-Olive-Pehcivm,- LOS ANGELES HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER WITH OTHER VERSES HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER WITH OTHER VERSES by WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY O, how shall summer's honey breath hold out Against the wrackful siege of battering days? SHAKESPEARE 1 ■ - • •> • • I . r HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS NEW YORK AND LONDON » • • • • • • I • * • • • ' i • < i i ...... .... • > ! Copyright, 1901, by Harper & Brothers. All rights reserved November, igoi. HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER CONTENTS DEDICATION: Ask me not how they came . PROLOGUE: These to the glory and praise of the green land *# HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER ENVOY: My songs were once of the sunrise . PRAELUDIUM: In sumptuous chords, and strange Low — low: Over a perishing after-glow • Moon of half -candied meres ♦ The night dislimns, and breaks . • It came with the year's first crocus . The good South- West on sea-worn wings In the red April dawn .... The April sky sags low and drear . • Shadow and gleam on the Downland . The wind on the wold • . * • Deep in my gathering garden • • • What doth the blackbird in the boughs. This world, all hoary • • • • I talked one midnight with the jolly ghost * * • v ix x • XII xiv xv xvi xvii xviii xix XX xxi xxii xxiv 48 ENGLISH HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER and the CONTENTS Why do you linger and loiter, O most sweet ? Come where my Lady lies . . The west a glory of green and red gold Look down, dear eyes, look down Poplar and lime and chestnut * Hither, this solemn eventide . After the grim daylight . ♦ Love, which is lust, is the Lamp in Tomb .♦.♦♦. Between the dusk of a summer night I took a hansom on to-day . ♦ Only a freakish wisp of hair? ♦ This is the moon of roses . • June, and a warm, sweet rain ♦ It was a bowl of roses ♦ • ♦ Your feet as glad ♦ . . • A world of leafage murmurous and a-t winkle I send you roses — red, like love These glad, these great, these goodly days The downs, like uplands in Eden, The time of the silence . ♦ There was no kiss that day? xxv xxvii xxix xxx xxxi xxxii xxxiii xxxiv xxxv xxxvi xxxvii xxxix xl xli xlii xliii xliv xlv xlvi xlvii xlviii HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER $ CONTENTS Sing to me, sing, and sing again ♦ . We sat late, late — talking of many things 'Twas in a world of living leaves . Since those we love and those we hate These were the woods of wonder "Dearest, when I am dead" . • Dear hands, so many times so much When, in what other life ♦ The rain and the wind, the wind an< rain He made this gracious Earth a hell O, these long nights of days ! . In Shoreham River, hurrying down Come by my bed . Gray hills, gray skies, gray lights . Silence, loneliness, darkness . So let me hence . FINALE : A sigh sent wrong the xlix 1 li lii liii liv Iv lvi lvii lviii lix Ix lxii lxiii lxiv lxv lxvii LONDON TYPES BUS DRIVER— He's called The General . . lxxi Life -Guardsman— Joy of the Milliner, Envy of the Line lxxii HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER i£ CONTENTS HAWKER— Far out of bounds he's figured . Ixxiii BEEF-EATER — His beat lies knee-high through a dust of story . lxxiv SANDWICH-MAN— An ill March noon; the flagstones gray with dust ♦ lxxv r LlZA — 'LIZA'S old man 's perhaps a little shady lxxvi "LADY" — Time, the old humourist, has a trick lxxvii BLUECOAT BOY— So went our boys when Edward Sixth, the King . . . lxxviii MOUNTED POLICE— Army Reserve; a wor- shipper of "Bobs lxxix NEWS-BOY — Take any station, pavement, circus> corner ♦♦♦♦.♦ lxxx DRUM-MAJOR— Who says Drum-Major ♦ lxxxi FLOWER-GIRL — There 's never a delicate nurseling of the year lxxxii BARMAID— Though, if you ask her name, she says ELISE lxxxiii EPILOGUE: The artist muses at his ease . lxxxiv THREE PROLOGUES BEAU AUSTIN — "To all and singular" . Ixxxvii HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER ^CONTENTS RICHARD SAVAGE— To other boards for pan and song and dance! . ♦ . . . xc Admiral Guinea — Once was an Age, an Age of blood and gold xciii EPICEDIA Two DAYS — That day we brought our Beau- tiful One to lie xcix I.M .— Thomas Edward Brown— He looked half-parson and half-skipper .... ci LM. — George Warrington Steevens— We cheered you forth — brilliant and kind and brave • cii LAST POST — The day's high work is over and done ciii I.M.— REGINAE DlLECTISSIMAE Victoriae— Sceptre and orb and crown , ♦ . ♦ cv Epilogue— Into a land Storm-wrought, a place of quakes cxi Ask me not how they came, These songs of love and death. These dreams of a futile stage, These thumb-nails seen in the street: Ask me not how nor why, But take them for your own, Dear Wife of twenty years, Knowing — O, 'who so well? — You it was made the man That made these songs of love, Death, and the trivial rest: So that, your love elsewhere, These songs, or bad or good- How should they ever have been ? Worthing, July 31, 1901. * HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER PROLOGUE jj^HESE to the glory and praise of the green land [That bred my women, and that holds my dead, \ England, and with her the strong broods that stand Wherever her fighting lines are thrust or spread! They call us proud? — Look at our English Rose! Shedders of blood ? — Where hath our own been spared ? Shopkeepers ? — Our accompt the high God knows* Close ? — In our bounty half the world hath shared. They hate us, and they envy ? — Envy and hate Should drive them to the Pits edge? — Be it so! That race is damned which misesteems its fate; And this, in God's good time, they all shall know, And know you too, you good green Eng- land, then — Mother of mothering girls and governing men! HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER ENVOY My songs were once of the sunrise : They shouted it over the bar ; First-footing the dawns, they flourished, And flamed with the morning star. My songs are now of the sunset : Their brows are touched with light, But their feet are lost in the shadows And wet with the dews of night. Yet for the joy in their making Take them, O fond and true, And for his sake who made them Let them be dear to You. \^ n 111 HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER PRAELUDIUM Largo espressivo |N sumptuous chords, and strange, I Through rich yet poignant har- monies : Subtle and strong browns, reds Magnificent with death and the pride of death, Thin, clamant greens And delicate yellows that exhaust The exquisite chromatics of decay: From ruining gardens, from reluctant woods — Dear, multitudinously reluctant woods! — And- sering margents, forced To be lean and bare and perished grace by grace, And flower by flower discharmed, Comes, to a purpose none, Not even the Scorner, which is the Fool, can blink, The dead-march of the yean Dead things and dying ! Now the long-laboured soul Listens, and pines. But never a note of hope Sounds HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER Sounds: whether in those high, Transcending unisons of resignation That speed the sovran sun, As he goes southing, weakening, minishing, Almighty in obedience; or in those Small, sorrowful colloquies Of bronze and russet and gold, Colour with colour, dying things with dead, That break along this visual orchestra: As in that other one, the audible, Horn answers horn, hautboy and violin Talk, and the 'cello calls the clarionet And flute, and the poor heart is glad. There is no hope in these — only despair* Then, destiny in act, ensues That most tremendous passage in the score: When hangman rains and winds have wrought Their worst, and, the brave lights gone down, The low strings, the brute brass, the sullen drums Sob, grovel, and curse themselves Silent* ♦ ♦ ♦ But on the spirit of Man And VI HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER And on the heart of the World there falls A strange, half-desperate peace: A war-worn, militant, gray jubilance In the unkind, implacable tyranny Of Winter, the obscene, Old, crapulous Regent, who in his loins — O, who but feels he carries in his loins The wild, sweet - blooded, wonderful harlot, Spring ? VII • HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER i O W— low Over a perishing after-glow, A thin, red shred of moon Trailed* In the windless air I The poplars all ranked lean and chill. The smell of winter loitered there, And the Year's heart felt still. Yet not so far away Seemed the mad Spring, But that, as lovers will, I let my laughing heart go play, As it had been a fond maid's frolicking ; And, turning thrice the gold I'd got, In the good gloom Solemnly wished me — what? What, and with whom ? IX HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER _ _ MOON of half-candied meres And flurrying, fading snows ; Moon of unkindly rains, Wild skies, and troubled vanes ; When the Norther snarls and bites, And the lone moon walks a-cold, And the lawns grizzle o' nights, And wet fogs search the fold: Here in this heart of mine A dream that warms like wine, A dream one other knows, Moon of the roaring weirs And the sip-sopping close, February Fill-Dyke, Shapes like a royal rose — A red, red rose ! O, but the distance clears ! O, but the daylight grows ! Soon shall the pied wind-flowers Babble of greening hours, Primrose and daffodil Yearn to a fathering sun, The lark have all his will, The HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER The thrush be never done, And April, May, and June Go to the same blythe tune As this blythe dream of mine! Moon when the crocus peers, Moon when the violet blows, February Fair-Maid, Haste, and let come the rose — Let come the rose! 21 HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER in The night dislimns, and breaks Like snows slow thawn; An evil wind awakes On lea and lawn; The low East quakes; and hark! Out of the kindless dark, A fierce, protesting lark, High in the horror of dawn! A shivering streak of light, A scurry of rain: Bleak day from bleaker night Creeps pinched and fain; The old gloom thins and dies, And in the wretched skies A new gloom, sick to rise, Sprawls, like a thing in pain. And yet, what matter — say! — The shuddering trees, The Easter-stricken day, The sodden leas? The XII HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER The good bird, wing and wing With Time, finds heart to sing, As he were hastening The swallow o'er the seas. X1I1 HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER IV It came with the year's first crocus In a world of winds and snows — Because it would, because it must, Because of life and time and lust; And a year's first crocus served my turn As well as the year's first rose. The March rack hurries and hectors, The March dust heaps and blows; But the primrose flouts the daffodil, And here's the patient violet still; And the year's first crocus brought me luck, So hey for the year's first rose! xiv HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER V The good South-West on sea-worn wings Comes shepherding the good rain; The brave Sea breaks, and glooms, and swings, A weltering, glittering plain* Sound, Sea of England, sound and shine, Blow, English Wind, amain, Till in this old, gray heart of mine The Spring need wake again ! xv HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER VI In the red April dawn. In the wild April weather, From brake and thicket and lawn The birds sing altogether. The look of the hoyden Spring Is pinched and shrewish and cold; But altogether they sing Of a world that can never be old: Of a world still young — still young! — Whose last word won't be said, Nor her last song dreamed and sung, Till her last true lover's dead! xvi HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER vn The April sky sags low and drear, The April winds blow cold, The April rains fall gray and sheer, And yeanlings keep the fold* But the rook has built, and the song-birds quire, And over the faded lea The lark soars glorying, gyre on gyre, And he is the bird for me! For he sings as if from his watchman's height He saw, this blighting day, The far vales break into colour and light From the banners and arms of May* XVII HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER vm Shadow and gleam on the Downland Under the low Spring sky, Shadow and gleam in my spirit — Why? A bird, in his nest rejoicing, Cheers and flatters and woos: A fresh voice flutters my fancy — Whose ? And the humour of April frolics And bickers in blade and bough- O, to meet for the primal kindness Now! XVlll HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER IX The wind on the wold, With sea-scents and sea-dreams attended, Is wine! The air is as gold In elixir — it takes so the splendid Sunshine ! O, the larks in the blue! How the song of them glitters, and glances, And gleams! The old music sounds new — And it's O, the wild Spring, and his chances And dreams! There's a lift in the blood — O, this gracious, and thirsting, and aching Unrest ! All life's at the bud, And my heart, full of April, is breaking My breast* xix HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER X Deep in my gathering garden A gallant thrush has built; And his quaverings on the stillness Like light made song are spilt* They gleam, they glint, they sparkle, They glitter along the air, Like the song of a sunbeam netted In a tangle of red-gold hair. And I long, as I laugh and listen, For the angel-hour that shall bring My part, pre-ordained and appointed, In the miracle of Spring. xx HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER XI What doth the blackbird in the boughs Sing all day to his nested spouse? What but the song of his old Mother-Earth, In her mighty humour of lust and mirth? "Love and God's will go wing and wing, And as for death, is there any such thing ?" — In the shadow of death, So, at the beck of the wizard Spring The dear bird saith — So the bird saith! Caught with us all in the nets of fate, So the sweet wretch sings early and late; And, O my fairest, after all, The heart of the World's in his innocent call. The will of the World's with him wing and wing : — "Life — life — life! 'Tis the sole great thing This side of death, Heart on heart in the wonder of Spring!" So the bird saith — The wise bird saith ! XX1 HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER XII This world, all hoary With song and story, Rolls in a glory Of youth and mirth; Above and under Clothed on with wonder, Sunrise and thunder, And death and birth. His broods befriending With grace unending And gifts transcending A god's at play, Yet do his meetness And sovran sweetness Hold in the jocund purpose of May. So take your pleasure, And in full measure Use of your treasure, When birds sing best! For when heaven's bluest, And earth feels newest, And love longs truest, And takes not rest: When XXII HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER When winds blow cleanest, And seas roll sheenest, And lawns lie greenest: Then, night and day, Dear life counts dearest, And God walks nearest To them that praise Him, praising His May. xxm HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER Xffl I talked one midnight with the jolly ghost Of a gray ancestor, Tom Heywood hight ; And, "Here's," says he, his old heart liquor- lifted- " Here's how we did when Gloriana shone:" All in a garden green Thrushes were singing; Red rose and white between, Lilies were springing; It was the merry May; Yet sang my Lady: — Nay, Sweet, now nay, now nay! I am not ready," n Then to a pleasant shade I did invite her: All things a concert made, For to delight her ; Under, the grass was gay; Yet sang my Lady: — "Nay, Sweet, now nay, now nay! I am not ready." xxiv HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER XIV Why do you linger and loiter, O most sweet ? Why do you falter and delay, Now that the insolent, high-blooded May Comes greeting and to greet ? Comes with her instant summonings to stray Down the green, antient way — The leafy, still, rose - haunted, eye -proof street ! — Where true lovers each other may entreat, Ere the gold hair turn gray? Entreat, and fleet Life gaudily, and so play out their play, Even with the triumphing May — The young-eyed, smiling, irresistible May! Why do you loiter and linger, O most dear ? Why do you dream and palter and stay, When every dawn, that rushes up the bay, Brings nearer, and more near, The Terror, the Discomforter, whose prey, Beloved, we must be? Nor prayer, nor tear, Lets his arraignment; but we disappear, What time the gold turns gray, Into XXV HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER Into the sheer, Blind gulfs unglutted of mere Yesterday, With the unlingering May — The good, fulfilling, irresponsible May! xxvi HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER XV ~~ Come where my Lady lies, Sleeping down the golden hours ! Cover her with flowers. Bluebells from the clearings, Flag-flowers from the rills, Wildings from the lush hedgerows, Delicate daffodils, Sweetlings from the formal plots, Bloomkins from the bowers — Heap them round her where she sleeps, Cover her with flowers! Sweet-pea and pansy, Red hawthorn and white; Gilliflowers — like praising souls; Lilies — lamps of light: Nurselings of what happy winds, Suns, and stars, and showers! Joylets good to see and smell — Colter her with flowers! Like to sky-born shadows Mirrored on a stream, Let XXVII HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER Let their odours meet and mix And waver through her dream! Last, the crowded sweetness Slumber overpowers, And she feels the lips she loves Craving through the flowers ! xxvm HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER XVI The west a glory of green and red and gold, The magical drifts to north and eastward rolled, The shining sands, the still, transfigured sea, The wind so light it scarce begins to be, As these long days unfold a flower, unfold Life's rose in me* Life's rose — life's rose! Red at my heart it glows — Glows and is glad, as in some quiet close The sun's spoiled darlings their gay life renew! Only, the clement rain, the mothering dew, Daytide and night, all things that make the rose, Are you, dear — you! XXIX HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER xvn Look down, dear eyes, look down, Lest you betray her gladness* Dear brows, do naught but frown, Lest men miscall my madness. Come not, dear hands, so near, Lest all besides come nearer. Dear heart, hold me less dear, Lest time hold nothing dearer. Keep me, dear lips, O, keep The great last word unspoken, Lest other eyes go weep, And other lives lie broken! xxx HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER XVIH Poplar and lime and chestnut Meet in a living screen; And there the winds and the sunbeams keep A revel of gold and green. O, the green dreams and the golden, The golden thoughts and green, This green and golden end of May My lover and me between! xxxi HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER XIX Hither, this solemn eventide, All flushed and mystical and blue, When the late bird sings And sweet-breathed garden-ghosts walk sudden and wide, Hesper, that bringeth all good things, Brings me a dream of you. And in my heart, dear heart, it comes and goes, Even as the south wind lingers and falls and blows, Even as the south wind sighs and tarries and streams, Among the living leaves about and round; With a still, soothing sound, As of a multitude of dreams Of love, and the longing of love, and love's delight, Thronging, ten thousand deep, Into the uncreating Night, With semblances and shadows to fulfil, Amaze, and thrill The strange, dispeopled silences of Sleep. xxxn HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER XX After the grim daylight, Night- Night and the stars and the sea ! Only the sea, and the stars And the star-shown sails and spars — Naught else in the night for me! Over the northern height, Light- Light and the dawn of a day With nothing for me but a breast Laboured with love's unrest, And the irk of an idle May! XXXIII HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER XXI Love, which is lust, is the Lamp in the Tomb* Love, which is lust, is the Call from the Gloom* Love, which is lust, is the Main of Desire* Love, which is lust, is the Centric Fire* So man and woman will keep their trust, Till the very Springs of the Sea run dust* Yea, each with the other will lose and win, Till the very Sides of the Grave fall in* For the strife of Love's the abysmal strife, And the word of Love is the Word of Life. And they that go with the Word unsaid, Though they seem of the living, are damned and dead* XXXIV HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER xxn Between the dusk of a summer night And the dawn of a summer day, We caught at a mood as it passed in flight, And we bade it stoop and stay. And what with the dawn of night began With the dusk of day was done; For that is the way of woman and man, When a hazard has made them one. Arc upon arc t from shade to shine, The World went thundering free; And what was his errand but hers and mine — The lords of him, I and she? O, it's die we must, but it's live we can, And the marvel of earth and sun Is all for the joy of woman and man And the longing that makes them one. XXXV HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER XXIII I took a hansom on to-day For a round I used to know — That I used to take for a woman's sake In a fever of to-and-fro* There were the landmarks one and all — What did they stand to show? Street and square and river were there — Where was the antient woe? Never a hint of a challenging hope Nor a hope laid sick and low, And a longing dead as its kindred sped A thousand years ago! xxxvi HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER XXIV Only a freakish wisp of hair? — Nay, but its wildest, its most frolic whorl Stands for a slim, enamoured, sweet-fleshed girl ! And so, a tangle of dream and charm and fun, Its every crook a promise and a snare, Its every dowle, or genially gadding Or crisply curled, Heartening and madding, Empales a novel and peculiar world Of right, essential fantasies, And shining acts as yet undone, But in these wonder-working days Soon, soon to ask our sovran Lord, the Sun, For countenance and praise, As of the best his storying eye hath seen, And his vast memory can parallel, Among the darling victories — Beneficent, beautiful, inexpressible — Of life on time! — Yet have they flashed and been In millions, since 'twas his to bring The heaven-creating Spring, An angel of adventure and delight, In all her beauty and all her strength and worth, With xxxvii HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER With her great guerdons of romance and spright, And those high needs that fill the flesh with might, Home to the citizens of this good, green earth* Poor souls — they have but time and place To play their transient little play And sing their singular little song, Ere they are rushed away Into the antient, undisclosing Night; And none is left to tell of the clear eyes That filled them with God's grace, And turned the iron skies to skies of gold! None ; but the sweetest She herself grows old — Grows old, and dies; And, but for such a lovely snatch of hair As this, none — none could guess, or know That She was kind and fair, And he had nights and days beyond compare — How many dusty and silent years ago! xxxvm HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER XXV This is the moon of roses, The lovely and flowerful time; And, as white roses climb the wall, Your dreams about me climb* This is the moon of roses, Glad and golden and blue; And, as red roses drink of the sun, My dreams they drink of you. This is the moon of roses ! The cherishing South-West blows, And life, dear heart, for me and you, O, life's a rejoicing rose* XXXIX HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER XXVI June, and a warm, sweet rain; June, and the call of a bird: To a lover in pain What lovelier word? Two of each other fain Happily heart on heart: So in the wind and rain Spring bears his part! O, to be heart on heart One with the warm June rain, God with us from the start, And no more pain! xl HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER XXVH " It was a bowl of roses: There in the light they lay, Languishing, glorying, glowing Their life away* And the soul of them rose like a presence, Into me crept and grew, And filled me with something — some one — O. was it you? xli HAWTH ORN AND LAVENDE R _____ _____ _ Your feet as glad And light as a dove's homing wings, you came — Came with your sweets to fill my hands, My sense with your perfume. We closed with Lips Grown weary and fain with longing from afar, The while your grave, enamoured eyes Drank down the dream in mine* Till the great need So lovely and so instant grew, it seemed The embodied Spirit of the Spring Hung at me, heart on heart* xlii HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER XXIX A world of leafage murmurous and a-twinkle; The green, delicious plenitude of June; Love and laughter and song The blue day long Going to the same glad, golden tune — The same glad tune! Clouds on the dim, delighting skies a-sprinkle; Poplars black in the wake of a setting moon; Love and languor and sleep And the star-sown deep Going to the same good, golden tune — The same good tune! xliii HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER XXX I send you roses — red, like love, And white, like death, sweet friend: Born in your bosom to rejoice, Languish, and droop, and end. If the white roses tell of death, Let the red roses mend The talk with true stories of love Unchanging to the end. Red and white roses, love and death- What else is left to send? For what is life but love, the means, And death, true Wife, the end? xliv HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER XXXI These glad, these great, these goodly days Bewildering hope, outrunning praise, The Earth, renewed by the great Sun's longing, Utters her joy in a million ways ! What is there left, sweet soul and true — What, for us and our dream to do? What but to take this mighty Summer As it were made for me and you? Take it and live it beam by beam, Motes of light on a gleaming stream, Glare by glare and glory on glory Through to the ash of this flaming dream! xlv HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER XXXII The downs, like uplands in Eden, Gleam in an afterglow Like a rose-world ruining earthwards — Mystical, wistful, slow! Near and afar in the leafage, That last glad call to the nest! And the thought of you hangs and triumphs With Hesper low in the west! Till the song and the light and the colour, The passion of earth and sky, Are blent in a rapture of boding Of the death we should one day die* :lvi HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER XXXIII The time of the silence Of birds is upon us: Rust in the chestnut leaf, Dust in the stubble: The turn of the Year And the call to decay. Stately and splendid, The Summer passes: Sad with satiety, Sick with fulfilment ; Spent and consumed, But august till the end* By wilting hedgerows And white-hot highways, Bearing its memories Even as a burden, The tired heart plods For a place of rest. xlvii HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER XXXIV There was no kiss that day? No intimate Yea-and-Nay, No sweets in hand, no tender, lingering touch ? None of those desperate, exquisite caresses, So instant — O, so brief! — and yet so much, The thought of the swiftest lifts and blesses? Nor any one of those great royal words, Those sovran privacies of speech, Frank as the call of April birds, That, whispered, live a life of gold Among the heart's still sainted memories, And irk, and thrill, and ravish, and beseech, Even when the dream of dreams in death's a-cold? No, there was none of these, Dear one, and yet — O, eyes on eyes! O, voices breaking still, For all the watchful will, Into a kinder kindness than seemed due From you to me, and me to you! And that hot-eyed, close-throated, blind regret Of woman and man baulked and debarred the blue !— No kiss — no kiss that day? Nay, rather, though we seemed to wear the rue, Sweet friend, how many, and how goodly — say! xlviii HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER XXXV Sing to me, sing, and sing again, My glad, great-throated nightingale: Sing, as the good sun through the rain — Sing, as the home-wind in the sail! Sing to me life, and toil, and time, O bugle of dawn, O flute of rest ! Sing, and once more, as in the prime, There shall be naught but seems the best* And sing me at the last of love: Sing that old magic of the May, That makes the great world laugh and move As lightly as our dream to-day! xlix HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER XXXVI We sat late, late — talking of many things. He told me of his grief and, in the telling, The gist of his tale showed to me, rhymed, like this* It came t the news, like a fire in the night, That life and its best were done ; And there was never so dazed a wretch In the beat of the living sun. I read the news, and the terms of the news Reeled random round my brain Like the senseless, tedious huzzlz and boom Of a bluefly in the pane* So I went for the news to the house of the news, But the words were left unsaid, For the face of the house was blank with blinds, And I knew that she was dead. HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER XXXVII 'Twas in a world of living leaves That we two reaped and bound our sheaves: They were of white roses and red, And in the scything they were dead. Now the high Autumn flames afield, And what is all his golden yield To that we took, and sheaved, and bound In the green dusk that gladdened round? Yet must the memory grieve and ache Of that we did for dear love's sake, But may no more under the sun, Being, like our summer, spent and done* li HAWTHORN AND LAVEN DER xxxvni Since those we love and those we hate, With all things mean and all things great, Pass in a desperate disarray Over the hills and far away : It must be, dear, that, late or soon, Out of the ken of the watching moon, We shall abscond with Yesterday Over the hills and far away* What does it matter? As I deem, We shall but follow as brave a dream As ever smiled a wanton May Over the hills and far away* We shall remember, and, in pride, Fare forth, fulfilled and satisfied, Into the land of Ever-and-Aye, Ober the hills and far away* lii HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER XXXDC These were the woods of wonder We found so close and boon, When the bride-month in her beauty Lay mouth to mouth with June* November, the old t lean widow, Sniffs, and snivels, and shrills, And the bowers are all dismantled, And the long grass wets and chills; And I hate these dismal dawnings, These miserable even-ends, These orts, and rags, and heeltaps — This dream of being merely friends* liii HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER XL "f)earest, when I am dead, Make one last song for me: Sing what I would have said — Righting life's wrong for me, ♦ 4 Tell them how, early and late, Glad ran the days with me, Seeing how goodly and great, Love, were your ways with me/' liv HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER XLI Dear hands, so many times so much When the spent year was green and prime, Come, take your fill, and touch This one poor time* Dear lips, that could not leave unsaid One sweet-souled syllable of delight, Once more — and be as dead In the dead night* Dear eyes, so fond to read in mine The message of our counted years, Look your proud last, nor shine Through tears— through tears* lv HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER XUI When, in what other life, Where in what old, spent star, Systems ago, dead vastitudes afar, Were we two bird and bough, or man and wife? Or wave and spar? Or I the beating sea, and you the bar On which it breaks? I know not, I! But this, O this, my very dear, I know: Your voice awakes old echoes in my heart; And things I say to you now are said once more; And, sweet, when we two part, I feel I have seen you falter and linger so, So hesitate, and turn, and cling — yet go, As once in some immemorable Before, Once on some fortunate yet thrice-blasted shore* Was it for good? O, these poor eyes are wet; And yet, O, yet, Now that we know, I would not, if I could, Forget. lvi HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER XLHI The rain and the wind, the wind and the rain — They are with us like a disease: They worry the heart, they work the brain, As they shoulder and clutch at the shrieking pane, And savage the helpless trees* What does it profit a man to know These tattered and tumbling skies A million stately stars will show, And the ruining grace of the after-glow And the rush of the wild sunrise? Ever the rain — the rain and the wind! Come, hunch with me over the fire, Dream of the dreams that leered and grinned, Ere the blood of the Year got chilled and thinned, And the death came on desire! lvii HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER XLIV He made this gracious Earth a hell With Love and Drink. I cannot tell Of which he died. Bat Death was well. Will I die of drink? Why not ? Won't I pause and think? -What ? Why in seeming wise Waste your breath? Everybody dies — And of death! Youth — if you find it's youth Too late? Truth — and the back of truth? Straight, Be it love or liquor, What's the odds, So it slide you quicker To the gods? lviii HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER XLV O, these long nights of days ! All the year's baseness in the ways, All the year's wretchedness in the skies; While on the blind, disheartened sea A tramp-wind plies Cringingly and dejectedly! And rain and darkness, mist and mud, They cling, they close, they sneak into the blood, They crawl and crowd upon the brain: Till in a dull, dense monotone of pain The past is found a kind of maze, At whose every coign and crook, Broad angle and privy nook, There waits a hooded Memory, Sad, yet with strange, bright, unreproaching eyes. tix HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER XLVI In Shoreham River, hurrying down To the live sea, By working, marrying, breeding Shoreham Town, Breaking the sunset's wistful and solemn dream, An old, black rotter of a boat Past service to the labouring, tumbling flote, Lay stranded in mid-stream: With a horrid list, a frightening lapse from the line, That made me think of legs and a broken spine : Soon, all too soon, Ungainly and forlorn to lie Full in the eye Of the cynical, discomfortable moon That, as I looked, stared from the fading sky, A clown's face flour'd for work. And by and by The wide-winged sunset wanned and waned; The lean night-wind crept westward, chilling and sighing; The poor old hulk remained, Stuck HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER Stuck helpless in mid-ebb. And I knew why — Why, as I looked, my heart felt crying/ For, as I looked, the good green earth seemed dying — Dying or dead; And, as I looked on the old boat, I said: — "Dear God, it f s I!" 1 At two years old, my child, being chidden, found this striking phrase. — W. E. H. ki HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER XLVH Come by my bed, What time the gray ghost shrieks and flies; Take in your hands my head, And look, O look, into my failing eyes; And, by God's grace, Even as He sunders body and breath, The shadow of your face Shall pass with me into the run Of the Beyond, and I shall keep and save Your beauty, as it used to be, An absolute part of me, Lying there, dead and done, Far from the sovran bounty of the sun, Down in the grisly colonies of the Grave* lxii HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER XLVHI Gray hills, gray skies, gray lights, And still, gray sea — O fond, O fair, The Mays that were, When the wild days and wilder nights Made it like heaven to be ! Gray head, gray heart, gray dreams- O, breath by breath, Night-tide and day Lapse gentle and gray, As to a murmur of tired streams, Into the haze of death. Ixiii HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER XLIX Silence, loneliness, darkness — These, and of these my fill, While God in the rush of the Maytide Without is working His will. Without are the wind and the wall-flowers, The leaves and the nests and the rain, And in all of them God is making His beautiful purpose plain. But I wait in a horror of strangeness — A tool on His workshop floor, Worn to the butt, and banished His hand forevermore. Ixiv HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER L So let mc hence as one Whose part in the world has been dreamed out and done: One that hath fairly earned and spent In pride of heart and jubilance of blood Such wages, be they counted bad or good, As Time, the old taskmaster, was moved to pay; And, having warred and suffered, and passed on Those gifts the Arbiters preferred and gave, Fare, grateful and content, Down the dim way Whereby races innumerable have gone, Into the silent universe of the grave. Grateful for what hath been — For what my hand hath done, mine eyes have seen, My heart been privileged to know; With all my lips in love have brought To lips that yearned in love to them, and wrought In the way of wrath, and pity, and sport, and song: Content 5 lxv HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER Content, this miracle of being alive Dwindling, that I, thrice weary of worst and best, May shed my duds, and go, From right and wrong, And, ceasing to regret, and long, and strive, Accept the past, and be forever at rest. lxvi HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER FINALE Schiz^ando ma con sentimento. A sigh sent wrong, A kiss that goes astray, A sorrow the years endlong — So they say. So let it be — Come the sorrow, the kiss, the sigh! They are life, dear life, all three, And we die. Worthing, J899-J90J. lxvii LONDON TYPES (ToS. S. P.) LONDON TYPES BUS DRIVER IE 'S called The General from the brazen craft [And dash with which he sneaks a bit of road I And all its fares; challenged, or chafed, or chaffed, Back-answers of the newest he'll explode; He reins his horses with an air; he treats With scoffing calm whatever powers there be; He gets it straight, puts a bit on, and meets His losses with both lip and £ s. d. ; He arrogates a special taste in short ; Is loftily grateful for a flagrant smoke; At all the smarter housemaids winks his court, And taps them for half-crowns; being stoney- broke, Lives lustily; is ever on the make; And hath, I fear, none other gods but Fake* lxxi LONDON TYPES LIFE-GUARDSMAN #JOY of the Milliner, Envy of the Line, Star of the Parks, jack-booted, sworded, helmed, He sits between his holsters, solid of spine; Nor, as it seems, though Westminster were whelmed, With the great globe, in earthquake and eclipse, Would he and his charger cease from mount- ing guard, This Private in the Blues, nor would his lips Move, though his gorge with throttled oaths were charred! He wears his inches weightily, as he wears His old-world armours; and with his port and pride, His sturdy graces and enormous airs, He towers, in speech his Colonel countrified, A triumph, waxing statelier year by year, Of British blood, and bone, and beef, and beer* Ixxii LONDON TYPES HAWKER UFAR out of bounds he 's figured — in a race Of West-End traffic pitching to his loss. But if you'd see him in his proper place, Making the browns for bub and grub and doss. Go East among the merchants and their men, And where the press is noisiest, and the tides Of trade run highest and widest, there and then You shall behold him, edging with equal strides Along the kerb; hawking in either hand Some artful nothing made of twine and tin, Cardboard and foil and bits of rubber band: Some penn'orth of wit-in-fact that, with a grin, The careful City marvels at, and buys For nurselings in the Suburbs to despise! lxxiii LONDON TYPES BEEF-EATER #HIS beat lies knee-high through a dust of story — A dust of terror and torture, grief and crime; Ghosts that are England's wonder, and shame, and glory- Throng where he walks, an antic of old time ; A sense of long immedicable tears Were ever with him, could his ears but heed; The stern Hie Jacets of our bloodiest years Are for his reading, had he eyes to read, But here, where Crookback raged, and Cranmer trimmed, And More and Strafford faced the axe's prov- ing, He shows that Crown the desperate Colonel nimmed, Or simply keeps the Country Cousin moving, Or stays such Cockney pencillers as would shame The wall where some dead Queen hath traced her name* Ixxiv LONDON TYPES SANDWICH-MAN ^ AN ill March noon; the flagstones gray with dust; An all-round east wind volleying straws and grit; St. Martin's Steps, where every venomous gust Lingers to buffet, or sneap, the passing cit; And in the gutter, squelching a rotten boot, Draped in a wrap that, modish ten year syne, Partners, obscene with sweat and grease and soot, A horrible hat, that once was just as fine; The drunkard's mouth a-wash for something drinkable, The drunkard's eye alert for casual toppers, The drunkard's neck stooped to a lot scarce thinkable, A living, crawling blazoning of Hot-Coppers, He trails his mildews towards a Kingdom- Come Compact of sausage-and-mash and two-o'- rutnl Ixxv LONDON TYPES 'LIZA §&'Liza's old man 's perhaps a little shady, 'Liza's old ivoman 's prone to booze and cringe ; But t Liza deems herself a perfect lady, And proves it in her feathers and her fringe* For 'Liza has a bloke her heart to cheer, With pearlies and a barrer and a /ac&, So all the vegetables of the year Are duly represented on her back* Her boots are sacrifices to her hats, Which knock you speechless — like a load of bricks I Her summer velvets dazzle Wanstead Flats, And cost, at times, a good eighteen-and-six. Withal, outside the gay and giddy whirl, 'Liza 's a stupid, straight, hard - working girl Ixxvi LONDON TYPES 44 LADY " UPTIME, the old humourist, has a trick to- day Of moving landmarks and of levelling down, Till into Town the Suburbs edge their way, And in the Suburbs you may scent the Town. With Mount St thus approaching Muswell Hill, And Clapham Common marching with the Mile, You get a Hammersmith that fills the bill, A Hampstead with a serious sense of style* So this fair creature, pictured in The Row, As one of that "gay adulterous world/' 1 whose round Is by the Serpentine, as well would show, And might, I deem, as readily be found On Streatham's Hill, or Wimbledon's, or where Brixtonian kitchens lard the late-dining air. Wilfrid Blunt. Ixxvii LONDON TYPES BLUECOAT BOY ^SO went our boys when Edward Sixth, the King, Chartered Christ s Hospital, and died* And so Full fifteen generations in a string Of heirs to his bequest have had to go. Thus Camden showed, and Barnes, and Still INGFLEET, And Richardson, that bade our Lovelace be; The little Ella thus in Newgate Street,- Thus to his Genevieve young 5, T. C With thousands else that, wandering up and down, Quaint, privileged, liked and reputed well, Made the great School a part of London Town Patent as Paul's and vital as 'Bow Bell: The old School nearing exile, day by day, To certain clay-lands somewhere Horsham way» lxxviii LONDON TYPES MOUNTED POLICE ^ARMY Reserve; a worshipper of Bobs, With whom he stripped the smock from Canda- HAR; Neat as his mount, that neatest among cobs; Whenever pageants pass, or meetings are, He moves conspicuous, vigilant, severe, With his Light Cavalry hand and seat and look, A living type of Order, in whose sphere Is room for neither Hooligan nor Hook* For in his shadow, wheresoe'er he ride, Paces, all eye and hardihood and grip, The dreaded Crusher, might in his every stride And right materialized girt at his hip; And they, that shake to see these twain go by, Feel that the Tec t that plain-clothes Terror, is nigh* lxxix LONDON TYPES NEWS-BOY INTAKE any station, pavement, circus, corner, Where men their styles of print may call or choose, And there — ten times more on it than Jack Horner— There shall you find him swathed in sheets of news* Nothing can stay the placing of his wares — Not bus, nor cab, nor dray! The very Slop, That imp of power, is powerless! Ever he dares, And, daring, lands his public neck and crop* Even the many-tortured London ear, The much-enduring, loathes his Speeshul yell, His shriek of Winnur ! But his dart and leer And poise arc irresistible. Pall Mall Joys in him, and Mile End-, for his vo- cation Is to purvey the stuff of conversation* lxxx LONDON TYPES DRUM-MAJOR If* WHO says Drum - Major says a man of mould, Shaking the meek earth with tremendous tread, And pacing still, a triumph to behold, Of his own spine at least two yards ahead! Attorney, grocer, surgeon, broker, duke — His calling may be anything, who comes Into a room, his presence a rebuke To the dejected, as the pipes and drums Inspired his port ! — who mounts his office stairs As though he led great armies to the fight! His bulk itself 's pure genius, and he wears His avoirdupois with so much fire and spright That, though the creature stands but five feet five, You take him for the tallest He alive, Ixxxi LONDON TYPES FLOWER-GIRL $» THERE'S never a delicate nurseling of the year But our huge London hails it, and delights To wear it on her breast or at her ear t Her days to colour and make sweet her nights. Crocus and daffodil and violet, Pink, primrose, valley-lily, clove-carnation, Red rose and white rose, wall -flower, migno- nette, The daisies all — these be her recreation, Her gaudies these! And forth from Drury Lane, Trapesing in any of her whirl of weathers, Her flower-girls foot it, honest and hoarse and vain, All boot and little shawl and wilted feathers : Of populous corners right advantage taking, And, where they squat, endlessly posy- making. lxxxii LONDON TYPES BARMAID ^THOUGH, if you ask her name, she says Elise, Being plain Elizabeth, e'en let it pass, And own that, if her aspirates take their ease, She ever makes a point, in washing glass, Handling the engine, turning taps for tots, And countering change, and scorning what men say, Of posing as a dove among the pots, Nor often gives her dignity away. Her head's a work of art, and, if her eyes Be tired and ignorant, she has a waist; Cheaply the Mode she shadows ; and she tries From penny novels to amend her taste; And, having mopped the zinc for certain years, And faced the gas, she fades and disap- pears. lxxxiii LONDON TYPES $■ The Artist muses at his ease, Contented that his work is done, And smiling — smiling ! — as he sees His crowd collecting, one by one* Alas I his travail f s but begun I None, none can keep the years in line, And what to Ninety-Eight is fun May raise the gorge of Ninety-Nine I Muswell Hill, 1898. Ixxxiv THREE PROLOGUES THREE PROLOGUES BEAU AUSTIN 'By W, E, Henley and 9^. L. Stevenson, Haymarket Theatre, c^cyvember 3, 1890, Spoken by Mr. Tree in the character of Beau Austin. |0 all and singular/* as Dryden says, I We bring a fancy of those ^JjIpS Georgian days, r*iS Whose style still breathed a faint and fine perfume Of old-world courtliness and old-world bloom: When speech was elegant and talk was fit, For slang had not been canonised as wit; When manners reigned, when breeding had the wall, And Women — yes ! — were ladies first of all ; When Grace was conscious of its gracefulness, And man — though Man ! — was not ashamed to dress, A brave formality, a measured ease Were his — and hers — whose effort was to please. And to excel in pleasing was to reign, And, if you sighed, never to sigh in vain. But lxxxvii THREE PROLOGUES But then, as now — it may be, something more — Woman and man were human to the core. The hearts that throbbed behind that brave attire Burned with a plenitude of essential fire* They too could risk, they also could rebel: They could love wisely — they could love too well. In that great duel of Sex, that ancient strife Which is the very central fact of life, They could — and did — engage it breath for breath, They could — and did — get wounded unto death. As at all times since time for us began Woman was truly woman, man was man, And joy and sorrow were as much at home In trifling Tunbridge as in mighty Rome. Dead — dead and done with ! Swift from shine to shade The roaring generations flit and fade. To this one, fading, flitting, like the rest, We Ixxxviii THREE PROLOGUES We come to proffer — be it worst or best — A sketch, a shadow, of one brave old time; A hint of what it might have held sublime; A dream, an idyll, call it what you will, Of man still Man, and woman — Woman still! Ixxxix THREE PROLOGUES RICHARD SAVAGE "By J. M. Carrie and H. c H X O