sweet phrase
+Of saintly Francis) for our sister Snow:
+Whose soft, soft coming never man may know
+By any sound; whose down-light touch allays
+All fevers of worn earth. She clothes the days
+In garments without spot, and hence doth go
+Her noiseless shuttle swiftly to and fro,
+And very pure, and pleasant, are her ways.
+
+But yesterday, how loveless looked the skies!
+How cold the sun's last glance, and unbenign,
+Across the field forsaken, russet-leaved!
+Now pearly peace on all the landscape lies.
+--Wast thou not sent us, Sister, for a sign
+Of that vast Mercy of God, else unconceived?
+
+
+
+
+RETROSPECT
+
+
+"Backward," he said, "dear heart I like to look
+To those half-spring, half-winter days, when first
+We drew together, ere the leaf-buds burst.
+Sunbeams were silver yet, keen gusts yet shook
+The boughs. Have you remembered that kind book,
+That for our sake Galeotto's part rehearsed,
+(The friend of lovers,--this time blessed, not cursed!)
+And that best hour, when reading we forsook?"
+
+She, listening, wore the smile a mother wears
+At childish fancies needless to control;
+Yet felt a fine, hid pain with pleasure blend.
+Better it seemed to think that love of theirs,
+Native as breath, eternal as the soul,
+Knew no beginning, could not have an end.
+
+
+
+
+THE CONTRAST
+
+
+He loved her; having felt his love begin
+With that first look,--as lover oft avers.
+He made pale flowers his pleading ministers,
+Impressed sweet music, drew the springtime in
+To serve his suit; but when he could not win,
+Forgot her face and those gray eyes of hers;
+And at her name his pulse no longer stirs,
+And life goes on as though she had not been.
+
+She never loved him; but she loved Love so,
+So reverenced Love, that all her being shook
+At his demand whose entrance she denied.
+Her thoughts of him such tender color took
+As western skies that keep the afterglow.
+The words he spoke were with her till she died.
+
+
+
+
+A MYSTERY
+
+
+That sunless day no living shadow swept
+Across the hills, fleet shadow chasing light,
+Twin of the sailing cloud: but, mists wool white,
+Slow-stealing mists, on those heaved shoulders crept,
+And wrought about the strong hills while they slept
+In witches' wise, and rapt their forms from sight.
+Dreams were they; less than dream, the noblest height
+And farthest; and the chilly woodland wept.
+
+A sunless day and sad: yet all the while
+Within the grave green twilight of the wood,
+inscrutable, immutable, apart,
+Hearkening the brook, whose song she understood,
+The secret birch-tree kept her silver smile,
+Strange as the peace that gleams at sorrow's heart.
+
+
+
+
+TRIUMPH
+
+
+This windy sunlit morning after rain,
+The wet bright laurel laughs with beckoning gleam
+In the blown wood, whence breaks the wild white stream
+Rushing and flashing, glorying in its gain;
+Nor swerves nor parts, but with a swift disdain
+O'erleaps the boulders lying in long dream,
+Lapped in cold moss; and in its joy doth seem
+A wood-born creature bursting from a chain.
+
+And "Triumph, triumph, triumph!" is its hoarse
+Fierce-whispered word. O fond, and dost not know
+Thy triumph on another wise must be,--
+To render all the tribute of thy force,
+And lose thy little being in the flow
+Of the unvaunting river toward the sea!
+
+
+
+
+IN WINTER, WITH THE BOOK WE READ IN SPRING
+
+
+The blackberry's bloom, when last we went this way,
+Veiled all her bowsome rods with trembling white;
+The robin's sunset breast gave forth delight
+At sunset hour; the wind was warm with May.
+Armored in ice the sere stems arch to-day,
+Each tiny thorn encased and argent bright;
+Where clung the birds that long have taken flight,
+Dead songless leaves cling fluttering on the spray.
+
+O hand in mine, that mak'st all paths the same,
+Being paths of peace, where falls nor chill nor gloom,
+Made sweet with ardors of an inward spring!
+I hold thee--frozen skies to rosy flame
+Are turned, and snows to living snows of bloom,
+And once again the gold-brown thrushes sing.
+
+
+
+
+SERE WISDOM
+
+
+I had remembrance of a summer morn,
+When all the glistening field was softly stirred
+And like a child's in happy sleep I heard
+The low and healthful breathing of the corn.
+Late when the sumach's red was dulled and worn,
+And fainter grew the trite and troublous word
+Of tristful cricket, that replaced the bird,
+I sought the slope, and found a waste forlorn.
+
+Against that cold clear west, whence winter peers,
+All spectral stood the bleached stalks thin-leaved,
+Dry as papyrus kept a thousand years,
+And hissing whispered to the wind that grieved,
+_It was a dream--we have no goodly ears--
+There was no summer-time--deceived! deceived!_
+
+
+
+
+ISOLATION
+
+
+White fog around, soft snow beneath the tread,
+All sunless, windless, tranced, the morning lay;
+All noiseless, trackless, new, the well-known way.
+The silence weighed upon the sense; in dread,
+"Alone, I am alone," I shuddering said,
+"And wander in a region where no ray
+Has ever shone, and as on earth's first day
+Or last, my kind are not yet born or dead."
+
+Yet not afar, meanwhile, there faltered feet
+Like mine, through that wide mystery of the snow,
+Nor could the old accustomed paths divine;
+And even as mine, unheard spake voices low,
+And hearts were near, that as my own heart beat,
+Warm hands, and faces fashioned like to mine.
+
+
+
+
+THE LOST DRYAD
+
+(TO EDITH M. THOMAS)
+
+
+Into what beech or silvern birch, O friend
+Suspected ever of a dryad strain,
+Hast crept at last, delighting to regain
+Thy sylvan house? Now whither shall I wend,
+Or by what wingèd post my greeting send,
+Bird, butterfly, or bee? Shall three moons wane,
+And yet not found?--Ah, surely it was pain
+Of old, for mortal youth his heart to lend
+To any hamadryad! In his hour
+Of simple trust, wild impulse him bereaves:
+She flees, she seeks her strait enmossèd bower
+And while he, searching, softly calls, and grieves,
+Oblivious, high above she laughs in leaves,
+Or patters tripping talk to the quick shower.
+
+
+
+
+A MEMORY
+
+
+Though pent in stony streets, 'tis joy to know,
+'Tis joy, although we breathe a fainter air,
+The spirit of those places far and fair
+That we have loved, abides; and fern-scents flow
+Out of the wood's heart still, and shadows grow
+Long on remembered roads as warm days wear;
+And still the dark wild water, in its lair,
+The narrow chasm, stirs blindly to and fro.
+
+Delight is in the sea-gull's dancing wings,
+And sunshine wakes to rose the ruddy hue
+Of rocks; and from her tall wind-slanted stem
+A soft bright plume the goldenrod outflings
+Along the breeze, above a sea whose blue
+Is like the light that kindles through a gem.
+
+
+
+
+THE GIFTS OF THE OAK
+
+(FOR THE SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL)
+
+
+'There needs no crown to mark the forest's king.'
+Thus, long ago thou sang'st the sound-heart tree
+Sacred to sovereign Jove, and dear to thee
+Since first, a venturous youth with eyes of spring,--
+Whose pilgrim-staff each side put forth a wing,--
+Beneath the oak thou lingeredst lovingly
+To crave, as largess of his majesty,
+Firm-rooted strength, and grace of leaves that sing.
+
+He gave; we thank him! Graciousness as grave,
+And power as easeful as his own he gave;
+Long broodings rich with sun, and laughters kind;
+And singing leaves, whose later bronze is dear
+As the first amber of the budding year,--
+Whose voices answer the autumnnal wind.
+
+
+
+
+THE STRAYED SINGER
+
+(MATTHEW ARNOLD)
+
+
+He wandered from us long, oh, long ago,
+Rare singer, with the note unsatisfied;
+Into what charmèd wood, what shade star-eyed
+With the wind's April darlings, none may know.
+We lost him. Songless, one with seed to sow,
+Keen-smiling toiler, came in place, and plied
+His strength in furrowed field till eventide,
+And passed to slumber when the sun was low.
+
+But now,--as though Death spoke some mystic word
+Solving a spell,--present to thought appears
+The morn's estray, not him we saw but late;
+And on his lips the strain that once we heard,
+And in his hand, cool as with Springtime's tears,
+The melancholy wood-flowers delicate.
+
+
+
+
+THE IMMORTAL WORD
+
+
+One soiled and shamed and foiled in this world's fight,
+Deserter from the host of God, that here
+Still darkly struggles,--waked from death in fear,
+And strove to screen his forehead from the white
+And blinding glory of the awful Light,
+The revelation and reproach austere.
+Then with strong hand outstretched a Shape drew near,
+Bright-browed, majestic, armored like a knight.
+
+"Great Angel, servant of the Highest, why
+Stoop'st thou to me?" although his lips were mute,
+His eyes inquired. The Shining One replied:
+"Thy Book, thy birth, life of thy life am I,
+Son of thy soul, thy youth's forgotten fruit.
+We two go up to judgment side by side."
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, RIDE TO THE LADY ***
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