r 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 CALIFORNIA 
 SAN DIEGO
 
 TMfc UNIVERSITY LlBKAKY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFGHNiA, SAN DIEGQ 
 
 LA JOLLA, CALIFORNIA
 
 THE CRUCIBLES OF TIME 
 
 AND OTHER POEMS
 
 5120^ 
 
 THE 
 
 CRUCIBLES OF TIME 
 
 AND OTHER POEMS 
 
 BY 
 
 DARRELL FIGGIS 
 
 LONDON: J. M. DENT & SONS, LTD. 
 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND, W.C. 1911
 
 All rights reserved
 
 TO MY MOTHER
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ODE TO Music ..... i 
 
 A SONG . . . . . .12 
 
 THE PITY o' IT . . . .13 
 
 To A SNOWDROP . . . . .17 
 
 TRIOLETS ...... 20 
 
 RELICS ...... 22 
 
 To A CHRYSANTHEMUM . - . . .23 
 
 CROMWELL ...... 26 
 
 ROSES . . . . . .28 
 
 A SONG ...... 30 
 
 To A SKYLARK . . . .31 
 
 DAWN ...... 33 
 
 To SORROW . . . . -35 
 
 IN MEMORIAM . . . . .38 
 
 To E. VON O. . . . . .39 
 
 HANGER WOODS . . , . .40 
 
 To SHAKESPEARE . . . . .43 
 
 EMPTY WRATH . . . . .44 
 
 LAMENT ...... 45 
 
 THE VACANT CHAIR . . . . .47 
 
 AD INTRA ...... 54 
 
 "FIRELIGHT" . . . , 55 
 
 THE CRUCIBLES OF TIME . . . 57
 
 ODE TO MUSIC 
 
 FIRSTLING of Days, begotten not nor shaped ; 
 Breath of the spacious God that knows not Time, 
 And is for vesture with Creation draped 
 Effulgent and transcendent, sprung from Him 
 In eloquence sonorous thro' the vast 
 Of ebon desolation void and dim ; 
 
 Boding His lonely plaint 
 
 To the far borders faint 
 Of an immeasurable infinitude ; 
 Finding for Him bright galaxies sublime 
 To lift to ecstasy His lofty mood 
 
 In hoary ages past : 
 
 Voice of his Soul I strew 
 Before thine aery path my tribute true ! 
 
 Oh, art not thou pure spirit of all thought, 
 Soul of the Universe, the lustrous heart 
 Whence burst the secret harmony divine 
 That wrought to aweful splendour Life's frail mart ? 
 
 All the celestial court 
 
 In legioned wonder, wrought 
 To sudden beauty by thine ancient art, 
 Echoes thy voice mellifluous and benign
 
 2 ODE TO MUSIC 
 
 Thro' the void spaces of Eternity ! 
 
 Planets in rhythmic ease, 
 Comets that thread high Heaven's intricacies 
 
 Searching its furthest part, 
 Hum with thy secret voice and ecstasy. 
 
 Creation's pomp thro' far-resounding Time, 
 Moving thro' birth and riot, death and strife, 
 Stept to the subtle measure of thy chime : 
 
 Thro' dissonance high harmony 
 Waking, and in defeat mellisonance : 
 Till, in massed symphony and paean, Life, 
 
 Majestic and supreme, 
 
 Mighty of thew and scheme, 
 Broke thro' the tangled maze of Circumstance ; 
 With younger lips then to take up thy theme 
 And wake to wonder all thy moon-struck courts of Dream. 
 
 Oh, what of jocund rapture was then heard ! 
 
 What fervour ! what delight ! 
 
 What swift and vivid flight 
 Of splendour thro' the soul of rhapsody ! 
 Mellow and rare, soft, delicate and free, 
 Sonorous, lofty, resonant of power, 
 Swelled the wide anthem thro' the range of joy ! 
 Then the dim reaches of Eternity 
 
 Heard its own formless word 
 Articulated with the bounds of Song ; 
 
 Heard its stupendous dower 
 Champing upon the bit of fleshy thong.
 
 ODE TO MUSIC . 
 
 Oh, so each fervid Bird 
 
 In memory of that Hour 
 Heralds the fluctuant swell of Life along 
 
 When out of Night Life wings, to employ 
 
 Time's uses and Time's joy 
 
 With deep enchantments, rapture strong, 
 Pining the fretful barriers to destroy 
 And float thro' ether to thy perfect bower. 
 
 So art thou ever knit to Life and Song, 
 
 To motion and articulation fit : 
 
 So dost thou seek to burst each corporal thong, 
 
 And hail thine ancient golden liberty, 
 
 And be of shackle quit : 
 Irked by thy slender margins, to be free, 
 Chafing, thou burdenest mightily thy themes. 
 
 Oh, worthy conflict, combat high, 
 
 Majestic traffic, for in it 
 New symphonies and deeper rhythms ply ! 
 
 In mystic runes 
 
 Of stranger tunes 
 Bidding the tardy spirit to outvie 
 Past victories, higher subtleties to try : 
 
 So to quell vaster schemes 
 And marry to the Earth the ecstasy of dreams. 
 
 Yea, yet thou art far more, far more than this ! 
 Oh, thou art not bitten of thong ; thou art thyself 
 The very fountain-head and source of bliss.
 
 ODE TO MUSIC 
 
 Spurning what pelf 
 
 The ruinous delf 
 
 Bestrews before thee, thou dost lift thy Wing 
 Over a native and unplumbed abyss 
 Echoing with the murmur of thy flight ; 
 
 And old, eternal Night 
 Hums with thine utterances and whispering. 
 
 There in voluptuous might, 
 Clothed in essential light ; 
 Cinctured with harmony, 
 In rhythmic tunic drest, 
 Thou floatest in unparalleled sovranty 
 God-uttered, self-confest ! 
 
 Thou art the informing spirit 
 
 That all things do inherit, 
 The ichor throbbing in the veins of Time ! 
 
 Thou art the spirit intense 
 
 Whose choric influence 
 Burns to a soul things mutual and sublime : 
 
 The subtle rhyme 
 
 Knitting to structure the high odic flight 
 Of far-flown ecstasies and pure delight. 
 Touched by the mystic word that did first wake 
 Order from wondering Chaos, all things break 
 Swift their responsive hum of harmony, 
 
 Ecstatically, 
 As viol to sweet viol fitly tuned !
 
 ODE TO MUSIC 
 
 The octaves of thy soul 
 
 Hold in their firm control 
 Matter and motion in pure melody, 
 
 And in their range 
 
 Hymn of diversity 
 
 Fretfully uttered in the bonds of change. 
 Thy vivid fifths and melancholy thirds, 
 
 Apt combinations, pruned 
 Or bounteous, prodigal or pert, 
 
 Like hymeneal birds 
 
 Voluptuous or alert, 
 
 Swell thro' variety 
 And raise the choric anthem of the Earth. 
 
 Till full as to the brim 
 
 With rapture of its birth, 
 Creation stretches a resplendent hymn, 
 
 Holy and unprofaned, 
 Uttered in thee and of thy harmony sustained ! 
 
 Deeper and deeper, higher and higher, thou art ! 
 Holier and nearer Life's hot wounded heart 
 O'erflowing with attenuate melodies 
 Blown hither like a soft Favonian breeze 
 
 From the eternal seas : 
 Nearer the high agony of its thought 
 
 Eschewing tranquil ease 
 To track to the far splendour of their Court 
 
 Those errant harmonies 
 That taunt and wound desire with fitful wizardries.
 
 ODE TO MUSIC 
 
 Bearing the deep Almighty Voice divine 
 Vibrant beyond the resonant Universe, 
 Creative, or in sustenant power benign, 
 Laden art thou with voiceless mysteries : 
 Beauty and Pity that themselves rehearse 
 
 In plangent ecstasies, 
 Splendour and Awe consummate of control. 
 
 So from the aerial /ones 
 
 The thunder of thy tones 
 Burst like a mighty Sea about the Soul, 
 Awaking dread and fear and majesty ; 
 
 Or if thou chance be sent 
 With softer burthen thro' the Stellar Court, 
 
 Thine accents eloquent 
 
 Break o'er the Heart deliquous murmurs, fraught 
 With piercing echoes delicate and rare : 
 Swelling all Being to its uttermost lair 
 
 With tost antiphonies. 
 
 Oh, thro' the eternal heaven is thy demesne 
 Spacious and vast, illimitable and pure. 
 Floating from immemorial Hours serene 
 Thy wings are feathered for a subtle lure 
 
 With broken harmonies, 
 
 Distant affinities, 
 
 Arcs from a mighty rondure high above 
 All eager quest, from bitter search secure. 
 
 Far o'er our cliffs thy clanging word 
 
 Echoes, as with a theme unheard, 
 Echoes reverberate and incomplete j
 
 ODE TO MUSIC 
 
 Till the Desire 
 With a quick fire 
 
 Quivers to burn the starry thing whereof 
 The broken numbers treat. 
 
 So, floating down the avenues of Time, 
 Upon the aerial waves thou dost awake 
 Vibrant mellisonance and mellow strife. 
 
 Out of thine inner life, 
 
 Forth from thy heart sublime, 
 Broken ejaculations dost thou shake, 
 Memorials of our younger days of prime, 
 Memorials throbbing on the minds, that we, 
 
 Hearkening thereto, 
 Consanguine to the very heart of thee, 
 Hear in their native numbers, purport true. 
 
 Numbers that we, 
 
 Finding them very passion of our blood, 
 Hearing them laden with such utterance 
 
 As we have striven to know, 
 
 Translating so 
 Numbers to thought, as blooms thro' the bud, 
 
 With kindling eyes 
 
 Transfigured rise 
 And mocking at all earthly chance, 
 All corporal bond, claim kinship with eternity. 
 
 The Soul of all high ecstasies thou art ! 
 
 Thou dost not chant of them, 
 
 Nor do they thee begem 
 As stars flash in a heavenly carcanet 
 
 Isolate and apart.
 
 ODE TO MUSIC 
 
 In thy purpureal ichor are they lost : 
 
 Organs of a refulgent whole, 
 
 Lustres of one ecstatic soul, 
 Fragmentary, yet 
 
 On the fierce needs of utterance tost 
 Sweeping high chords of ultimate control. 
 
 For He who uttereth thee 
 
 In hoar infinity, 
 Of whom thou art the pure and resonant Voice, 
 
 Folds in their holy glee, 
 
 For they are not, but He. 
 So therefore do thine urgent themes rejoice, 
 
 Not otherwise content 
 
 To sing, save to present 
 Vaster relations, mightier harmony, 
 Since they are not, but thou of them constituent ! 
 
 So Man, Man in his corporal, frail control 
 Stranger, Man potent to pursue all thought, 
 
 But of achievement frail ; 
 Man smitten with transcendencies unsought, 
 
 Wild melodies that trail 
 Unbidden o'er his fit ^Eolian Soul ; 
 
 Man ever in his fitfullest hour, 
 
 With thy far harmony irked, 
 
 Hath known the wizardry of power 
 
 That ever in thee lurked. 
 
 Moving in splendour from thy Courts of gold, 
 What beauties thus thy thunders have unrolled
 
 ODE TO MUSIC 
 
 Upon his brooding thought, 
 
 His eager spirit hath caught, 
 Seeking to sing thee back thy numbers fair. 
 
 From the vast womb arisen 
 Of deep eternity, floating thro' the Night 
 
 Upon him unaware, 
 So hath he caught the manner of thy flight, 
 
 And found for thee a prison 
 
 Trite tho' it be and spare. 
 Haunted by his heart's echo of thy word, 
 Stung by suggestive symphonies half-heard, 
 
 Upon contrivance mystical 
 
 Puts he thy very soul for thrall, 
 And fits the waking wonder of thy throat. 
 
 Yea, all that thou dost sing in him, 
 
 The rhapsodies that ring in him, 
 Passions that flaunt him, beauties that allure, 
 Bends he the utmost powers of his Soul 
 
 In mightier meshes to immure ; 
 
 With faint control 
 Thinking to bind thy true authentic note. 
 
 Yet when the Voice of thee 
 
 Like a tumultuous Sea 
 Roars thro' the serried channel of his thought, 
 
 Falters he then, and, spent, 
 Perplexed, amazed, enfeebled and unwrought, 
 
 Utters his ravishment 
 In tones whose very notes convey 
 His potent theme is mightier than his roundelay.
 
 io ODE TO MUSIC 
 
 So hath he found for thee new note of Song 
 Therein : new theme of threnody 
 Musing upon his fetter and his thong. 
 The splendour of thy pristine harmony, 
 The native radiancy of thy delight 
 Hath he deep-tinctured with a darker hue, 
 Making thy soul coruscant, as might be 
 Oceans whereon the Night 
 Sweeps, yet in whom the light 
 Glitters and gleams of noons superb of thew. 
 For as with ineffectual pang 
 He seeks to sing thee as thou sang 
 Erstwhile in liberty, 
 Quit of all irk and chance, 
 
 He finds thee with his woe and sorrow fraught, 
 Knows thee in his dark travail caught, 
 Curbed with mortal circumstance. 
 
 Oh, then he flings aloft with burning eyes 
 The numbers of his spirit to the skies ! 
 
 Snatches him to his Soul 
 
 Thy fastness of control, 
 To make the caverns of Eternity 
 Echo with his calamity and woe. 
 Burthened with awe, shrouded with mystery, 
 
 He turns to thee, 
 
 To thy deep soul, and so, 
 
 Finding thee fit and meet 
 
 Of his heart's word to treat, 
 Thyself an alien to the mortal throe 
 
 Even as he,
 
 ODE TO MUSIC ii 
 
 Thro' thy pure lips he pours his threnody, 
 Bidding thee wake somniferous Time to tell 
 
 The subtlety of thy spell, 
 
 In bitterness of desire 
 
 Winged with sorrow and fire. 
 
 Angel of the Most High, Spirit of Days, 
 Breath of the star-eyed God that knows not Time, 
 Art not thou passion of all thought sublime ? 
 Oh, none may track the passing of thy ways ! 
 Yea, none of all the sons of Time may tell 
 
 Thy potency ineffable 
 
 Or compass thy pure spell, 
 
 And yet think we 
 That thou inheritest all praise 
 Moving upon the winds of mystery : 
 
 Therefore I strew 
 Before thine aery path this tribute true.
 
 A SONG 
 
 NOT cherry ripe nor roses 
 
 Tho' picked from Summer's chalice, 
 
 Could ever vie with you, dear, 
 
 In daintiness of hue, dear ; 
 
 So who could hope to view, dear, 
 Thy like amid the posies 
 Of cottage or of palace 
 
 In Man's weak retinue, dear ? 
 
 See how the Winter closes 
 Summer with frigid malice ! 
 
 Ah vainly should one sue, dear, 
 
 That daintiness to woo, dear ! 
 
 So say it is not true, dear, 
 That even as the rose is, 
 Alice, irradiant Alice, 
 
 It is the same with you, dear j 
 That Alice, lovely Alice, 
 
 I woo thee but to rue, dear !
 
 THE PITY O' IT 
 
 I DREAMT that once a lucent Spring, 
 When all the air was like one lake 
 With sunlight rather than water ashake, 
 And each diaphanous leaf did fling 
 A halo of bright vapour round 
 Like silver upon gold, 
 I stood to hear the choir of sound 
 That o'er the forest rolled. 
 
 Quick ripples, slurs and shakes, and tides 
 Voluminous, sonorous, low, 
 Shrill lyrics on bright joy aflow, 
 Chatter that to itself confides, 
 Blended with passionate excess 
 Involved and interspun, 
 In love's pure throe and tenderness 
 To link that forest one. 
 
 Beneath a poplar high of grace 
 Upon the tender earth I lay, 
 The golden wizardry of the day 
 In mottled splendour on my face, 
 
 13
 
 i 4 THE PITY O' IT 
 
 When lo ! in pure excess of love, 
 From braken, brake and trees 
 The birds, quick-fluttering from above, 
 Swept down upon my ease. 
 
 A throstle leapt upon my breast 
 Jocund with gravest joy, and eyed 
 A wren poised on my ear, whose tide 
 Of rapture burst without a rest ; 
 Two robins on my shoulder sung, 
 Matching a blackbird who, 
 Fluting his liquid measures, wrung 
 Their shriller music thro'. 
 
 Finches made merry on my brow ; 
 While, on a branch that at my side 
 Swung, a brown nightingale allied 
 Sorrow with song, his themes to endow 
 With Joy from Melancholy's cup ; 
 And, like a brooklet strong, 
 The sparrows at my feet filled up 
 The interstices of song. 
 
 Such joy was mine, my bursting heart 
 Was filled with rapture nigh to tears. 
 A squirrel nosed away his fears 
 Against my cheek, while all apart 
 Pert field-mice nestled in my breast 
 Beneath the throstle's wings. 
 Thrilled with high rapture I caressed 
 The gentle fluttering things.
 
 THE PITY O' IT 15 
 
 I woke ; the sun was all aflow 
 Over the room ; and on its beams 
 In elfin glee and golden dreams 
 Fauns in slant eagerness did go, 
 Their softer sisters to entice 
 To mingle in the play. 
 I sprung abroad, and in a trice 
 I strode into the day. 
 
 'Twas even as I dreamed ; so fair 
 The day, so passing soft the hour : 
 In lucent silver field and flower 
 Shimmered beneath the golden glare. 
 Toward a near copse sprayed and besprent 
 With winking beads of dew, 
 Eager with beating hope I went 
 My vision to renew. 
 
 A red-breast on a twig of birch 
 Swung, and with every bar of mirth 
 Uprose and fell, chanting the Earth 
 In fluent measure as his perch 
 Swung to his theme of eloquence ; 
 So to his holy glee 
 I drew, in Hope's pure confidence 
 Loving him utterly. 
 
 He eyed me, and upon a flash 
 Vanished ; while, with the eager tread 
 I took, a fluting blackbird fled 
 Shrieking away, and I saw dash
 
 1 6 THE PITY O' IT 
 
 A rabbit on a gleam of white. 
 Awhile in vague vast fears 
 I stood ; then, forrested with blight, 
 I burst to bitter tears.
 
 TO A SNOWDROP 
 
 SYMBOL of glory on a shadowy noon, 
 Fragrant upon the curded Eastern wind, 
 Beneath the tangled hedgerow notched and hewn 
 By the harsh revelry of frosts unkind, 
 Thou yet dost droop in tender modesty, 
 Fearful yet jocund 'spite thy solitude : 
 There neath the Heaven's most desolate array 
 
 Defiantly 
 
 Mocking the rigours of the Winter rude 
 With softer promise of a gentler day. 
 
 Not tropic splendours prodigal and vast 
 Can vie with thee in rare munificence : 
 Not wild Magnolias in effulgence cast 
 Flame-like o'er broad savannahs and immense j 
 Nor fleshy marvels of an Eastern shore, 
 Orchids, in myriad hue of bloom that tie 
 Tall trees, and hang as flaming sunsets may ; 
 
 Nor the Gold Mohur, 
 A vision of glory drooping from the sky, 
 Rose-golden from the burning dome of day.
 
 1 8 TO A SNOWDROP 
 
 Rare Herald of the pompous host of Spring, 
 Floating upon the billows of my thought 
 From a far ghostly region thou dost bring 
 Of phantom armies promise and report : 
 Primroses in battalions vast and fair, 
 Lithe Bluebell lancers, flaunting Daffodils 
 Sweeping the river marge with tossing plumes, 
 
 Violets rare, 
 
 Tall Tulips cloven, Narcissus that spills 
 Fragrance where'er are found her dainty blooms. 
 
 And yet in serried ranks they sweep along, 
 Thy legions, Herald, leader bold and pert ! 
 Majestic Kingcups, Daisies soon to throng 
 The emerald meadows, Celandine alert, 
 Poppies for swaying cornfields, Lilies drest 
 In splendours pale, soft Pansies frolicsome, 
 And sumptuous Roses, Summer's crowning boast, 
 
 At thy behest, 
 
 Awoken from vast slumbers, trooping come 
 Thro' lanes of Spring and Summer host on host. 
 
 Herald of Summer ? More, oh more, thou art ! 
 Thou art the symbol of infinity. 
 Visions of high and chastened Beauty start 
 From thy pure realms of wonder, bringing me 
 Glimpses I half may see and half may know : 
 Majestic splendour knit to lowly dress, 
 Sublimity hewn out of aching strife, 
 
 In pain and woe 
 
 Beauty achieved and exquisite loveliness ! 
 Art thou, then, very type of this our Life ?
 
 TO A SNOWDROP 19 
 
 I fain would pluck thee, but thou art to me 
 Too holy and too high to desecrate 
 With mortal touch : Joy and exultancy, 
 Moved by the mystic beauty of thy state 
 So frail, and in such modest vesture decked, 
 Are purged of earthly passion, and made nigh 
 To rapture and high ecstasy sublime : 
 
 While, bourne-unchecked, 
 Vision moves this its regions vast, to ply 
 Dreams that deride at Latitude or Time. 
 
 Oh Beauty of high pride ! O Spirit sweet ! 
 Drooping thy brow because thou art so fair ! 
 Flitting thro' ruining seasons, deft and fleet, 
 Thou art Truth's fit ambassador, to bare 
 Her visions unto such as, bowing, learn : 
 Hope and desire thou wakest, peace remote, 
 Rapt love, pure faith, and true felicity : 
 
 And as I turn 
 
 Musing away, over the heavens there float 
 Vast shades to trouble and to succour me.
 
 TRIOLET 
 
 LIFE blossoms at noon 
 But is gone on the morrow. 
 A transient boon 
 Life blossoms at noon, 
 To falter rough-hewn 
 On a night of wild sorrow : 
 Life blossoms at noon 
 But is gone on the morrow.
 
 TRIOLET 
 
 Strength, Wisdom and Love 
 Are its tale of achievement. 
 High-stencilled above, 
 Strength, Wisdom and Love ; 
 In wooing whereof 
 It mocks at bereavement : 
 Strength, Wisdom and Love 
 Are its tale of achievement.
 
 RELICS 
 
 ONLY withered leaves ! 
 
 Ah ! but what tales they tell ! 
 Tales of a broken and bitter heart, 
 
 Of wine from the lees of hell. 
 
 Only a faded script ! 
 
 Oh ! yet what eloquence ! 
 Of thwarted hopes and a wounded love 
 
 That no life may recompense. 
 
 Only an inward scar, 
 
 Closed by the hand of Time ! 
 Yet opened anew whene'er Memory 
 
 Sings her low mournful rhyme.
 
 TO A CHRYSANTHEMUM 
 
 DRAGOON or dragon, either fits thee well ! 
 Thy tossing mane of saffron-tawny plumes, 
 Nodding before the Noon, doth wake a spell 
 Of magic, that all Earth and sky illumes. 
 When first I saw thee float before my view 
 Straightway methought that o'er the Autumn noon, 
 Already sickled from its larger might, 
 
 A paler hue 
 
 Was cast, and fountains of soft silver strewn 
 Over the boundless sea of golden light. 
 
 Dryads and elves, frail fairies girt and shod 
 With rainbows, stept a mazy dance between 
 Gay companies of stouter fauns that trod 
 Their steady measures clad in emerald sheen. 
 Oh then, down from the golden dome o' the sky, 
 In snowy cincture, soft as down of doves, 
 In wheeling circles slid a mystic host, 
 
 That came to ply 
 
 Soft moaning music to the fairy loves, 
 Music of sadness and of grief almost. 
 
 33
 
 24 TO A CHRYSANTHEMUM 
 
 Ah, not a merry measure trod they there ! 
 
 Not theirs a cavalcade of utter joy ! 
 
 Amidst of them frail shadowy forms did bear 
 
 High catafalques, whereon, in last employ, 
 
 Rested fair wonders of a sumptuous host j 
 
 Roses, faded from glory ; Lilies, wan, 
 
 Gaunt, shrunken ; Dahlias, sometime fair and free, 
 
 Now stript of boast ; 
 
 Sere Pansies, withered Poppies, lying upon 
 Their ghostly biers in vanquished excellency. 
 
 Oh thou, thou only, art now left to bear 
 The branch of life upon a withered tree, 
 The Ensign of a countless army fair 
 Over an arid desert ! and in thee, 
 Aching, yet rapturous, I perceive how pure, 
 How fair, of what ineffable delight, 
 Is Life. Not all thy beauty prodigal, 
 
 Charm or allure, 
 
 Robes thee with nigh such splendour to my sight 
 As this replete rare passion mystical. 
 
 So I could clasp thee to my beating breast, 
 Thou tangled brow of hyacinthine curls, 
 Where the last raindrops, love-transmuted, rest 
 Rubies and emeralds, diamonds and pearls ! 
 Instinct with life in each soft twist of thine, 
 I love thee, beauteous Marvel ! thine array, 
 I fain would think, knows not Death's heavy touch 
 Or power malign
 
 TO A CHRYSANTHEMUM 25 
 
 Oh Sorrow of Sorrows ! lo, e'en now Decay 
 Hath had thy looser curls in his fell clutch ! 
 
 Yet hath thou woken in me such pure Joy 
 That thou art to me high above all Death ! 
 Yea, thou art Beauty, Beauty without cloy, 
 Beauty above the Flower that withereth, 
 Beauty eternal and ecstatical. 
 And me thou woo'st to beauty, bidding me 
 Ponder and muse on thine effulgent spell ; 
 
 To burst each thrall 
 And swell to rapture thro' simplicity, 
 Lessoned e'en from the Snowdrop's gentle bell. 
 
 Eternal thou, Eternal I ! oh Bliss 
 
 Telling of regions where all smutch and care 
 
 Pine and are faint at Beauty's perfect kiss, 
 
 Where joy is rapture, and all Life is fair ! 
 
 Thy spell floats thro' all Hours ; and in thy light 
 
 In Sorrow blooms a lustre, and in Pain 
 
 Gleams some pure centre that despite all fears 
 
 Is rare and bright. 
 
 Flower, I thank thee ! yet and yet again, 
 Until I cannot see thee for my tears.
 
 CROMWELL 
 
 OUTSIDE WESTMINSTER 
 
 FITLY without, oh fitly art thou here 
 
 Maker of men, Creator of our realm, 
 
 And Monarch of all monarchs without peer ! 
 
 Thou would'st not let a sea of words o'erwhelm 
 
 The spirit's instantaneous word of stress ; 
 
 Nor did'st thou spin thee subtle draperies 
 
 Of thought, wherewith to robe Life's nakedness, 
 
 Thyself participant of sombre ease. 
 
 Rather Life strode upon thee vast of hue, 
 
 And mighty with divinity while thou 
 
 Instant of courage, and supreme of thew, 
 
 Wrought what sheer deed was written on her brow ; 
 
 Then of thy heart's impetuous duty quit, 
 
 Tossed it to roaring Time to treat of it.
 
 CROMWELL 27 
 
 ii 
 
 Poet of Duty ! musing lonely thus, 
 
 Glooming upon an idle errant throng 
 
 Floating about its ways tumultuous, 
 
 Say, Thinkest thou we are no longer strong ? 
 
 That the stout heart thou got us in our youth 
 
 Hath fallen on decay and desuetude ? 
 
 Then think not so ! our dalliance in good sooth 
 
 Is but the languor of an idle mood, 
 
 Begotten of an inadventurous hour. 
 
 The blood that flowed in thee still is our own, 
 
 And still our own that irresistible power 
 
 That Duty girt thee with for crown and zone. 
 
 Yet, did we think some baser lot to ply, 
 
 Dost thou not gleam a beacon in our sky ?
 
 ROSES 
 
 ROSES red and roses white, 
 Dancing, gleaming in my sight, 
 Tossing in capricious pleasure, 
 Tripping to an unknown measure ; 
 Quartet, trio, duet, then 
 Breaking to unite again, 
 Aft before and fore behind 
 Swung upon the summer wind. 
 
 Roses red and roses white 
 
 Clothed in soft celestial light, 
 
 Mingling hues, and speeding swift 
 
 On a visionary drift 
 
 To the limits of my sight, 
 
 To the bounds of high delight, 
 
 Like a snow of colour driven 
 
 Over the wide floor of Heaven. 
 
 Roses red and roses white, 
 Fairy nymphs in vesture bright 
 Floating in the hyaline 
 Murmuring softest songs divine,
 
 ROSES 29 
 
 Bathed in fragrance deep and sweet, 
 Glorious, subtle, swift and fleet, 
 In the freedom of their flight ! 
 Roses half, oh ! angels quite !
 
 A SONG 
 
 IN the pure Eternal Abode, 
 
 Far from this little day, 
 Where moth and rust corrupt and corrode, 
 
 Let our great Spirits play ! 
 
 Let us bid Times and Seasons depart, 
 
 Furling their trivial bliss, 
 To find the realms where Heart on Heart 
 
 Fold the Eternal Kiss. 
 
 Withal we have entered the portals of Birth 
 
 Our destinies to spin, 
 Yet are we aliens on the Earth : 
 
 But Heaven and the Heart are kin. 
 
 Seasons but irk us as they ply 
 
 Disunion on halcyon ; 
 Oh my Beloved, thou and I, 
 
 Let us at last be one !
 
 TO A SKYLARK 
 
 SKYLARK ! lately I saw thee swim 
 
 Up thro' the wastes of air ; 
 
 Bathed in a golden bath, to its brim 
 
 Flooded with sunlight, faint and dim 
 
 I saw thee floating there, 
 
 In the high heavens, a quivering spot : 
 
 Yet now, look where I will, lo ! I can find thee not ! 
 
 Yet on the foamless tide of gold, 
 
 Out of heaven's naked blue, 
 
 A cataract of joy untold 
 
 Too vast for any heart to hold 
 
 Breaks o'er the sunlit view ; 
 
 And Earth and air, and brake and tree, 
 
 Echo and multiply the voiceful ecstasy. 
 
 Oh thou hast gone, and art thou so 
 A dim immaterial thing ? 
 Is it the golden notes that flow 
 Over the spacious Earth below, 
 These, and not thou, that sing, 
 Pouring out in exultant life 
 
 Measures of breathless song and deep mellifluous strife ? 
 
 31
 
 TO A SKYLARK 
 
 Hast thou then doffed thy slender girth 
 
 To join the shapeless voices 
 
 That swell the air, till all the Earth 
 
 Charmed by this holy spell of mirth 
 
 To its uttermost soul rejoices, 
 
 Thinking in truth her paramour, 
 
 The high majestic sun, would so her heart allure ? 
 
 One with the breathless soul of things 
 
 Life's song is this, not thine ! 
 
 This theme angelical that flings 
 
 Cascades of beauty from its wings, 
 
 This eager, vast, divine, 
 
 Ecstatic, disembodied song 
 
 Chanted by choirs that in the mid-air throng !
 
 DAWN 
 
 THOU hast outdone me, Bird ! I did await 
 
 His coming too ! 
 E'er since Love's palest opal-streaks did mate 
 
 Night's royal blue ! 
 
 Yea, I have hung expectant, tranced and mute, 
 
 Awed with delight, 
 Watching Light's steady harvest strike its root 
 
 In fields of Night ! 
 
 Dim hills strode into being, each to assume 
 
 His daily station, 
 Even as a stealthy vigour struck Heaven's gloom 
 
 With bright elation. 
 
 Trees woke, whispering unto each other, while, 
 
 Surgent and free, 
 Colour rushed o'er Heaven's vault in conquering file 
 
 Triumphantly. 
 
 Purples to opals paled, and opals flushed 
 
 With tints of rose, 
 Discovering sleeping clouds, that stirred and blushed 
 
 With waking throes. 
 
 C 33
 
 34 DAWN 
 
 In shadowy vesture hung the looming West, 
 
 While her fair sister 
 With ruby cheeks and drooping eyes confest 
 
 Apollo kist her. 
 
 Swiftly then stretched a golden arm to strike 
 
 Earth's flaming lyre 
 Of livid clouds, that hung out broadly, like 
 
 A lake of fire. 
 
 Oh ! then Dawn's orchestration was unrolled ! 
 
 Violets shrill, 
 Crimsons sonorous, amber, blue, and gold, 
 
 Uttered their fill ! 
 
 Breathless, in wide-eyed wonderment I hung, 
 
 And ere I knew 
 The tune of passion's numbers o'er my tongue, 
 
 Heavenward thou flew ! 
 
 Heavenward to meet the King with Earth's rich hymn 
 
 Of exaltation 
 Flew thou, and left to me a mute and dim 
 
 Frail adoration. 
 
 And now, even as the Dawn in Earth or sky 
 
 Hath nought to capture, 
 Lo ! thou art not ! yet all Heaven's rondure high 
 
 O'erflows with rapture !
 
 TO SORROW 
 
 OH Sorrow ! sitting in thy secret lair 
 Of Man's proud heart in sullen passionateness, 
 With misty eyes and raven flowing hair, 
 Plucking the weeds that deck thy shadowy dress 
 With twitchy fingers, thy rich heavy tears 
 Dropping like bitter rain o'er all his soul, 
 How art thou Queen of all his fitful days ! 
 
 What eager fears 
 
 Thou bring'st him, minions of thy dark control ! 
 What weeds of cypress gloom for crown of bays ! 
 
 Hath he not ever thought to find his throne 
 In some irradiant Heaven, and build him there 
 A pearly structure, girt with Joy for zone, 
 And happy sportive elves upon its stair ? 
 Ah ! little recked he then how swoln thy power, 
 Mistress of Tears and Wisdom ! little, in sooth, 
 How thou art even inevitable as the Tomb ! 
 
 For thou didst lower 
 
 Above him with wide wings that knew not ruth, 
 Blotting his Sun and whelming him in gloom. 
 
 35
 
 36 TO SORROW 
 
 i 
 
 3 
 
 Oh Sorrow, this thy bitter river of tears, 
 Coursing thro' all the earth in channels hewn 
 Deep where the passionate heart of Man appears, 
 Oh, wherefore flows it ? Flows it that are strewn 
 In dust and ashes his quick eager hopes ? 
 Flows it to see some dull, dim, glazing eye 
 That stares at realms where for a Tester's Heaven 
 
 A Hell now opes ? 
 
 Canst thou unlock thy heart, or tell him why 
 The filmy stars in thy pale crown are seven ? 
 
 4 
 
 Not like an Angel clad in vivid hues, 
 Apparelled in celestial radiancy, 
 Com'st thou athwart the zenith, to suffuse 
 Office with splendour, place with majesty ! 
 Not glorious thou, nor lovely ! yet in mire 
 Thou found'st frail Man ; from sluggish sloth and ease 
 Awoke him with a touch of thy swift stave ; 
 
 In bitterness of desire 
 Teaching him loftier ends and destinies 
 To hunger after, and new Morrows crave. 
 
 5 
 
 Ever down all the avenues of Time 
 Thou prickt his lethargy, framed him to see 
 What his lot held of wondrous or sublime 
 To bate thy torments with. In heavenly fee
 
 TO SORROW I I 37 
 
 Thou held his Soul, rare Visions to supj 
 
 And pluck him out the midst of sluggish meres. 
 
 Oh, yet what boots it that we may perceive 
 
 Thy function high, 
 
 Or the pure goal thou hast, for in sad tears 
 We know thee, and in grief thy praise receive.
 
 IN MEMORIAM 
 
 E. J. F. TERTIUS 
 
 PRATER ave atque vale ! Sorrow ! oh Sorrow ! 
 Poignant with Life's very bitterness and anguish ! 
 Wrung from heavy hearts that passioned for the morrow j 
 Broken from distasteful lips that languish 
 Yesternoons to borrow. 
 
 Friendship's high communion, Love's exultant guerdon, 
 Severed of ruthless Time, or smitten of Death and broken, 
 Drape above the Future's brow their sorry burden, 
 Till its vaunted greetings are but spoken 
 For the self-same token. 
 
 Life in life, sweet boon in circumstance, hereafter 
 Shall we greet thee, know thee as we never knew thee ? 
 Decked in subtler vesture, clothed in higher laughter, 
 Shall again our eyeless vision view thee 
 Nevermore to rue thee ? 
 
 Oh, give us to know ! Exalt our querulous vision 
 So to read our destinies that we may see not 
 Life a gloom immedicable, blind misprision, 
 Knowing surely Love's high boon to be not 
 Sorrow or derision !
 
 V 
 
 TO E. VON O. 
 
 FRIEND, who of all the earth that I term so 
 
 Hath not wrung grief from me ! oft I have yearned 
 
 To kindle with other souls the flame that burned 
 
 In mutual joy betwixt us, and to know 
 
 An eye that leapt to mine in lustrous glow 
 
 Of great high interchange. But Time hath spurned 
 
 That gift to me j and where I thought to have learned 
 
 Love, warming to some brave and outward show, 
 
 I have learned a trip that waited at the last. 
 
 Oh, thou who knew my faults and took my hands : 
 
 Who knew them well, and opened me thy heart, 
 
 I cannot find thy like where e'er I cast. 
 
 Therefore I sing to thee across the lands 
 
 And thank thee for the anchorage thou art. 
 
 39
 
 HANGER WOODS 
 
 To A THRUSH AT SUNSET 
 
 THROSTLE ! the winter woods are bare 
 Of colour, verdure, or attire, 
 Save that the sunset like a fire 
 Flames thro' the dim and misty air, 
 Flickers upon the shroud that drapes 
 The shadowy glens and glades, 
 Filling them full of ghostly shapes 
 In ghostly ambuscades. 
 
 Surely for thee the day is done ! 
 For see ! in the resplendent West 
 With mauve and gold and amber drest, 
 Thro' crimson shutters glares the Sun : 
 Like some vast God that with one eye 
 Surveys the shadowy scene 
 Sadly from vales where he doth lie 
 The length of his demesne. 
 
 The zenith like a rippled shore 
 Welcomes the waves of light, from tides 
 Upon whose foaming crests there glides 
 Colour until the Day is o'er.
 
 HANGER WOODS 41 
 
 And in the East the timid stars 
 Thro' curtains of the Night 
 Peep, like the flash of scimitars, 
 Peep, and then vanish quite. 
 
 Over the dells pale primrose blooms, 
 Changing to jocund nymphs and elves 
 Exultant to disport themselves, 
 Vanish amid the gathering glooms : 
 Yet in thy bower of gaunt trees 
 Like witches that apart 
 Gather for night-long mysteries, 
 Still pourest thou thy heart ! 
 
 Thou, Throstle ! 'tis not thou that sings ! 
 
 Not thine the esctatic melody 
 
 Pouring o'er all things like a sea 
 
 Of song, a tide of boundless springs ! 
 
 Surely not thine this mighty voice 
 
 Filling the earth and sky, 
 
 Like some archangel's, that for choice 
 
 Thought here his psalm to ply. 
 
 Rather it seems the aching Earth, 
 Toucht by the beauty of delight, 
 Moved by the music of the night, 
 Herself hath broken out in mirth, 
 Herself hath found a point of song, 
 And in a grove of trees 
 Utters unto the starry throng 
 Her secret ecstasies.
 
 42 HANGER WOODS 
 
 Deeming no errant mortal near 
 She hath unlockt her heart of song, 
 And now doth volubly prolong 
 Wisdom and rapture and high cheer. 
 So seems it, for the day's soft close 
 Falls peaceful and serene, 
 Save for thy passionate tide that flows 
 Over the tranquil scene. 
 
 Throstle, if it indeed be thou, 
 If it be thine, this potent theme 
 Breaking the caskets of pure dream, 
 Wherever thou art hid, say now, 
 Is't nothing to thee that some shape 
 Is moving everywhere 
 The sable folds of Night to drape 
 Like curtains thro' the air ? 
 
 And see ! like jewels that o'erleap 
 The dark, over Night's swarthy coast 
 The vanguards of the starry host 
 In glittering legions slowly sweep : 
 Each to his task appointed flares 
 With majesty benign ; 
 Yet, tho' Night's purple vaults are theirs, 
 Lo ! all the earth is thine !
 
 TO SHAKESPEARE 
 
 THERE is a glory of what men acquire, 
 A glory of erudition, plucked from gloom, 
 And set o'er mounded darkness as a fire 
 Raying, the paths of ignorance to illume. 
 Not so with thee, Rare Spirit ! from the womb 
 Thou bore an Eye to which our choice designs, 
 Cloaking the spirit's hypocritical bloom, 
 Lay bare and naked in their pristine lines. 
 Moving with tender ease its radiance shines 
 Swiftly about our bowels, hath its play 
 Imperious in our heart's most gloomy mines, 
 And swings our secrets out to cruel Day. 
 Therefore we fear thy power miraculous ; 
 Therefore we love thee for thou loveth us ! 
 
 43
 
 EMPTY WRATH. 
 
 I SAW a man strike at a youth, 
 
 Who staggered at the stroke ; 
 Whereat another, passing by, 
 
 To sudden anger woke. 
 
 " For shame ! " cried he ; " thou shameless hulk, 
 
 Thou coward to smite one frail, 
 Helpless to give thee back thy blow 
 
 And fetch thee hale for hale ! " 
 
 A sunny noon when nuts were prime, 
 
 And passionless the sun, 
 I saw him stride a heavy glebe 
 
 Beneath his arm a gun. 
 
 With it he felled a soft-eyed bird 
 
 That from a bush made start. 
 Astonished I beheld the sight, 
 
 And marvelled in my heart.
 
 LAMENT 
 
 To MY MUSE 
 
 THOU woo'st me with benignant grace, 
 
 Pursing thy lips to mine, 
 
 While the smiles that wreathe thy radiant face 
 
 Burn in my veins like wine 
 
 Drunk in the glory of an eager chase, 
 
 And I am thine, I am thine. 
 
 Mistress, I am thine ; this truant heart 
 No other allegiance knows ; 
 Thy beauty with its mystic art 
 Riots me with high throes, 
 Finding me joy and ecstasy apart, 
 However occasion goes. 
 
 The pomp of midmost June, the grace 
 
 Of April's tender sheen, 
 
 Whelm me with glory as I gaze 
 
 Thy mighty orbs between : 
 
 Truth, Beauty and the eternal height of days 
 
 Are one then, as I ween. 
 
 45
 
 46 LAMENT 
 
 And yet it may not be ; for when 
 
 Thou bidd'st me to be bold 
 
 And chase with thee o'er mead and fen 
 
 To search the heights of gold, 
 
 Prisoner am I ; and when I may, oh then 
 
 Perchance thou may'st be cold.
 
 THE VACANT CHAIR 
 
 NOT for the dead, not for the dead, I bring 
 
 Tribute of grief, of sorrow and suffering ! 
 
 Not for the dead, oh Memory, woo I thee ; 
 
 Deckt tho' thou art in weeds of drapery, 
 
 And gossamer vestiture 
 
 Bitter to see ! 
 
 Not for the dead, earth-weary, that put off 
 
 Earthy habiliments and Time's allure j 
 
 Not for the dead that doff 
 
 Sorrow itself, seeking the eyes that trace 
 
 Heaven's roseate glow 
 
 Over a twilight dim ! 
 
 Not for the dead no, no ! 
 
 Hath life grown unto me a desert place ! 
 Not for the dead, not for the stark of limb ; 
 But for the dead to me ! 
 
 Ah Memory, what is this bringest me 
 
 Shadowy o'er the gloom ? 
 
 What Visage gleaming thro' thy drapery 
 
 Palely and fitfully 
 
 Even as stars flash to illume 
 
 47
 
 48 THE VACANT CHAIR 
 
 The vesper river of glory o'er the West ? 
 
 Oh Memory, oh Memory, 
 
 Seeing it the quick functions of my breast 
 
 Cease, and the firm utterance of my will 
 
 Falters and fails with longings unexprest. 
 
 Fain would I blot it from me, yet I still 
 
 Hunger upon the sight, to pluck it out, 
 
 And hold it sure before me past all doubt, 
 
 Even tho' it shatter me. 
 
 Oh Memory, oh Memory, 
 
 This bitter cup of thine 
 
 Is sacramental wine ; 
 
 Blood is it, blood, and bitter gall of tears. 
 
 I take it from thy hand, and as I drink, 
 
 Even tho' its brink 
 
 Eye me with dim capricious lure, 
 
 Moving with charm benign 
 
 Far thro' the folds of thy faint vestiture 
 
 That shadowy Face appears. 
 
 Thy vesture moves, and with it move the years. 
 
 Half a dim decade moves, and there I see 
 
 The birth of much to me. 
 
 Half a dim decade passes, as a blot 
 
 Toucht by erasure firm ; 
 
 But the Face passes not ! 
 
 Now may it never pass, for oh ! there met we : 
 
 With such swift union as might eager souls 
 
 Shorn of their aureoles 
 
 Till such sweet time as their predestined stars
 
 THE VACANT CHAIR 49 
 
 Toucht them to unity and perfect bliss. 
 
 Oh, then I swore that never should forget we 
 
 The rapture of that kiss ; 
 
 And to the Worm 
 
 I flung far challenge that our unity 
 
 Transcended pulsing Time and fleshy bars. 
 
 Oh Memory, oh Memory, 
 
 Thro' the wide night of gloom 
 
 How thou dost taunt me now, 
 
 Tossing this early glory as a bloom 
 
 Stript of its petals, wrung from the vital bough ! 
 
 Oh, Mistress of the lofty, pitiless brow, 
 
 What dost thou now ? 
 
 For lo ! like billowy waves o'er Ocean's face 
 
 Foamless with majesty, 
 
 Thy vesture flows, and thro' it seasons loom 
 
 Dark with a deep impenetrable gloom ! 
 
 Ah, there in midst of all 
 
 That fair Face yet I see ; 
 
 Shining with courage, aid and sustenance 
 
 While all was dark with me ; 
 
 Radiant with living hope and tenderest grace 
 
 Despite the Hour's tenebrious bodefulness. 
 
 Oh, never, till all time, whate'er befall, 
 
 Can I forget 
 
 The succour that I found me, 
 
 In that deep hour of stress, 
 
 From those sweet lips, whose eager music bound me 
 
 Already with the crown I strove to get ! 
 
 D
 
 5 o THE VACANT CHAIR 
 
 But it is o'er, oh Memory, it is o'er ! 
 
 No longer may I find that eager hand 
 
 By slipping down mine own ! 
 
 No more, oh never more, 
 
 Shall its warm fingers teach me to command 
 
 Victory in teeth of chance ! 
 
 No more that eager Face 
 
 Shall make old Time reel in his little zone, 
 
 While realms of pearl and pure eternal gold 
 
 Unfold 
 
 A spacious heritage upon my sight, 
 
 Oh Memory, oh Memory, 
 
 All this has ta'en its flight, 
 
 All this is now no more, 
 
 Save in the tender glamour of thine eye ! 
 
 Ah ! Mistress pale, well dost thou know how I, 
 
 Howe'er the years might trace 
 
 Sorrow or halcyon, 
 
 Have deemed it not a shame 
 
 To muse on one sweet Face, 
 
 And murmur one dear Name ! 
 
 Ay, on a harsh far Eastern shore, 
 
 A weary year, 
 
 Forbad intrusion of aught other fame, 
 
 Howe'er so subtly wrought with tender yore, 
 
 From earliest shout of chanticleer 
 
 Until he sang once more ! 
 
 Ah ! since we drew to one 
 
 Mixing to issue Heaven's own perfect truth
 
 THE VACANT CHAIR 51 
 
 In our Life's nearer range 
 
 How often 'mid the barter and exchange 
 
 I have hungered for the music of one voice ! 
 
 In sorrow for but one heart's tender ruth ! 
 
 Esteeming them to be, 
 
 Beyond what else might be, 
 
 The Goal of all, Eternity's fair sooth. 
 
 Oh Memory, oh Memory, 
 
 What Horror looms there over thee, 
 
 With sad eyes, sad beyond all bitterness, 
 
 Pale as the wooing Ocean's foam-caress ? 
 
 Why beacons it ? oh why 
 
 Gazes it on me with such sorrowful eye ? 
 
 Deep at my secret thought 
 
 I find its promptings, as with gesture low 
 
 It doth a melancholy Future show, 
 
 Flowing to hoary hours 
 
 Strewn with the wrack of yesternoon's gay flowers. 
 
 I fear it, ah ! for it showeth me 
 
 Life as a theme for mad carouse, forgetting 
 
 That love had birth or setting ; 
 
 Or grey with effort to shut out thy face 
 
 Oh Memory, wan Memory ! 
 
 Yet aid me thou ! for it doth trace 
 
 Alternate issues to my soul distraught : 
 
 Wooing me to a swift confederacy 
 
 With lethal hours of peace, 
 
 Shut from the world, 
 
 Shut from all time,
 
 52 THE VACANT CHAIR 
 
 In deep eternal slumber to be furled 
 Sublime -, 
 
 So to get quit of pain, so to bid cease 
 Sorrow, with the heart's fretful poignancy. 
 
 Oh Memory, oh Memory, 
 
 From out the harvest of thy sumptuous store 
 
 Canst thou not succour me ? 
 
 I fear the Horror that thro' sorrow and gloom 
 
 Tempts me unto the Tomb : 
 
 Ah ! it hath something of mine own hid self. 
 
 Life is a hollow gloom, a void void delf, 
 
 Art thou a mockery ? 
 
 Canst thou not succour me ? 
 
 And hold thy caskets only bitterness ? 
 
 Then help me thou, whom I have doubted never ; 
 
 Help me, oh Destiny ! 
 
 Perchance thy flail is in this, for thy love 
 
 Is subtle tho' I may not doubt its birth ! 
 
 Thou hast bidden me strive, and yet again to strive, 
 
 In bitterness and fierce endeavour 
 
 To burst each heavy gyve, 
 
 Binding the Heaven-born o'er the earth. 
 
 Oh thou ! if this be newer stress 
 
 To purge me and my days, 
 
 Succour me then with visions and stern aid ! 
 
 Support me while thy thongs 
 
 Curl with swift fierceness over my quick soul ! 
 
 Bid them complete what thou hast bid them do ; 
 
 Nor heed me if I falter, afraid,
 
 THE VACANT CHAIR 53 
 
 Perceiving not the radiant and meet Goal 
 
 Thou hast in view ! 
 
 Sing to me thy pure songs. 
 
 I doubt thee not ; nor ever doubted thee ; 
 
 Not e'en in Doubt's own sombre and gloomy abyss. 
 
 Oh, yet thou hast thy sting not less than she, 
 
 Wan Memory. 
 
 For, since our earliest kiss, 
 
 She whom I mourn hath never doubted too ?
 
 AD INTRA 
 
 DEAR, where thou art I know not, 
 
 Nay, nor thy destiny ; 
 And on my brow I show not 
 
 That it is aught to me. 
 
 Ah ! yet mine inmost spirit 
 Finds not one theme of joy 
 
 As day upon day inherit 
 Life's weariness and cloy. 
 
 54
 
 "FIRELIGHT" 
 
 SOFTLY the shadows flit 
 
 Into the sombre room, 
 Brushing me not as here I sit 
 
 Brooding the darker gloom. 
 
 Here the quick flickering flame 
 Leaps o'er the careless grate, 
 
 Finding no glistening eye to claim 
 There to be duplicate. 
 
 Ah ! and I too, I too, 
 
 Lean to the low-backed chair, 
 Eager to find soft lips to woo ; 
 
 Vainly, oh vainly, there !
 
 THE CRUCIBLES OF TIME 
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 IT has seemed to me that both the matter and the manner 
 of this Poem call for a word in explanation. That it 
 should employ Personages hitherto known in treasured 
 Poems of the World's Literature will perhaps mean a 
 stumble only to the feeble-footed, for it is fitting that 
 a Poet utilise the Great Memory if so be it strikes not 
 athwart the native instance of his own powers. That it 
 should employ other machinery is a graver matter : yet 
 if it have its own theme to tell, its own purport to deliver, 
 a purport and theme derivable only from its own Maker, 
 then it will be wise if it arrive at these as speedily as 
 possible, which may happen to be better achieved by 
 taking known machinery than by elaborating, and there- 
 fore explaining, its own. Yet it will be rightly demanded 
 that this machinery be woven into its own poetry. If 
 any confusion arise, this may indeed be the fault of its 
 Maker, but may well chance to arise from the sloth of 
 its Reader. 
 
 57
 
 PERSONS 
 
 JOB. 
 
 JOB'S WIFE. 
 
 THREE MESSENGERS. 
 
 SLAVE. 
 
 PERSONAGES 
 
 THE PRESENCE. 
 MEPHISTOPHELES. 
 CHORUS OF PITIES. 
 CHORUS OF FURIES. 
 
 SCENE Porch of Job's House. 
 
 9
 
 THE CRUCIBLES OF TIME 
 
 JOB 
 
 IN the high God I trust, He who supreme 
 
 Reigns, throned above all sovereignty and power. 
 
 In the beginning, ere the breath of Time, 
 
 Or the vast concourse of eternity 
 
 Woke, stirred to sweetest song in cycles wide, 
 
 He shone, on high above a cosmic Void, 
 
 In flaming hue, when neither high or low 
 
 Was yet, nor looming West nor radiant East, 
 
 Dizzy above a dark vacuity ; 
 
 Arched by eternal roofs unshot by aught 
 
 Save His effulgent radiancy of hue. 
 
 We all are of Him : I not less than thou, 
 
 Thou even as I. He is supreme, superb, 
 
 Omnipotent, transcendent, glorious. 
 
 In Him I trust. So hence ! Tempt me no more ! 
 
 MEPHISTOPHELES 
 
 It is not so, howe'er thou think it so. 
 
 How high he is in measureless majesty 
 
 I know, who bear on me His sting of power. 
 
 But wherefore thou ? The object of thy praise 
 
 Is that most curious chance that raised thee high. 
 
 ii
 
 62 THE CRUCIBLES OF TIME 
 
 Not for the glory of Him, nor for the power 
 Resident in His beauty, dost thou arch 
 This duteous knee before His lustrous face ; 
 But for thy goodly lands, thy retinue, 
 Thy spacious tilth of merchandise and spoil. 
 Bereft of these, lonely and comfortless, 
 Would fetch thee such rare blasphemies as we 
 In Hades use. Thou worshippeth thyself j 
 And so we too, yet being more jocund-eyed, 
 We do esteem and recognise it so. 
 Nay, more ! we are loftier and nobler in it. 
 For lo ! we worship in our misery, 
 Having no mirror of prosperity 
 To note ourselves in. But, Job, thou, oh thou, 
 Doth preen thy wings before the vivid sun, 
 Basking in glory, like some rooster-cock 
 Flinging a challenge to the sun i' his pride ; 
 Reading his scorn for fear. We know ourselves, 
 And therefore are the worthier of self-praise : 
 Thou art the bantling son of self-delusion. 
 
 JOB 
 
 Who says so mocks me ; and doth do me more 
 Most grievous wrong. What I have in my day 
 I hold from Him, and hold it to return 
 At his behest. He is greater than them all 
 Being Giver of them ; and this I truly esteem. 
 Sons, daughters, retinue and merchandise, 
 Lands spacious or confined, kine, sheep and herb, 
 Fleets o'er the argent waves, camels that trend
 
 THE CRUCIBLES OF TIME 63 
 
 Hither and thither o'er the arid sands, 
 
 Gold-heavy coffers, Tyrjan-purple bales, 
 
 And all that men esteem for excellency, 
 
 Let them pass on the vesper wind, and I 
 
 Will yet praise Him whose goodness gave them me. 
 
 MEPHISTOPHELES 
 
 Brave words ! High-vaunting sentences ! Forsooth 
 Did I but touch the least of these, thy curse 
 Would quickly leap on me ; and to curse fiends 
 Is to curse Deity with a coward's tongue. 
 This gracious state thy word so lately built 
 Erect before mine eyes, let me but crush, 
 Crushed as a blosmy arbourage is crushed 
 By a tempestuous breath, crush as the surge 
 Doth crush the gentle sepulture of love, 
 Crush with a pitiless palm, and so will I crush 
 The melancholy boast thy feeble breath 
 Labours upon. Thine is a trivial hour, 
 Job ; soon will come thy trial ; and then my hand 
 Will stretch it forth to clutch thee for its own, 
 And bear thee down triumphantly to Hell. 
 
 CHORUS OF PITIES 
 
 Out of the loom of years, 
 Into the strife of Time, 
 Came Man, in sorrow and tears, 
 Travail and toil and grime, 
 To erect him a stature noble in a complexity sublime.
 
 64 THE CRUCIBLES OF TIME 
 
 Clad in eternal light, 
 Vestured with radiancy, 
 Bright, and as pure as bright, 
 Into the gloom came he 
 To fashion a splendour ineffable as height and depth may be. 
 
 He thro' the vales of birth 
 Swept from his lustred throne, 
 Here in the travail of Earth, 
 Here, and here alone, 
 Thro' Sorrow and Tribulation to achieve to a larger zone. 
 
 Trailing eternal hours 
 Comes he grief to sue, 
 Eager of vaster powers, 
 Shedding his pristine hue 
 To fashion again its lustre and to build it up anew. 
 
 But larger and broader, and tho' 
 Pure as the pure may be, 
 Pure with a fiercer throe, 
 Pure with wisdom for fee, 
 
 Pure as the end of travail and knowledge, pure with new 
 radiancy. 
 
 Not here hath he rest nor peace, 
 Otherwhere burns his goal : 
 Where blood rebellions cease 
 To shatter his high control, 
 
 Where glories caught on Earth shine free in boundless- 
 ness of soul.
 
 THE CRUCIBLES OF TIME 65 
 
 Nay, not here hath he rest ! 
 Ah ! but too oft, too oft, 
 Quitting his ceaseless quest 
 Falls he on slumber soft, 
 Not seeing the vivid beacon that flares and flames aloft. 
 
 JOB 
 
 What dost thou here, thou who before my day 
 
 Broke to such splendour wast companion still, 
 
 And comforter, to me ? All my stout youth, 
 
 Or e'er achievement shone about my feet, 
 
 When with swift hands I hewed my way, with thought 
 
 Laborious studied to make near what seemed 
 
 So far, so distant, so removed, so dim, 
 
 Ever thou wert the voice that cheered me on 
 
 And made the combat glorious. So now, come ! 
 
 We are alone, let us renew our love ! 
 
 JOB'S WIFE 
 
 Job, thou art not what once thou wert ; thou hast 
 
 Fallen aside from glory ; and thy thews 
 
 Are slack and graceless, those high mental thews 
 
 Wherewith thou clomb the peaks of Beauty, Love, 
 
 And dreams ideal, in thine eager youth 
 
 And larger excellence. He whom I loved 
 
 Is dead ; thou art another in his place. 
 
 JOB 
 
 What shrewish words are these ? Am I not he 
 Who loved thee ere success flamed with wide wings
 
 66 THE CRUCIBLES OF TIME 
 
 O'er my frail hour ? and who, now that her glory 
 
 Is high above my head, doth love thee still ? 
 
 Thee have I loved ; and with such constancy 
 
 As I have served the fervour of our troth 
 
 Have I served Beauty, and have sought to attempt 
 
 Her innermost shrine where Truth and Life are one. 
 
 JOB'S WIFE 
 
 It is not so ; oh Job, it is not so ! 
 Success hath eaten thee ; and such success 
 As is most native to our baser clay. 
 Once didst thou think men equal, holding them 
 One, brethren of adversity, and Life 
 A charge most holy fallen to their care. 
 How falls it now ? Dost thou not in thine heart 
 Esteem them fuel to make burn more bright 
 Thy noon of splendour ? Ah, and see thy days 
 That once were spent in service of high Truth ! 
 Is not sleek merchandise thy truth, great bales 
 Beauty, and plenished coffers excellence ? 
 Say, is not Life thine end, that once thou held 
 A discipline ? Oh, thou art fallen away ! 
 That thou dost deem success hath been to thee 
 Corruption ; and therewith hath come on me 
 Sorrow and grief, tears and an aching void. 
 
 JOB 
 
 Woman, away ! Life is not one but twain. 
 Thy wit is keen to note but half; its whole 
 Escapes thy shrewish tongue as odours 'scape
 
 THE CRUCIBLES OF TIME 67 
 
 The eager edge that cuts the violet. 
 
 Folly it is, gross folly and gross pride, 
 
 That thinks youth's single humour doth embrace 
 
 Life's perfect rondure, or the well of Truth 
 
 Exhausts. From nonage have I grown ajltee, 
 
 And learnt a larger discipline than there 
 
 Was possible to me. 
 
 JOB'S WIFE 
 Perchance ! perchance ! 
 Yet who is this that o'er the desert wild 
 Flies like a tempest swift ? 
 
 JOB 
 
 Upon his feet 
 His cloudy paces clothe him with bright wings. 
 
 CHORUS OF FURIES 
 Deckt in a little pride, 
 Feeble from birth ; 
 Broken at even tide, 
 Shapeless of girth, 
 Yet at his halcyon 
 Thinking to blot the Sun, 
 Man doth encumber wide 
 Tracts of the Earth. 
 
 Even as the thirsty sod 
 Kisses his sweat, 
 Thinks he himself a god 
 Glorified ; yet
 
 68 THE CRUCIBLES OF TIME 
 
 Swift at the last of days 
 Death ! and his glory lays 
 Overstrewn, undertrod, 
 Dust to dust met. 
 
 Over his pallid brow 
 Fits he a crown : 
 Even tho' to Death he bow, 
 Snatching renown, 
 Eager of sumptuous state, 
 Seeking to foil his Fate, 
 Strutting a stage : oh how 
 Like to a clown ! 
 
 Pity does mock at him, 
 Terror doth weep, 
 Seeing him up the dim 
 Pinnacles steep 
 Scaling, to sound a blast 
 Glorious : yet, at the last, 
 Every resplendent whim 
 Rocked in a sleep. 
 
 JOB'S WIFE 
 
 See ! he hath gained us now ! So travel-sore, 
 So desert-stained and weary with much heat, 
 What urgent theme sped him athwart the void 
 Upon our solitudes ? Methinks some deep 
 Occasion dire hath pricked him to such haste j
 
 THE CRUCIBLES OF TIME 69 
 
 For lo ! his twitching countenance hath fear 
 Looming upon it, even as eagerness 
 To burst a vital burthen holds his eyes 
 And quivers on his lips. 
 
 JOB 
 
 Whoe'er thou art, 
 
 Whate'er the matter thou art burthened with, 
 Swift ! let it take the air. My lissom youth 
 Is buried 'neath the arches of the years ; 
 And with it have been buried agitations, 
 Those champing stallions coursing thro' the blood 
 Snuffing some sorry tale upon the breeze. 
 I am bold to know thy worst ; so tell it out ! 
 Were it e'en twice so large I fear it not. 
 
 FIRST MESSENGER 
 
 Even as we tended thy large herds, oh Job, 
 
 On the far mountain side, 
 
 All the vast valley wide 
 
 Darkened, as tho' some sombre glittering robe 
 
 Was cast about the shoulders of the Earth. 
 
 Wondring we gazed, and the dim rubious sun 
 
 Made play upon the spear-points of the host. 
 
 Yea, as our toil was done 
 
 Gone was our evening mirth, 
 
 Struck with disastrous terror and stark fear j 
 
 For all the shadowy coast, 
 
 Both far and near,
 
 70 THE CRUCIBLES OF TIME 
 
 Glittered and writhed with fire-lit menace wide, 
 
 Like a huge dragon many-eyed : 
 
 Glittered at close of day, 
 
 Glittered and writhed, for they 
 
 Swept o'er the meady passages, 
 
 Swept from beneath the bosky trees, 
 
 Swept o'er the rocks, 
 
 And like a mighty foamless tide 
 
 Swept o'er the darkling valley-side, 
 
 Swept on our flocks. 
 
 Oh Job, what could we few ? 
 
 What mortal aid could venture that did we. 
 
 I, overcome of two, 
 
 Turned me to flee, 
 
 And staggered headlong down a rocky cleft : 
 
 'Tis therefore I, I only, am now left 
 
 To come to thee. 
 
 JOB 
 
 Buffets are given but to make stout the soul. 
 This breach in our fortunes Time and I must make 
 Surer anon ; nor may it daunt us now. 
 
 CHORUS OF PITIES 
 
 Oh Heaven of Heaven, to woo Man to thy splendour 
 
 Brilliant before his soul's ecstatic eye ! 
 
 Rolling effulgent, scintillant, and tender 
 
 Thro' the dim clouds of doubt and mystery ! 
 
 With many flagellations deep and dire 
 
 Thou whipp'st him as with whips of flaming fire.
 
 THE CRUCIBLES OF TIME 71 
 
 Unto the heart upon whose eye the bevy 
 Of soft diaphanous spirits swim revealed, 
 Before whose vision o'er the vapour heavy 
 The hue of heaven's blue hyaline is concealed, 
 Oh wherefore do thy righteous angers burn ? 
 Wherefore thy hand so hard, thy brow so stern ? 
 
 But oh ! thy ways are strange and strange thy mission ! 
 Thy vapours curl in dexterous cycles wide 
 Losing themselves in night, and to Man's vision 
 He know'th not which are false, nor which abide 
 The perfect clue that leadeth to the zone 
 Where Truth and Beauty share an equal throne. 
 
 Oh tell him, hide it not in flaunting lyric ! 
 
 Thine angers, do they sever light from dark ? 
 
 Is this thy wisdom, by a swift empiric 
 
 Admonishing when he hath slipt the mark ? 
 
 Oh Heaven of Heaven, to thy bright realm to woo him 
 
 Wilt thou first prove him, then to strength endue him ? 
 
 JOB'S WIFE 
 
 And yet another ! If I err me not 
 'Tis with some new disaster he is primed. 
 Never did sorrows trail a single course, 
 But keep the road in congregations, flocks, 
 And herded teams. 'Twas ever so ; yet if 
 There wanted confirmation, his swift eyes 
 Avoiding thine, his visage dark and gloomy, 
 Utter as loud as trumpet tongues of woe.
 
 72 THE CRUCIBLES OF TIME 
 
 JOB 
 
 Suffice it to toll lamentations loud ! 
 Out with thy tale, whether it be of woe, 
 Or whether dreams of bliss ! There cannot be 
 Aught in this sorrow-laden world so harsh 
 As dim foreboding, fancy reading grief 
 Penned in vast charactry o'er the morrow's sun. 
 Knowledge is half the issue met. So come ! 
 Bid swift compression aid thy limber tongue ! 
 
 SECOND MESSENGER 
 
 From the far Tyrian shore I fly, 
 
 O Job, to bear to thee 
 
 Tales of defeat and dire calamity. 
 
 Job, Job, thy steward am I ; 
 
 And from the lips of one swift sestet gray, 
 
 From morn to noon of day, 
 
 Learnt I the bitterest chance that e'er could fall. 
 
 First came a mariner from the Southern Sea, 
 
 Haggard and wan, wild terrors in his eye 
 
 Shining, like stars within a dusky pall ; 
 
 He of thy mighty navies, bent 
 
 From the bright Orient 
 
 To fetch thee spices and wide tapestries, 
 
 Was sole survivor ; and with pallid hue 
 
 Told he how, o'er the ruthless winds that flew 
 
 Shrieking about their tackle taut and yare, 
 
 He heard fiends laughing in high revelries. 
 
 Then from the Middle Ocean came there one
 
 THE CRUCIBLES OF TIME 73 
 
 Nigh dead, and spun 
 
 Terror and wizardry woven. Job, he sware 
 
 Soft sirens woo'd them to a furious shore 
 
 And slew them as they foundered, seeming then 
 
 Like spirits clothed about with flaming fire. 
 
 Elect and chosen was he to escape and bare 
 
 The tidings to thee, by a Council hoar 
 
 And wizened ; nor he knew conclusion, when 
 
 A violent spirit tore 
 
 His utterance, and he fell before me, stark. 
 
 Job, with dust and mire 
 
 1 strewed me, and in sackcloth heavy adorned 
 
 My stricken and quivering limbs. So had I mourned 
 
 Till Noon's bright zenith, when before mine eyes 
 
 I saw two threading up the coast's defiles 
 
 In a sequestered bark. 
 
 Heavy and gloomy was their guise ; 
 
 And heavy with the burthen of gloom their tale. 
 
 With jocund souls they had flung out their sail, 
 
 Laden with metals from the further isles 
 
 To swell thy coffers with ; when sudden and swift 
 
 A pitiless tempest did uplift 
 
 Its roaring voice about their ears, 
 
 Poured its tempestuous tears 
 
 Over their decks, and whelmed them with vast seas. 
 
 Amid the fiercer furies these, 
 
 Being lightlier laden with the precious ore. 
 
 Struck not, nor foundered, on that bitter shore, 
 
 But on the tempest sped 
 
 Counting their dying and dead.
 
 74 THE CRUCIBLES OF TIME 
 
 And even as they sped so, 
 Bewildered, as upon a charger fierce 
 A fiend upon a forked lightning flew 
 Over the universe. 
 Job, Job, for bearing thee this bitter woe 
 Even at thy knees thy pardon will I owe. 
 
 JOB'S WIFE 
 
 Oh, theme for lamentation, sorrow, and woe ! 
 
 Oh grief ! oh misery ! at noon to note 
 
 The ruin of edifices, that erewhile 
 
 Stood out with snowy domes 'neath golden skies, 
 
 Now hewn by huge catastrophe, and brought 
 
 From the blue firmament down to the dust ! 
 
 JOB 
 
 Oh, once it could not move me, to receive 
 Sorrowful tidings, grief and woe ! for when 
 I sought me eager ventures with sure heart 
 'Twas fitting they should flow on my success, 
 Even as forsooth a forward heave o' a wedge 
 Fetches a lateral thrust its either side ! 
 But now ! even at my noon of splendour, when 
 Harvest and slumber kiss each other : curse it ! 
 Oh, curse it, curse it, curse it ; and curse thee 
 Thou filter of ill tidings, thou vile blot 
 On the untarnished page of high success !
 
 THE CRUCIBLES OF TIME 75 
 
 CHORUS OF FURIES 
 
 Over the bitterness and the gloom, over the wonder of 
 
 glory, 
 Laden with both arms flits the Tomb with its consolation 
 
 hoary, 
 Whispering to sorrow and rapture alike its mystic antique 
 
 story. 
 
 Smitten with splendour of the Sun, and satiate of 
 
 emotion, 
 Welcomes the Earth when day is done the ghostly 
 
 Moon's devotion, 
 Charmed by her musical silver of speech, lulled by her 
 
 lethal potion. 
 
 She the pale Huntress icy and chaste, from all passion 
 
 bereft and broken, 
 O'er the wide waters' restless waste and the barter of 
 
 wisdom spoken, 
 Rules, and is Goddess and Mistress supreme, for a deep 
 
 and mystic token. 
 
 So at the uttermost height of days, so when all Life is 
 
 ended, 
 
 Love's fair laurels and Victory's bays tost aside untended, 
 Comes she, Sleep, the shadowy-eyed, no more with 
 
 phantasy blended.
 
 76 THE CRUCIBLES OF TIME 
 
 Passion and ecstasy, fury and strife, conquest and 
 
 cataclysm, 
 Love and the sweetest savour of Life, are one at the 
 
 touch of her chrism, 
 Muted to language of silence, lost and sunk in her vast 
 
 abysm. 
 
 Even as Aurora over the blue wild brow of a Vesper 
 
 tearful, 
 Flits she, Memory, pale of hue, on the wake of a high 
 
 noon cheerful, 
 Flits she, passes, and all is peace, in the depth of a 
 
 slumber fearful. 
 
 JOB'S WIFE 
 
 Too true, oh Job, too true, that thou didst lend 
 Too heavy a love, too eager and too large 
 An interest of pursuit, in those mere shows 
 That hit the grosser sense and please the eye 
 Sensual and petulant : which being lost 
 Having no spirit ideal that abides 
 A corporal decay grievous and grave 
 Our state is, having lost our very all ! 
 
 JOB 
 
 Lost ! lost ! Who is it says 'tis lost ? 
 Lost lives not in my language ; lost is a word 
 Coined for the sluggard to beguile himself 
 While resolution recreates the hour.
 
 THE CRUCIBLES OF TIME 77 
 
 I do despise this lost. Have I not gold 
 
 In glittering bounty coffered for my need ? 
 
 If once I hit achievement, then again 
 
 It may be won. But resolution's all ; 
 
 And here I do resolve to gather up 
 
 This challenge flung me. I will tell my gold, 
 
 And put it out to vantage, freeing it 
 
 To wing the earth and ocean 
 
 SLAVE 
 
 Job, thy gold 
 
 JOB 
 What of my gold ? Lies it not dark and sure ? 
 
 SLAVE 
 It bears not telling, 'tis so strange and wild. 
 
 JOB 
 What of my gold ? Lies it not hid and wrapt ? 
 
 CHORUS OF PITIES 
 
 Oh the deep grief of one smitten 
 By Fortune's pitiless flail ! 
 
 SLAVE 
 
 Job, even as the golden morning 
 
 Glowed about us, making radiant thy great coffers many 
 and wide,
 
 78 THE CRUCIBLES OF TIME 
 
 As we marvelled on thy riches, lo ! without a breath of 
 
 warning 
 Broke a murmur at our side ! 
 
 CHORUS OF FURIES 
 
 Oh the deceit of one bitten 
 With lust of a golden grail ! 
 
 SLAVE 
 
 Forth with terror we upstarted ! 
 
 For like ghostly pinions moving thro' a ghostly spirit-lair, 
 All about us, and yet seeming by a mighty realm far- 
 parted, 
 Moved that murmur thro' the air. 
 
 CHORUS OF PITIES 
 
 Oh grief ! oh loud lamentation ! 
 Oh ashes for fruit at the lips ! 
 
 SLAVE 
 
 Each thy coffers burst asunder 
 
 In the vivid sunlight saw we, and thy golden pieces 
 flowed 
 
 Like a billowy noiseless ocean on the marbles set there- 
 under j 
 
 Where they lay awhile and glowed. 
 
 CHORUS OF FURIES 
 
 Oh mighty and meet flagellation ! 
 Oh potency hidden in whips !
 
 THE CRUCIBLES OF TIME 79 
 
 SLAVE 
 
 Louder grew the noise of pinions, 
 As we hung there tranced in terror, smitten by a potent 
 
 spell, 
 Louder yet, and swifter, fleeter, like a host of spirit 
 
 minions, 
 And oh Job, I shrink to tell ! 
 
 CHORUS OF PITIES 
 What, Life, thine eager commission, 
 Fain would Man know, and divine ! 
 
 SLAVE 
 
 For amid thy treasure golden 
 
 Moved a spirit swift and secret, like an agitation deep 
 Swelling o'er the limbs and visage of a sleeper tranced 
 
 and holden 
 By the portraiture of sleep. 
 
 CHORUS OF FURIES 
 Like a cup to the lips, Fruition, 
 Bitter, and empty of wine ! 
 
 SLAVE 
 
 So the moving treasure kindled 
 Gleaming in its golden beauty, writhing at the sun's 
 
 caress ; 
 Yet with horror stricken saw we, for it settled, melted, 
 
 dwindled, 
 Seeming gradually less.
 
 8o THE CRUCIBLES OF TIME 
 
 CHORUS OF PITIES 
 
 Oh Defeat ! to the steadfast spirit 
 Thou pointest the loftier goal. 
 
 SLAVE 
 
 So it vanished ; and thereafter 
 
 Rose a conquering swell of pinions from the midmost 
 
 spirit-lair, 
 And, as we hung tranced with terror, softly a mocking 
 
 wail of laughter 
 Died away upon the air. 
 
 CHORUS OF FURIES 
 
 Oh Death, all sorrows inherit 
 
 Thee, and thou eatest them whole. 
 
 JOB'S WIFE 
 
 I am stricken ; I am smitten of vast woe ; 
 All my veins burn with bitterness and with grief. 
 Sorrow hath me its portion, and I know 
 Nowhere to find me solace or relief. 
 
 JOB 
 
 It is enough ! Even at the last defeat 
 I will eschew me passion ; I will take 
 Sorrow for comrade j I will muse aside 
 On the deceit and frailty that make up
 
 THE CRUCIBLES OF TIME 
 
 The hollow shows of life. Its gilded gloss, 
 Its tinsel and its pomp did too much catch 
 My heart aforetime. Yea, it is enough ! 
 I will aside and muse on Time and Fate. 
 
 MEPHISTOPHELES 
 
 What of thy state, oh Job ? What of the wealth 
 Wherewith thou late wert swollen, and wherewith 
 Soft comfortable oblations thou poured out 
 Before the Almighty's shrine, thanksgiving him 
 For all his bounties to thee ? On a wind 
 Rumour procured me tidings thou wert ill ; 
 Whispering moreover that with goodly phrase 
 Thy lips were given to cursing and to oaths. 
 
 JOB 
 
 Tempter, away ! Naked I came, and naked 
 I must go hence : what other additions are, 
 Are light fortuitous gatherings of fate 
 Swiftly to be erased at any hour. 
 I set too high a love on them ; but now 
 My children will I gather thro' my house 
 And end my days with love and gentleness. 
 
 MEPHISTOPHELES 
 
 Thy children, Job ? Were they not feasting high 
 Even with the King of the City in the plain ?
 
 82 THE CRUCIBLES OF TIME 
 
 JOB 
 
 'Tis so ; yet will I bring them quickly thence, 
 Hearing their music's ripple o'er my ears. 
 
 MEPHISTOPHELES 
 
 Truly, oh Job, thou art smitten with a woe 
 Unparalleled ! For as with radiant flight 
 I sped across the vaults of heaven, I came 
 Over the city of the plain, and saw, 
 Amazedly, that agitated flames 
 Devoured it, as great serpents do devour 
 Sparrows and chaffers for a noontide feast. 
 Circuitously I past it, being unused 
 To such untimely flames and ruinous heat, 
 Yet could I note how o'er the King's demesne 
 With spiral fury lit the ardent flames, 
 Leaping from vault to pinnacle, base to dome, 
 Licking the walls vindictively amid 
 The shrieks of the incarcerated victims. 
 
 JOB 
 
 I have not yet found Sorrow, nor have known 
 Loss, till these bitter words of thine. Oh, I am 
 Broken ; yea, I am spent, and Life is empty. 
 The sun is darkened ; and a shade is thrown 
 Over my soul. My flesh is shrunken ; drought 
 Is entered in my veins, and in my bones 
 Hath swept a fever for a token dire. 
 Yet will I not be tempted to revile.
 
 THE CRUCIBLES OF TIME 83 
 
 Thou find'st me gins and pitfalls for my feet ; 
 Therefore will I be wary. Thou would'st lead 
 My lips to cursing ; therefore will my heart 
 Exult in Him in whom I find my boast. 
 
 MEPHISTOPHELES 
 
 Think'st thou to escape me so ? These pompous words, 
 
 They are not spoken in thine own heart's faith, 
 
 But in thy will's oppugnancy to mine. 
 
 Thou dost derive thee this refulgent faith, 
 
 This strength, from out a body's might of thew. 
 
 Thy seasonable health must I then touch 
 
 To fetch thee to thy last defence of all ; 
 
 To bring thee to those caverns whence proceed 
 
 Reverberations of such sumptuous oaths 
 
 As these ears love to hear. See o'er thy flesh 
 
 How boils proceed to envelope and to embrace thee ! 
 
 From scalp to heel not one sound perfect spot 
 
 Shalt thou boast presently. See how thy hairs 
 
 Dissever from thee ! See how thy rich robes 
 
 Are suddenly found too large to hold thy limbs ! 
 
 See how thine eyes are shrunken and grown dim ! 
 
 Oh, truly we shall hear a music soon 
 
 More dulcet to these ears than flute or harp ! 
 
 CHORUS OF PITIES 
 
 In the vast depth of thine abyss, 
 Sorrow, what lessons hath he learnt, 
 Man, the amazed of all the earth !
 
 84 THE CRUCIBLES OF TIME 
 
 CHORUS OF FURIES 
 
 Oh, as the rapture of thy kiss 
 
 Over his lips' full passion burnt, 
 
 How withered and shrunken fell his girth ! 
 
 TOGETHER 
 
 What bitterness found he then, and what dire pains 
 Moving like molten fluid in his thirsty veins ! 
 
 PITIES 
 
 Then unto him, who late, in youth, 
 
 Knew neither evil hours nor gray, 
 
 Life loomed with meaning vast and huge. 
 
 FURIES 
 
 Then, as on him thy pitiless tooth 
 Fastened, his gay and glorious day 
 Grew to a bitter subterfuge. 
 
 TOGETHER 
 
 And all his thoughts were hurled to furious strife, 
 Waiting to be refashioned to some larger life. 
 
 PITIES 
 
 What pangs of travail on him so 
 
 Fell, with a stern and ruthless might 
 
 What questionings found he, and what gloom ?
 
 THE CRUCIBLES OF TIME 85 
 
 FURIES 
 
 Enveloped in thy heavy woe, 
 Feeble and frail, he found no light 
 His soul's miasma to illume. 
 
 TOGETHER 
 
 Yet lest his wayworn heart too long should keep 
 Thy shades, Night curtains hung the air to woo him 
 asleep. 
 
 PITIES 
 
 Then o'er his brow new lustres shone, 
 New glories gathered in his eye, 
 A vaster stature found his soul. 
 
 FURIES 
 
 Oh, then did he in fury don 
 A fierce and swift philosophy 
 Whose darkness held him in control. 
 
 TOGETHER 
 
 And voices in the air and in his heart 
 Tossing antiphonal musics tore his soul apart. 
 
 PITIES 
 
 Oh Sorrow, from the brutish mire 
 Thou hast rescued Man, to look within, 
 To note himself, and to pursue 
 New goals and loftier Destinies.
 
 86 THE CRUCIBLES OF TIME 
 
 FURIES 
 
 Oh Sorrow, with thy flail of fire 
 
 Thou hast scourged his virgin thought, to win 
 
 What bliss soe'er his hours may woo 
 
 Oh ruby lips and fitful ease. 
 
 TOGETHER 
 
 Oh ever hast thou whelmed his liberty 
 
 Swiftly and suddenly ; 
 
 And having known thee once never the same is he ! 
 
 JOB'S WIFE 
 
 Oh Job, what blight hath fallen on thy flesh ! 
 
 Thou who wert sometime fair, and as the dawn 
 
 Gracious to look upon, what thing is this 
 
 Hath eaten up thy glory, and made thee 
 
 A theme for dusty urchins to mock at ? 
 
 Oh horror ! that the beauteous mortal frame 
 
 Should fall to such a fester of decay ! 
 
 JOB 
 
 May the dark day that gave my body birth 
 Be curst ! May it not see the light ! May all 
 Whom that day belched to teem this foolish earth, 
 My brothers and sisters of humanity,
 
 THE CRUCIBLES OF TIME 87 
 
 Wither and falter in distress and fear ! 
 May they not know the joy of strife encountered ; 
 But fall, :hewn by the arm of ruthless Fate, 
 Immedicable, fruitless and unscanned ! 
 And she who bore me, she who gave me birth, 
 She who in pangs had joy of me that morn, 
 Oh fruitless was her pain ! for in sad hour 
 I was conceived, blighted e'er I drew breath, 
 And toyed by all the gods to find them play 
 On such an hour as sadness irked their ease. 
 Cursed be earth, curst be the toil of earth, 
 And cursed be the ends and aims of earth, 
 Curst with the curse that curseth all fair things ! 
 
 JOB'S WIFE 
 
 Oh, what is this ? What grief should fall on thee, 
 
 That thy fair fortune, like a bellying sail 
 
 Blown by the sea-wind's breath on where thou sat'st 
 
 Toying the tiller, should o'erwhelm thy ease, 
 
 Is sorrow, and a sorrow that my tears 
 
 May flow for, and yet learn to know an end. 
 
 But that the splendour of my statured pride 
 
 Should shrink to such decay, that thy health's bloom 
 
 Should bear upon it the harsh touch of death, 
 
 The ravenous disfigurement of blight, 
 
 Oh Sorrow in her ebon vestiture 
 
 Is throned in my mind's most secret places, 
 
 And I am wrapt in horror, gloom and tears.
 
 88 THE CRUCIBLES OF TIME 
 
 
 JOB 
 
 Oh I could brave defeat if I could summon 
 
 Vigour to aid me, and my lust of thought ! 
 
 Yet what is Man ! A rush blown by the wind ; 
 
 Not a firm front, but a mere jutting fork 
 
 In indication which way moves the air. 
 
 Virtue is not ; but happy circumstance 
 
 Is all things, circumstance in blood or state. 
 
 Nor is vice anything : evil and woe 
 
 Are but as vanes that utter of icy blasts. 
 
 Who is it saw high virtue, that saw not 
 
 A happy junction of the blood and mind, 
 
 A junction ruled of destiny ? and who vice, 
 
 That saw not there a failing in the blood 
 
 Purged of all vigour by fell circumstance ? 
 
 We are not ourselves, but indications merely : 
 
 And being not ourselves there cannot be 
 
 Judgment or bounty for us. We are but shades 
 
 Cast o'er a wall until the sun shall down. 
 
 Mine is an evil shade, and so I curse 
 
 The day that bore me and that brought me to it. 
 
 MEPHISTOPHELES 
 
 Rapture and joy 
 Swell thro' my frame ; 
 Care or annoy, 
 Cavil or blame, 
 
 Are whelmed in a fervour ecstatic that purges me thro' 
 like a flame.
 
 THE CRUCIBLES OF TIME 89 
 
 CHORUS OF FURIES 
 Fury and fire, 
 In coronal greeting 
 Float like desire 
 To whelm the fair fleeting 
 
 Of joy that was fickle as Hope in the hour of their 
 birth and their meeting. 
 
 MEPHISTOPHELES 
 Oh, that my eye, 
 Piercing his thought, 
 So should apply 
 Thwart against thwart, 
 
 And out of a possible glory new terror and bitterness 
 wrought ! 
 
 CHORUS OF FURIES 
 Prickt to its place 
 In the courts of old Sorrow, 
 Life doth embrace 
 A rose-tinted Morrow, 
 
 Till dusk of its hour leaves it never a fervour to loan or 
 to borrow. 
 
 MEPHISTOPHELES 
 Here in the mire, 
 Shorn of his pride, 
 Stript of desire, 
 Doth he abide 
 
 My fiat who owneth the victory, my power his lot to 
 decide.
 
 90 THE CRUCIBLES OF TIME 
 
 CHORUS OF FURIES 
 
 So from all days 
 In utterances hoary 
 Life and life's praise 
 Hath spelled Man one story, 
 
 In ashes and pitiless ruins flung down his fanciful 
 glory. 
 
 MEPHISTOPHELES 
 
 Here have I shown 
 Oh, I delight 
 Here to have shown 
 Holiness bright 
 
 Is a transient pitiful bauble toyed of the nethermost 
 night. 
 
 CHORUS OF PITIES 
 
 Yea, for as clay, 
 However ye take it, 
 Is Life's little day, 
 Till Life shall forsake it, 
 
 And Time is its wheel, and Chance is its Potter to mould 
 it and make it. 
 
 JOB'S WIFE 
 
 Oh Job, we have sinned ! Let us confess it so ; 
 
 Let us in woeful lamentation loud 
 
 Utter our grief: then peradventure Sorrow 
 
 Will lift her misty eyes contemplative 
 
 That pierce our very bowels. Job, oh Job, 
 
 These burthens that o'erwhelm our blither spirits
 
 THE CRUCIBLES OF TIME 91 
 
 Are portents that the Heavens are wroth with us. 
 
 Oh, 'tis too true that in our secret guile 
 
 We have wrought some evil, some dark covert thing 
 
 That the effulgent eye of jubilant day 
 
 Hath not discovered us. Most true is it 
 
 That even in this wise we are like to err. 
 
 JOB 
 
 Oh Woman, tempt me not ! how have I sinned ? 
 
 To murmur in the heavy ear of grief 
 
 That Man is like to err, oh how doth this 
 
 Progress the tedious burthen of my sorrow ? 
 
 Most like to err ! oh this is such a tale 
 
 As sucklings prattle. Mortal 'tis to sin, 
 
 That well I know ; yet is it not even thus 
 
 We come to knowledge and arrive at stature ? 
 
 Then wherefore dost thou mock me with my growth ? 
 
 Have I betrayed my soul to have acquired 
 
 More larger might in thews ? Know I gross sin 
 
 In having eyes, nose, ears and taste withal ? 
 
 Away ! This is a cataclysm, dire, 
 
 Inevitable, frustrate by no power. 
 
 JOB'S WIFE 
 
 Oh Job, blaspheme not, lest some darker thing 
 Shatter our residue of peace ! Is it to thee 
 So light a thing to tempt, a swifter flame 
 Sent from above to wrap owr gloomy hour ?
 
 92 THE CRUCIBLES OF TIME 
 
 JOB 
 i 
 Nay, we have known full sorrow. This know I 
 
 For Life is in me, mocking thro' my veins. 
 A lighter thing had been to have tasted death ; 
 To have lain upon the couch that the tomb gives, 
 And slept the sleep of ages ; to have drunk 
 The purple wine that foams in beakers dark, 
 And known its rapture floating thro' the soul. 
 Oh hereby know I that my sorrow is full ; 
 For further sorrow would but deaden me 
 And blunt my edge of notion ; and so sorrow 
 Would frustrate be, and anger lose its cunning. 
 
 JOB'S WIFE 
 
 Job, Job, add not by words of bitterness 
 
 A further burthen to our cause of woe ! 
 
 There is some finger in this, marking out, 
 
 As o'er a chart, our path extravagant 
 
 From the more perfect way of equity. 
 
 Oh, in this wilderness of grief and gloom 
 
 Let Sorrow wash our eyes ; contrite and purged 
 
 Let us with purer vision note our ways, 
 
 And finding where our devious path hath branched, 
 
 Discover our rectitude, and so relearn 
 
 The honey flowing in the valley of peace. 
 
 JOB 
 
 Woman, wherefore in this our hour of gloom 
 Dost thou tie tortuous knots intrinsicate,
 
 THE CRUCIBLES OF TIME 93 
 
 Ravelling further what already is 
 
 Most crooked and most torn ? Look o'er my life 
 
 Thou know'st it as none other else may know, 
 
 Having trod with me thro' its strange defiles 
 
 Where have I trodden amiss ? Oh well I know 
 
 This is not such a life that delicacy 
 
 May mark its laden travellers ; and that oft 
 
 Strife hath awoken in me such fierce lust, 
 
 That in exultancy of combat I 
 
 Have hewn a heavy passage o'er the grief 
 
 Of such as would gainsay me. Yet 'twas they, 
 
 Or I myself : and there was Life to blame, 
 
 Not I, pushed to the deed for pity of space. 
 
 Yet saving such, have I not ever sought 
 
 To poise with equal majesty the beam 
 
 Of Justice ? in pure rectitude and pride 
 
 To abstain from sudden means to urgent ends ? 
 
 Oh grief that I should say it ! yet when gloom, 
 
 Most like some vulture o'er its stinking prey, 
 
 Doth swoop on me, as on a malefactor 
 
 Given o'er to lusts and furious thoughts depraved, 
 
 I do protest me I perceive no goal 
 
 Therein, save such a goal accipitrine. 
 
 JOB'S WIFE 
 
 Oh pity that I should gainsay thee, Job ! 
 I do but rouse thee to more furious words 
 Methinks. Yet say, by the great faith of Life 
 Thou didst protest in softer hours of ease, 
 Dost thou not hold Life hath divinity ?
 
 94 THE CRUCIBLES OF TIME 
 
 Oh ofttime in the twilight, when the Day 
 
 Doth muse upon its labour, and when Earth 
 
 Gives out grave exhalations to enchant 
 
 The timid stars, that like pale antelopes 
 
 Leap thro' Heaven's boskage, and when shadowy elves 
 
 Possess the forests in the stead of leaves 
 
 Oh then have I mused on thy spilth of thought, 
 
 And it hath knit its very life with mine. 
 
 JOB. 
 
 Such are the dreams of irreflective hours ; 
 
 Symbols of tinkling glass to toy the eye 
 
 Shattered by the dread hand of circumstance. 
 
 Consider Life ; with thought deliberative 
 
 Weigh o'er its round of being ! What is it 
 
 But a void, purposeless and vicious blot 
 
 On the fair green of Earth ? If Joy there be 
 
 'Tis not of meed or merit, for the proud, 
 
 The ungainly structured in pure honour's height, 
 
 Have of its bounty heaviest weight of share. 
 
 Yet what is Joy ? The overwhelming path that knows 
 
 That pompous name, is mimicry thereof 
 
 By hungry, slender souls, that in a glass 
 
 Rattle a noisy bauble. Joy is not : 
 
 Nor is there Justice. Blessing flows to him 
 
 Who ruthlessly Hews out the river banks. 
 
 And Life is but a sorry scorched design ; 
 
 Begun in pain, ta'en up in ignorance, 
 
 Continued in a weary weight of strife, 
 
 And ended in some dark futility
 
 THE CRUCIBLES OF TIME 95 
 
 Of broken dreams, dull eyes, and nerveless ringers. 
 
 We asked not it, but it was thrust on us ; 
 
 We do abhor it, yet continue it, 
 
 While some dark law forbids to make an end. 
 
 CHORUS OF FURIES 
 
 Like a river flowing thro' valleys out to the utttermost sea 
 Is Life, as it eddies and rallies, held of its banks in fee. 
 Over its crystalline fountains in beauty and fervour of bliss 
 Bursts it, clothing its mountains white with a radiant kiss 5 
 Tempting the Sun to woo its beauty and clothe it o'er 
 With a rapturous halo of hue and a cincture bright and 
 
 hoar. 
 
 Oh as it revels and leaps, o'er the golden garment of day 
 Flung high at the heavenly steeps, who notes it then 
 
 as spray, 
 
 Idle and formless, sterile, froth and a depthless foam, 
 Whose liberty is its peril where virtue is never to roam ? 
 Yet, tho' spent and shivered, its energy broken and 
 
 waste, 
 From the bondage of youth delivered, in equable humour 
 
 chaste 
 
 Gathers it all its strength in sad slow measure to go 
 In sinuous coil of length down far to the vales below : 
 Nevermore now to revel, nevermore now to play, 
 Its tenour heavy and level, its azure stricken to gray ! 
 Then as it turns its gaze on the gleaming heights on 
 
 high 
 Where its tenderer kindred plays, oh with what weary 
 
 sigh
 
 96 THE CRUCIBLES OF TIME 
 
 Moans it thro' its sedges, ripples amid its meres, 
 
 And garlands its coronal hedges with a bitter spilth of 
 tears ; 
 
 Pining for days that are not, not calling to mind 
 
 That all glories seen of afar are glories in wonder en- 
 shrined , 
 
 Nor that the splendour of youth is a splendour not known 
 of its day, 
 
 But Self's own pity and ruth in thrall of a bondage gray. 
 
 Yet to its own hour's duty moving, it winds and threads 
 
 Where the Willow's resilient beauty its sorrowful glory 
 sheds, 
 
 Out where the turreted spires and numberless wharfs 
 and quays 
 
 Utter of broken desires, murmur of dark unease. 
 
 Ah then its music and song is an echo of rhythms heard 
 
 From the voice of a mighty throng, like a single rever- 
 berate word, 
 
 Where anger is eaten of sorrow and hatred whelmed of 
 woe, 
 
 And mercy and tenderness borrow a mute soft passionate 
 throe. 
 
 Oh then is its radiant colour o'erswept with a leaden gloom 
 
 Mournfuller, heavier, duller than sepulchre or than tomb. 
 
 Then is its every motion transmuted, as tho' it drank 
 
 Of a dark and lethal potion from each dark and spectral 
 bank : 
 
 Its swiftness a swiftness of anger, furious and bitterly 
 swift ; 
 
 Its peace a passage of languor, drifting, content to drift.
 
 THE CRUCIBLES OF TIME 97 
 
 Yea, and moving there, in the midst of its wharfs and 
 
 quays 
 
 Moaning to tell and declare its uttermost mysteries, 
 Deep-lined on its mournful face, in the silver-pale glint 
 
 of the moon, 
 Darkly its children trace sorrow for bounty and 
 
 boon : 
 
 So as it ebbs it and frets it down its appointed path, 
 Heavily, stealthily gets it a dark and a corse-strewn 
 
 swath. 
 
 Oh ! then sadly and wearily, sated of sorrow and self, 
 It turns its vision drearily out where all toil and pelf, 
 Disappointment, failure and gloom, care, soilure and 
 
 bitterness, 
 Are sunk in a deep wide tomb, and learn high Death's 
 
 caress : 
 But tho' at sight of old Ocean from its lethargy and its 
 
 sleep 
 
 Awoken to tremulous motion, in dire agitation deep 
 For a moment's wild terror tost, yet ever to cease 
 
 to be 
 O'erwhelmed and sunken and lost in the vast wide depth 
 
 of the Sea. 
 
 MEPHISTOPHELES 
 
 Ho, Job ! how goes it ? Is He good to thee 
 Whom all thy boast and hope were set upon ? 
 Methinks thou look'st not comely ; thy face wears 
 Disfavour on it, as tho' thou hast taken 
 A most vile potion that distasted thee. 
 G
 
 98 THE CRUCIBLES OF TIME 
 
 JOB 
 
 A curse on thee and thine ! I hate not Him. 
 
 Perchance He is removed from my weak woe ; 
 
 Perchance He is too lofty to have note 
 
 Of how my fortunes list, tho' with straight feet 
 
 I have trodden in the ways of equity : 
 
 Which I had thought was fit to have won his eye, 
 
 Deeming in truth high Equity to be 
 
 The very measure of his level hand. 
 
 I hate not Him , but thou, thou blot on the day ! 
 
 I hate thee fiercely j thou art the vile source 
 
 Whence flows the sorrow and the toil o' the world. 
 
 MEPHISTOPHELES 
 
 Thou'rt analytic, Job ; thou dost dissect 
 Most subtly 'twixt Time's very bone and marrow. 
 A curse is a curse ; and fitly was thine uttered. 
 He notes nothing of thee ; and thro' thy ways, 
 Tumultuous, dost thou step to our gay court 
 Where laughter waits thee 
 
 JOB 
 
 What is this sudden glory, 
 Whelming the golden beauty of the day 
 As day whelms night ? 
 
 MEPHISTOPHELES 
 
 Thro' all my subtle limbs 
 A sudden frost hath bitten like a flame.
 
 THE CRUCIBLES OF TIME 99 
 
 JOB 
 Oh what wild music floods the trembling air ! 
 
 MEPHISTOPHELES 
 
 Angelical hosts I oft have faced, and they 
 Never could cause me thus to fade away. 
 
 JOB 
 
 Harmony, as of a thousand well-matched throats 
 Seraphical, pours o'er the pulsing earth. 
 I faint ! I tremble ! I sink down in fear ! 
 
 CHORUS OF PITIES 
 Beauty, thou art His lineament and hue, 
 
 Who thro' Eternity 
 
 Chaos and primal darkness doth bestrew 
 With starry jewels, for a kingly due 
 
 To match His glee. 
 
 Glory, thou art His vesture sudden and bright : 
 
 In splendoured brilliancy 
 To fold His beauty lest it blind the sight 
 Of Seraphs, and make all Creation's might 
 
 To cease to be. 
 
 Harmony, thou art the measure of His voice 
 
 Floating thro' starry zones. 
 Thine echoes bid all sentient life rejoice 
 Where'er His fiat structured for his choice 
 
 Zeniths or thrones.
 
 ioo THE CRUCIBLES OF TIME 
 
 A PRESENCE 
 
 I heard thee, Job, curse out that thou wert born ; 
 I heard thee curse the day that gave thee birth : 
 Say, wherefore was it ? In thine own fair words 
 Acquaint me with the cause ! 
 
 JOB 
 
 Whoe'er thou art, 
 
 Oh Lord, that in this vivid golden cloud 
 Doth robe thyself as with a cincture pure, 
 I bow me to the dust before thy face. 
 
 A PRESENCE 
 
 Utter thy sorrow, Job ! Pour out thy tale 
 As tho' it were an incense at my feet ! 
 Forbear these gestures ; and with fearless tongue 
 Make known thy troubles and burthens to my ears ! 
 
 JOB 
 
 Lord, I have yearned to lay before thy feet 
 My sorrow, and to tell thee out my woe. 
 Oh, in thy dizzy throne, high-pinnacled 
 Above all Life and Time and Change and Chance, 
 Watching thy whirling systems wheel and surge 
 In ecstasies intricate, hast thou not 
 Perceived the weight of sorrow fallen on me ? 
 Hast thou not seen the blessing which thy love 
 Deckt me with, as with Summer's coronals, 
 Stript from me, as a beauteous bloom is stript 
 By a fell wind of Winter fallen astray ?
 
 THE CRUCIBLES OF TIME 101 
 
 THE PRESENCE 
 
 Methought the shrewd fierce oath that filled thy mouth 
 
 Swelled for a sorrow that but lately toucht thee. 
 
 Surely it seemed indeed that it was so. 
 
 And yet, Job, that high golden blessing pure 
 
 I robed thee with, filled out thy native parts 
 
 Till they were stuffed and primed for goodly ends, 
 
 Had faded from thee ere thy manhood strode 
 
 With set stern figure o'er the ruddy earth. 
 
 It was not stript from thee by ruthless winds, 
 
 But faded and repined and withered away. 
 
 JOB 
 
 Oh Lord, hast thou not seen my latter state ? 
 For Sorrow hath o'ercome me. All the glory 
 I did erect with straight strong hands and might 
 Hath been wrung from me. That investiture 
 I broidered thro' the years with diligent thought, 
 An eastern wind hath borne thro' a dark sky 
 Tattered and all dishevelled. House and lands, 
 Thriftage, the fruit of toil and harvest of thought, 
 Disaster hath o'ertaken suddenly ; 
 Thy gifts to me, the largess of thy love 
 Given plenteously, are whelmed in bitter woe, 
 And I am like a reed crushed to the earth. 
 
 THE PRESENCE 
 
 Job, Job, Sorrow, howe'er occasioned, is 
 Ever a theme for fragrant and soft speech. 
 The woe of the world bites at the heart of Love
 
 102 THE CRUCIBLES OF TIME 
 
 With cruel teeth, even tho' with mute wide eyes 
 Love sees, far off, in shadowy glory hid, 
 The burning Goal and Consummation shine. 
 Know that thy grief hath not escaped mine eye ; 
 For Pity like a mother's chastening babe 
 Moved secretly within me. Yet know, too, 
 The occasion of thy woe and lamentation 
 I know not, nor perceive it anywhere. 
 
 JOB 
 
 Oh Lord, is then my sorrow hid from thee ? 
 Methought thy eye pierced thro' the universe 
 With secret rapture, like a stellar ray 
 In eager travel, finding thee all thought, 
 All knowledge, all acquaintance of all hearts. 
 Yet is my sorrow hid from thee ? In heaven 
 Hath there not come a murmur of my grief ? 
 That all I had is gone, stript, hewn, blown wide 
 By winds tempestuous, and that I am left 
 In single nakedness to mourn alone ? 
 Oh what is Man without investiture ? 
 A reed blown by the wind, a scullion cur 
 Yelping the streets, a bough, a naked bough, 
 Blasted by lightnings on a hurricane night. 
 
 THE PRESENCE 
 
 What hast thou that I have not ; or what I 
 That thou hast not ? Dost thou take note of me 
 Because the argent waves leap with my ships ; 
 Or that the borders of my billowy robes
 
 THE CRUCIBLES OF TIME 103 
 
 Haunt thee with beauty ? Dost thou reckon me 
 
 By sleek large kine upon a mountain side ; 
 
 Or by mine accents flooding thro' all space 
 
 Taking thine inner ear with harmony ? 
 
 By clinking counters ; or by mellow truth ? 
 
 Oh Man is not more rich than he himself 
 
 Hath in himself; the measure of all hearts 
 
 Is Love, the measure of each potent mind 
 
 The stature and the subtlety it attains. 
 
 Oh, that the whole wide perfect Man of beauty, 
 
 Structured like him who made him, should achieve 
 
 An equal aim, and labour for all ends ! 
 
 Yet this thou mournest was but plucked in pride 
 
 From slender hearts to stuff thy treasure house ; 
 
 Deeming thyself, who shouldst be servant, lord. 
 
 CHORUS OF PITIES 
 
 Wonder and glory shining round his hair 
 
 In festive coronal like spirit fire, 
 
 With spacious lineaments structured featly and fair 
 
 To find his winging soul a fit attire, 
 
 Oh, what a theme 
 
 For song's high dream 
 Man is, as Life holds startled her bright lyre ! 
 
 Trampling the shaking earth with majesty, 
 Ecstatic favour shines in his mild eye. 
 Lifting his kingly brow in heavenly glee 
 To note where his wild minions post and ply,
 
 io 4 THE CRUCIBLES OF TIME 
 
 How he doth shine 
 Mighty of line, 
 Vaster than earth, and than the heavens more high ! 
 
 Like lightnings leashed of God his winged thoughts 
 Inhabit the wide vaults where timeless powers 
 Hold mighty conclave. Thro' the Stellar courts, 
 And in the secrecy of Earth's deep bowers, 
 
 Swiftly they speed 
 
 To match his need, 
 And bring him ease where harnessed of the Hours. 
 
 The ordered hierarchies, tier on tier, 
 Glory above glory, gaze astoniedly 
 On the fell plot of Time where he doth rear 
 High combat on darkness and adversity, 
 
 Knowing his soul 
 
 For its final goal 
 To inhabit the high peaks of eternity. 
 
 Attendant Seraphs post to bring his aid ; 
 For him, and all about him, thunders roll. 
 For he alone, of all things that are made, 
 May swell to stature and make high his goal. 
 
 Oh what a theme 
 
 For song's pure dream 
 Man is ; how fair his end, how great his Soul !
 
 THE CRUCIBLES OF TIME 105 
 
 JOB 
 
 I know not thee, O Lord ; nor what thou art. 
 All my life have I worshipped thee ; found thee 
 Praise of my lips and favour of my heart ; 
 Nor to my neighbour known it any shame 
 To vaunt thy greatness. O, well do I know 
 Erect above the heavens in lonely pride 
 Thou sitt'st, and ebon Night rolls on apace 
 To whelm his soul whom Sorrow calls her own. 
 Yet do I set irrefragable, this : 
 Capricious is she, like a dainty wench 
 Taunting the just and unjust with her lure. 
 
 THE PRESENCE 
 
 Job, like a child thou art, a querulous child 
 
 Mocking the sun. Declare the inner faith 
 
 Thy soul hath ! Utter out thine inmost thought ! 
 
 Dost thou think the Most High a worshipper 
 
 Of bubbles that endure not, howsoe'er 
 
 The morning sun that glints their stretched deceit 
 
 Gild them with radiance ? Is the All-Excellent 
 
 Praised by the teeming choir of murmurous spirits 
 
 Because at such an hour when the bright stars 
 
 Sang not their anthems yet, He did set Job 
 
 Predestined to take up such silver and gold 
 
 In his sleek palms, to build him such high ships, 
 
 To muster such large cattle, and to be 
 
 A lordling of his kindred, setting up 
 
 Palaces with foundations dug in hearts
 
 io6 THE CRUCIBLES OF TIME 
 
 Impoverished to erect him the more high ? 
 
 Dost think the Archangels post to bring him slaves 
 
 Of men who, like him, out of darkness came 
 
 And into darkness go, coming with arms 
 
 Empty, and empty-handed hence to float ? 
 
 Thou worshippest thyself; and in my seat 
 
 Thou seest the image of a mightier Job. 
 
 JOB 
 
 I know not anything : yet this I know, 
 
 Where'er the feet of Equity have trod 
 
 There have I followed ; in the dizzy ways 
 
 Of level Justice have I set my feet. 
 
 Wherefore should I take up upon my lips 
 
 Praise of myself ? But yet in these our tribes 
 
 There runs among the busy mart this word 
 
 " Pure as pure Job ; and just as upright Job ! " 
 
 In this my boast is ; for my eye hath sought 
 
 So to acquaint the custom of its range 
 
 With perfect truth, that it hath learnt to abhor 
 
 Fractures and tortions, bendings and deceit. 
 
 So have I done, and well done, and yet known 
 
 This darkness fallen from out a heaven of splendour. 
 
 THE PRESENCE 
 
 Oh true, thou hast loved straightness ; and therein 
 Shines every secret part of thee. Look forth ! 
 Gaze over all the utterance of my thought : 
 From the high leaping vault of bended heaven 
 To the arched splendour of thy doming brow !
 
 THE CRUCIBLES OF TIME 107 
 
 Sublimity and beauty tell their souls 
 
 In rondure ; for these are my trick of thought, 
 
 The high habiliments of secret joy 
 
 Decking my boundless soul. Oh tell me, Job, 
 
 Can the stream higher than its fountain rise ? 
 
 Is Man more just than God ? Yet tell me, Job : 
 
 Can the stream other than its fountain know ? 
 
 Where learnt thou wonder, or where rapture ? Yea, 
 
 And further tell me : didst thou find in straightness, 
 
 Beauty? Or hast thou found thee strength therein ? 
 
 Then wherefore should fair Wisdom deck her limbs 
 
 In vesture that her sisters have eschewed ? 
 
 Yet once more tell me : when thy secret soul 
 
 Utters herself thro' all thy ardent thought, 
 
 Which is more fair, Mercy or Equity ? 
 
 Hath Righteousness a visage that is not 
 
 Flushed o'er with Love, whose health and hue is Love ? 
 
 Divide not truth ; for know there is not Truth 
 
 That is not set in Beauty and in Love. 
 
 CHORUS OF PITIES 
 
 Strewn thro' all Earth like a splendour 
 
 Ineffable, secret and pure, 
 With dryads and nymphs to attend her 
 
 Lest the dark days immure, 
 Beauty doth revel and riot, 
 Flaming from Heaven with a fiat, 
 Held of the Highest to wend her 
 
 Man's wild heart to allure.
 
 io8 THE CRUCIBLES OF TIME 
 
 Mightily harnessed with thunder 
 
 Deckt in a vesture sublime, 
 Or pure as the first soft wonder 
 
 In the wild bright eye of Time, 
 However her fancy arrays her 
 The angels laud her and praise her, 
 For over her garments and under 
 Shines out Heaven's perfect prime. 
 
 Whatever Man's thoughts or his deeds are 
 
 Softly she lingers near 
 To tell what her pure fair needs are 
 
 At his innermost secretest ear ; 
 Then far o'er the Day's elision 
 Sets she her wondrous Vision, 
 To show how her own rare meeds are 
 
 High o'er the Tomb's dark fear. 
 
 He in thought's wildernesses 
 
 Straying in pale eclipse, 
 Filled with vagrant blisses 
 
 Taunting like distant ships, 
 Sees her athwart Hope's heaven 
 Flame with her marvels seven, 
 Like Love's remembered kisses 
 O'er Sorrow's murmuring lips.
 
 THE CRUCIBLES OF TIME 109 
 
 Oh in the wonder and glory 
 Of the ultimate uttermost Day, 
 
 When like a wayworn story 
 Travail is furled away, 
 
 She, with his own heart's rapture 
 
 Spun, shall riot and capture 
 
 The Joy of the Ancient and Hoary 
 That never hath known Decay. 
 
 JOB 
 
 Lord, thou hast spoken in mysteries and in riddles 
 
 What should be set delightedly before 
 
 Mine eye. Where have I trodden amiss ? Where 
 
 turned 
 
 Away appointed paths ? What have I done 
 To make thine angers play about my feet ? 
 Have not I diligently spun the woof 
 Of Life's most excellent texture ? Am not I 
 Blameless of evil if not nobly wise ? 
 
 When Slumber furled thy limbs and steeped thy thought, 
 
 I held me in review ten thousand souls 
 
 Of upright men. Across the pave of Heaven, 
 
 That billowed at my feet, they took their way. 
 
 Oh ! stunted and slender were they, pinched and peaked, 
 
 Ashen and pallid, even as tho' hoar Age 
 
 Had swept upon the tender bodies of babes ! 
 
 Job, thine was there j the harmony of high choirs
 
 no THE CRUCIBLES OF TIME 
 
 Frighted it ; and the splendour of Heaven's noon 
 Stung it to terror. All the supernal powers 
 Ceased their ecstatic thunder in pity of it : 
 A hush held all the numberless hosts to see 
 A mighty soul, swoll'n in its bounteous birth 
 With my high breath, brought to so lean a pass. 
 It spoke not then of equity j of houses 
 Stuffed and replete with tinsel of a day ; 
 But shrank to hide it in its puny frame 
 While all Heaven marvelled. 
 
 JOB 
 
 Lord, oh Lord of splendour ! 
 In pity expound to me what these deep words 
 Mean ; in thy mighty omniscience and power 
 Illumine all my twilit thoughts to see 
 The wonder of thy words. Even as when moths 
 Frequent the margin of the magic woods, 
 So flits thy purport thro' my bosky thought. 
 I am no coward heart, oh Lord ; what e'er 
 Life hath not got me, it hath got me this. 
 Gladly would I embrace the thing thy thought 
 Hath for me now, so it shine crystalline. 
 
 THE PRESENCE 
 
 And so 'tis well, Job ; so 'tis well ; for know 
 A resolute stature hath a half of beauty 
 Even tho' it be not structured featously. 
 Yet if it so be structured, joy and delight 
 Twine to make glorious so supreme a robe !
 
 THE CRUCIBLES OF TIME 1 1 1 
 
 Oh, in thy younger pride, when majesty 
 Clustered thy brow, Man was not to thee then 
 Sprung up a purple agaric of a night, 
 But was decked out with immortality, 
 And with divinity besomed. So thy life 
 Seemed to thee j and so seemed all equal lives, 
 Shaped like thine own, and destined to same ends. 
 Yet thou hast seen the roseate flush of morn 
 Spring to swift golden glory, soon to die 
 "Wrackt with the exhalations of the earth ? 
 So came thy noon succeeding to thy dawn. 
 
 JOB 
 
 Oh Lord, I ever held life loomed sublime 
 And wondrous, at all seasons and all times. 
 
 THE PRESENCE 
 
 Doth he think Life a splendour, to be wrought 
 Sublime, who tills the sands of a golden desert j 
 Who builds him glittering palaces to house 
 The harvest of a brief and graceless Hour ? 
 Oh, see thy glory, pluckt despite the tears 
 Of a world's grief, gone hath it, gone, yet gone 
 But a wild breath of Time before its due. 
 Is this thy Life of splendour ? Job, oh Job, 
 Harnessed with power and might, hadst thou but got 
 Love, Beauty, Harmony, the gold of Heaven, 
 Replete wert thou to all Eternity, 
 Deckt with a glory none could strip thee of.
 
 ii2 THE CRUCIBLES OF TIME 
 
 The Spirits of the Air, they who inform 
 
 The boskage of all woods, and glens and hills, 
 
 Inhabiting desolate ruins, have hungered fiercely 
 
 Desirous of Man's body, to put it 
 
 To all bright uses and void windy loves. 
 
 Yet thou who hast it putt'st it out to sloth ! 
 
 JOB 
 
 Like arrows thro' my mind wings thy swift breath. 
 I know not anything ; dark ruin hath 
 Enveloped all my thought, and sunk my soul 
 In the abysm of a void wide gloom. 
 
 THE PRESENCE 
 
 Go, get thee up, and waste not hours in tears ! 
 
 There is a splendour waiting thee, that not 
 
 Omnipotence can foil thee of, being got 
 
 By thee thyself. Gifts are but given, and held 
 
 Discinct of thee ; achievement floods the soul 
 
 As its inalienable bloom and pride. 
 
 Know this ; and know that all the Universe 
 
 Vibrant and instinct is with my high hue : 
 
 And, like a spilth of bloom, thy challenging touch 
 
 Will vesture thee in its munificence. 
 
 CHORUS OF PITIES 
 
 In the far height of days 
 
 That above glory or praise 
 
 Burns with irradiance in the lambent East ; 
 
 When Cavil and Grief and Care,
 
 THE CRUCIBLES OF TIME 113 
 
 Like Pestilence in the Air, 
 
 Will purged be while Rapture tend the feast, 
 
 How native to her gentle lure 
 
 Shall Man be, and the Son of Man, superb and pure ! 
 
 Jessed not, nor trickt to fear 
 
 By that high glory clear, 
 
 Lifting his brow exultant in the Dawn ; 
 
 In equal pride to go 
 
 Knowing nor high nor low, 
 
 Tossing not Anger and eschewing Scorn ; 
 
 Wonder shall in his wide eyes dream, 
 
 And Love steep all his thoughts in her refulgent beam. 
 
 ts 
 
 Yet that ecstatic strand 
 He only may command, 
 Striking thro' fear and deathliness of soul : 
 He, and of all things he 
 Alone, may win to be 
 
 Mighty thro' Sorrow, thro' her gloomy dole, 
 Achieving what no boon could give, 
 Nay, not the All-Excellent in bright prerogative. 
 
 JOB'S WIFE 
 
 Job, all thy flesh grows comely, and thy face 
 Shines with new fervour, as tho' o'er our Heaven 
 Daylight had stol'n with opalescent beam, 
 Oh, I am joyed thereat ! but who is this ? 
 What new sad courier speeding o'er the plain ? 
 H
 
 ii4 THE CRUCIBLES OF TIME 
 
 MESSENGER 
 
 Oh Job, upon the wings of the wind I fly 
 
 To tell thee that the City of the Plain is consumed. 
 
 The flames have wrackt it. Yet tho' its doom was dire 
 
 A merciful wind so beat it to the gates 
 
 That fed it first, so battled with its heat 
 
 That each man soul, and every woman alive, 
 
 And every child that chanted in its streets, 
 
 Was won to safety, and with the King now hide 
 
 In tented comfort by a river side. 
 
 He to thee bade me speed, so in thine ears 
 
 To mingle doom and gentleness and blessing. 
 
 JOB 
 
 For so much give I thanks. My foot is set 
 On a far flight, for glory beckons me 
 To a pure splendour at the height of all. 
 
 CHORUS OF PITIES 
 
 Not in the gardens voluptuous where languor and 
 
 plenteous ease be, 
 Tho' they be all too rife ; 
 Not in the issue of combat and conflict however fair 
 
 these be, 
 Not in the clangour of strife j
 
 THE CRUCIBLES OF TIME 115 
 
 But in the wild bright places wherever thine hours thou 
 
 spin thee, 
 In Love and an excellent Beauty Soul of all Life may 
 
 win thee, 
 Knowing the heart of all mystery gleameth and shineth 
 
 within thee, 
 Life of all Life ! 
 
 THE END
 
 A VISION OF LIFE 
 
 BY 
 
 DARRELL FIGGIS 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY G. K. CHESTERTON 
 3-r. 6d. nett. 
 
 Mr James Douglas in the Star. Mr Figgis is a poet, and 
 "A Vision of Life " is a poem which is rich with promise. 
 
 The World. We cannot but see promise in Mr Figgis's 
 poetry, and we admire its striking honesty. Wherever he has 
 sought he has found something worth telling the world, and he 
 tells his tale to pure music. We do not pretend that he conies 
 upon us grown to the stature of poetic greatness, but he is a 
 poet, and we wait without misgiving to hear him again. 
 
 The Sunday Times. Mr Figgis is on the side of the 
 optimists. . . . But it is the imaginative and musical sides of 
 the poem its sweep of fancy, its lyrical fervour, its sustained 
 ecstasy which deserve to be emphasised. 
 
 The Scotsman. Any student of English poetry who knows 
 the points of Elizabethan tradition must admire it without 
 qualification. 
 
 The Daily Chronicle. Mr Figgis's power is combined with 
 a natural delicacy, though without artificial refinement. What 
 we have called genuineness, Mr Chesterton, in his introduction, 
 calls Elizabethanism, the fact being that a modern man with a
 
 strong individuality is apt to go back for his colour and form to 
 that age rather than to Tennyson or the great poets from which 
 he sprang. 
 
 The Morning Post. We feel at every point in this poem and 
 in the rest that the writer has something definite to say and is 
 eager to say it ; never do we feel, as so often with clever 
 writers, that he is being persuaded to say things partly by the 
 itch for writing and partly by the necessity of rhyme. . . . The 
 other poems are shorter and of great variety. They all reveal a 
 grave, strong, passionate nature that is instantly attractive. 
 
 The Athenxum. Sincerity and a lofty ideal are undoubtedly 
 the keynotes of the book. 
 
 The Nation. Mr Figgis's poetry is not at all conventional, or 
 even orthodox ; it is new and original. Yet it is quite good 
 poetry, implicitly obeying the code of poetic law. Beneath all 
 its complexity and elaborate deviation, the vigorous poetic conduct 
 of thought is there, hard and firm. 
 
 T.P.'s Weekly. There is a good deal to arrest one, a good 
 deal to ponder over, in Mr Darrell Figgis's " A Vision of Life." 
 The author has a good deal to say, and he often says it with 
 imaginative richness and beauty. 
 
 Irish Independent. The volume of verses just issued contains 
 one long and several short poems, which bespeak a rare selection 
 and dainty touch that stamp the author a true singer. 
 
 Observer. Mr Figgis has things to say. He has seen some- 
 thing ; and at his least melodious, his thought is poetic.
 
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