THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 POEMS 
 
 BY 
 
 K. J. F. 
 
 <f>i\ov 
 
 MCMVI
 
 RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, LIMITED, 
 
 BREAD STREET HILL, B.C., AND 
 
 BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.
 
 
 
 
 18821906 
 
 " There shall be as the shaking of an 
 olive tree, and as the gleaning grapes 
 when the vintage is done.""
 
 THIS book has been privately printed with the 
 knowledge that the friends of the author will 
 be glad to share some of his inner thoughts. 
 
 The Epilogue was written a few days before his 
 death, when he lay in a garden where there are 
 roses. 
 
 A few of the poems were collected into a note- 
 book, and the rest were found loose among his 
 papers. Whether any of them are in the final 
 form in which they would have been published, or 
 whether he proposed to publish them, can never 
 be known ; but it is due to his memory to state 
 that he did not prepare them for publication. 
 
 vii
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Lovely the land 1 
 
 WINCHESTER 
 
 With groping skill 6 
 
 The Blue, the Brown, the Red . . . 7 
 On a Dead House-master . . . . .10 
 
 The First Fifteen 11 
 
 Domum Night ....... 13 
 
 Non Nobis 14 
 
 CAMBRIDGE 
 
 The Fiftieth Meeting of the X Society ... 19 
 
 From the Minute-Book of the X Society . . 21 
 Sir William Browne Prize Epigram . . .22 
 
 Another Epigram 24 
 
 Farewell to the 'Varsity 25 
 
 ix
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 VARIA 
 
 
 Life 
 
 31 
 
 Friendship 
 
 33 
 
 Sympathy 
 
 35 
 
 Retrospects ..... 
 
 39 
 
 Farewell 
 
 41 
 
 Science 
 
 44 
 
 The Might-have-been 
 
 45 
 
 Despair 
 
 49 
 
 In a London Cemetery . 
 
 . 53 
 
 FRAGMENTS .... 
 
 . 59-73 
 
 TRANSLATIONS 
 
 
 Plato : Apology xxxii 
 
 . 77 
 
 Pindar : Fragment cxxxi 
 
 . 82 
 
 Pindar : Fragment cxxxvii . 
 
 . 83 
 
 Catullus : ci .... 
 
 .84 
 
 Catullus : xcvi .... 
 
 . 86 
 
 Martial : I. 88 
 
 87 
 
 EPIIX)GUE
 
 POEMS
 
 Lorcly the land that is over that matt; 
 Softly the melodies beckon and call, 
 Promising freely a City of Gold, 
 Fruitage unfading and rapture untold. 
 
 Dark is the gate to it, narrow and small, 
 Storms all about it and mists over all; 
 Few that can enter it, few that can find , 
 Most of us wearily wander and blind.
 
 WINCHESTER 
 
 E 2
 
 WITH GROPING SKILL 
 
 WITH groping skill I keep and faulty care 
 
 This little corner of God's garden plot ; 
 Young souls the nursling beds my labour sows, 
 
 A soil that good from ill discerneth not, 
 But at a seeming random takes my seeds, 
 
 Now tares, and now a rose ; 
 
 And straight the weeds to wild luxuriance flare, 
 And choke the rose that in slow patience 
 
 breeds. 
 Lord of the garden, guide my words and deeds, 
 
 That all be seeds of roses, none of tare : 
 
 Lest, when the Lord return to view His ground, 
 He findeth only weeds ; and mine the blame, 
 And mine the sorrow when the souls I love 
 
 Are dug and hoe'd by long remorse and shame, 
 
 5
 
 To clear my careless plantings, while their 
 
 pain 
 
 My greater pain shall prove; 
 And bright boy-faces, marred with many a 
 
 wound 
 I might have shielded, through the deep 
 
 ingrain 
 
 Shall gleam sad eyes upon me, sick in vain 
 To bear their burden, so they might be 
 crowned.
 
 THE BLUE, THE BROWN, THE RED 
 
 THOUGH many, many here to-day 
 
 Shall part to meet no more, 
 And Life shall bear us far and wide 
 
 To ev'ry sea and shore, 
 No Wykehamist shall e'er forget 
 
 The school where he was bred, 
 The cloisters grey, the work and play, 
 
 The Blue, the Brown, the Red. 
 
 O, blue the seas the English rule, 
 And brown the English land, 
 
 And red the English blood that flows 
 By evVy sea and strand !
 
 We bear, in token that our best 
 In England's cause have bled 
 
 For centuries of sacrifice, 
 
 The Blue, the Brown, the Red. 
 
 O, red the clouds at early morn, 
 
 And blue the noonday sky, 
 And brown the twilight shadows fall 
 
 Before the sunbeams die ! 
 In boyhood, manhood, age alike, 
 
 Where'er our life be led, 
 Our mother school our lives shall rule, 
 
 The Blue, the Brown, the Red. 
 
 O, blue for striving thought and faith 
 
 That soar beyond the skies, 
 And brown for sombre duteous lives, 
 
 And red for sacrifice ! 
 8
 
 O sons of Wykehairfs family, 
 Where heroes trod, ye tread 
 
 Your whole life through do honour to 
 The Blue, the Brown, the Red. 
 
 O, blue the eternal sky above, 
 
 And brown the earth beneath, 
 And red the rising sun that wakes 
 
 The world each day from death ! 
 While sky above and earth beneath 
 
 Behold the sunbeams spread, 
 Our mother school shall work and rule, 
 
 The Blue, the Brown, the Red.
 
 ON A DEAD HOUSE-MASTER 
 
 KINDLY guide of strange young steps 
 New-exiled from guardian home, 
 
 Now thy long, long term is o'er, 
 Now thy holy-days are come. 
 
 In thy Home beyond the Tide 
 
 Find an even kinder Guide. 
 
 10
 
 THE FIRST FIFTEEN 
 
 PRIZES come, and prizes go, 
 Life has many a joy to show, 
 Many an eager strife between, 
 Battles many and battles keen ; 
 
 But none can beat 
 
 And none defeat 
 The joy of the first fifteen. 
 
 Crawling, crawling, slow, how slow 
 Minute by minute the long hours go 
 Spirit and body are all aglow, 
 
 All of a passion keen, 
 ii
 
 Work how work when the mind's away, 
 Pondering over the points of play? 
 Work how work when to-day's the day, 
 Day of the first fifteen ? 
 
 12
 
 DOMUM NIGHT 
 
 OUR latest sunset gilds the dreaming vale, 
 To smile farewell the very shadows glow ; 
 
 The far hills vanish : dewy slumber steals 
 On silent meadows and the Itchen's flow. 
 
 The last light fades ; the grey Court rings with 
 cheers, 
 
 The Chapel fills, and many a sainted head 
 On lowly brass or painted window high 
 
 Connects our worship with our many dead. 
 
 The solemn prayer for those who come no more, 
 The hymn that tells of One the same for aye, 
 The clustered partings, long walks round the 
 Court, 
 
 Uneasy sleep and then another day. 
 13
 
 NON NOBIS 
 
 WE thank Thee first, Our Father, 
 
 Beneath whose hand did grow 
 Our grassy open downland, 
 
 Our silver streams below ; 
 Whose finger paints our meadows 
 
 And tints the clouds above, 
 Whose mercy saves our country 
 
 And makes her worth our love. 
 
 We thank Thee for our Founder, 
 
 And all who wrought his plan, 
 Through whom we learn the manners 
 
 That make the Christian man : 
 14
 
 We thank Thee for Thy favour, 
 And for Thy grace we pray 
 
 On every good endeavour 
 In house, in work, in play. 
 
 We thank Thee for our fathers, 
 
 Who trod where now we tread, 
 Our ageless roll of heroes, 
 
 Our unremembered dead, 
 Whose graves the world encircles 
 
 From South to Northern ice, 
 Or lived and died forgotten 
 
 In patient sacrifice. 
 
 ( Unfinished)
 
 CAMBRIDGE
 
 THE FIFTIETH MEETING OF THE 
 
 X SOCIETY, TRINITY COLLEGE, 
 
 CAMBRIDGE 
 
 I DREAMED a dream when the night was lone, 
 
 And the stars were sighing for dawn 
 I dreamed that the fetters of Space were flown, 
 
 And the curtains of Time withdrawn. 
 From the aisles of the Abbey, from grassy graves, 
 
 Each soul of a poet was fleeting, 
 Like a flowery breath from the garden of Death, 
 
 To a feast for our fiftieth meeting. 
 
 Where Helicon longs for the Muses tread 
 
 And the voices that ring no more, 
 With a misty moon for their lamp overhead, 
 
 They feasted, the poets of yore. 
 
 19 c 2
 
 To Homer's "At Home" they are all of them 
 
 come, 
 
 They are singing and talking and eating; 
 They are all of them tippling, from Dante to 
 
 Kipling, 
 On the night of our fiftieth meeting. 
 
 They feed on the heart of the hurrying years, 
 
 Their wine is the world's desire; 
 They drink the deep water of human tears 
 
 That throbs in the veins like fire ; 
 They talk as the whisper of wandering waves, 
 
 But they cease from their talk and their 
 
 eating, 
 When rises the host to propose the toast 
 
 Of the X and its #tieth meeting. 
 
 20
 
 FROM THE MINUTE-BOOK OF THE 
 X SOCIETY 
 
 . . ' 
 
 GROWN in the garb of the gossamer grape, 
 
 Brief as the bloom of the vine 
 Trampled, and tumbled, and torn in the vats, 
 
 Love is a psychical wine, 
 Stored in the cool of the earth for a while, 
 
 Waiting a banquet divine. 
 
 21
 
 THE CREEK EPIGRAM WHICH OBTAINED 
 SIR WILLIAM BROWNE'S GOLD MEDAL, 1903. 
 
 SUBJECT 
 
 6vTO. tyiXtlv (6e\ovra 8e 
 
 EPIGRAM 
 
 j~tve, fca\bv TO tfiv K dray ay tov eariv aira<jiv 
 <yap oyaew? vvKTi i jr\avel<> re (f>i\e2, 
 
 <f>iXia<; teal repirvov epwra 
 KOI TTOVOV evavSpov <f)povriBa r ovpaviav 
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 -irefi-rrei 0' ware \adelv oitcaB' \rj\vdoTa<;. 
 
 22
 
 IDEM AXGLICE 
 
 A LITTLE helpless child, astray in night, 
 I reached the Inn of Light. 
 
 They bade me welcome, richest cheer they 
 brought, 
 
 Love, Friendship, Work, and Thought. 
 Then when I was aweary, last and best, 
 They gave me dreamless rest; 
 
 And sent me on my way, that I might come 
 
 Unknown, unknowing, Home.
 
 ANOTHER EPIGRAM 
 
 FROM the blind earth a tender bud I came: 
 Griefstorms and weeping showers^ 
 
 Did strengthen me, and Love's celestial flame 
 Drew forth my hidden powers ; 
 
 But ere my blossom cast its scent abroad 
 
 The Gardener plucks me for his Master's 
 board. 
 
 'E/c 7779 el/At Tv<f>\fj<;, fjLa\aicov S' epov 
 
 d\ryea tcdOpe^rev Sd/cpv' , e 
 etc fcd\VKO? S' ijSrj \yeapasi\ r^v avOepa 
 
 o Krj7roK6fJio<: Sairo? dyaX^a 
 
 24
 
 FAREWELL TO THE 'VARSITY 
 
 ON the threshold now of manhood 
 I can scan the years to be 
 
 The monotonous career of 
 Prim respectability : 
 
 Tidy hat and coat eternal, 
 Badge of commonplace's slave; 
 
 In a trim suburban villa, 
 Till a trim suburban grave. 
 
 O the prospect all entrancing, 
 
 Had I never been a child, 
 If there did not wail within me 
 
 Stirring voices of the wild ! 
 25
 
 O ye dawns upon the mountains, 
 
 O ye rosy peaks of snow, 
 O ye misty lakes and rivers 
 
 Gleaming faintly far below ; 
 
 O ye moors across the water, 
 
 O ye winds across the fen, 
 How regard ye us, your brothers, 
 
 Us, the modern race of men ? 
 
 We have stuffed our brains with knowledge 
 Till we cannot know you more; 
 
 We have sold our souls for riches, 
 And the bargain leaves us poor; 
 
 We have made the world a loveless, 
 
 Eyeless, thoughtless, dead machine; 
 We have ugliness for monarch, 
 
 And the dividend for queen. 
 26
 
 Give the crowd that asks them, Fortune, 
 Pomp and circumstance and state : 
 
 But to me no slum-born favours, 
 Neither wealth nor station great ; 
 
 Put me far from their possessors, 
 In a world beyond their ken, 
 
 Eye to eye with Nature's glories, 
 Eye to eye with Nature's men. 
 
 Near the vastness of the mountains, 
 'Neath the broadness of the sky, 
 
 With a spirit widened by them 
 I would live and I would die.
 
 VARIA
 
 LIFE 
 
 1. 
 
 Is it only an evening odour 
 
 Born of the closing flowers, 
 The sad strange note of a fragile harp,* 
 
 This fugitive life of ours ? 
 
 Will the mind, with its worldwide yearning, 
 
 Torture of doubt and toil, 
 Like labours and pains of the passing flesh, 
 
 Have an end in the dull dead soil ? 
 
 Is to die but to sleep at nightfall, 
 
 To rest from the long day, life, 
 An infinite peace for evermore, 
 
 Forgetfulness after strife ? 
 
 * PLATO, Phaedo 
 31
 
 Death the end ? Away with tears, 
 Drug thee with the wine of joy ; 
 Life is over ere it cloy, 
 
 Drown thy sorrows, drown thy fears. 
 
 Dark the earth where grows the weed ; 
 
 Howling wind and sobbing sky 
 
 Bow it, warp it till it die, 
 Vanish. But, behold, a seed ! 
 
 Sow the seed in tropic bowers, 
 Calm for tempest, sun for rain, 
 See it raise its leaf again ; 
 
 Blossom with ethereal flowers.
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 1. 
 
 EYES cannot see a friend : no sense has trod 
 That shrine, or can tread ; learn your neigh- 
 bour's worth 
 
 By imitation, merit's only test ; 
 Try him in storm and sunshine, grief and 
 
 mirth, 
 Till years of effort bring similitude 
 
 Between you, best with best ; 
 Till melting soul with soul, not clod with clod, 
 
 You reach, your unity by death renewed, 
 
 God, immortality, infinitude ; 
 
 This is the way to friendship, this to God : 
 33 D,
 
 For deeds, not words, make up the Godward 
 
 way, 
 
 Not prayers repeated, nor undoubted creeds. 
 Not everyone that saith " Lord, Lord ! ", but he 
 That, doubting or believing, doth the deeds 
 The Lord did, his the Kingdom. Friends of 
 
 man, 
 
 He saith, are friends of Me. 
 Take heart, O doubters, do the best ye may ; 
 Facts, fictions of that Life forbear to scan, 
 But act His teaching, imitate His plan, 
 So shall ye meet Him, soul to soul, some day. 
 
 34
 
 SYMPATHY 
 
 WE are strangers, never 
 Arm in arm we twine ; 
 Yet my heart is ever 
 One with thine. 
 
 Man and mount and meadow, 
 
 Ocean's changing tide 
 Outwardly are shadow, 
 Soul inside. 
 
 Through the phantoms groping, 
 
 Blind as blind the mole, 
 Struggling, yearning, hoping, 
 
 Soul seeks soul. 
 
 35 D 2
 
 On the phantoms gazing, 
 Earth with earthy eyes, 
 Comes a force erasing 
 The disguise : 
 
 Comes a sense exciting 
 
 Sympathies to roll, 
 Thought to thought uniting, 
 Soul to soul. 
 
 Some mysterious token, 
 Clear in spirit speech, 
 Joins the threads long broken 
 Each to each. 
 
 Dimly now discerning, 
 
 Ring the awakening chords, 
 Oversweet with yearning, 
 
 More than words : 
 36
 
 Harps awhile recalling 
 
 Tunes forgotten long, 
 Random fancies falling 
 Into song ; 
 
 As in recollection, 
 
 Rainbow'd thro 1 our tears, 
 Childhood's resurrection, 
 Golden years. 
 
 Then the chords long broken 
 
 Break again apart ; 
 Stores the truth unspoken 
 Either heart ; 
 
 Till the Dawn awaked 
 
 Rout the shades of night, 
 And all souls stand naked 
 
 In the light, 
 37
 
 Powers exerted wholly, 
 
 Secrets wholly known ; 
 Then I'll claim thee solely 
 For my own.
 
 RETROSPECTS 
 
 WHEN we are under the grasses, 
 When we are under the sod, 
 Where but the mourner passes 
 In the still presence of God 
 
 If there be aught hereafter 
 Making our fugitive years 
 More than a thoughtless laughter, 
 Hiding the silent tears 
 
 Shall we, with infinite grieving, 
 Out of our lonely night, 
 Look on the land of the living 
 
 Golden in memory's light ? 
 39
 
 Grief for the wrongs we committed 
 Now that their wounds are revealed ? 
 Grief for the sorrows permitted 
 Which but a word would have healed ? 
 
 For opportunities wasted 
 Now opportunity's o'er ? 
 Wine of the soul never tasted 
 Now we can taste it no more ? 
 
 Grief for the soul's many powers 
 Wasted and weakened and fled, 
 Seeds that might have been flowers, 
 Had we but cared for them, dead ? 
 
 40
 
 FAREWELL 
 
 I HAD a friend once, 
 
 We were at one 
 Walking together ; 
 
 Warm was the sun. 
 
 Steep the white pathway 
 
 Under our feet, 
 Worn by the flocks and 
 
 Cracked by the heat. 
 
 Haze in the valley, 
 Clear on the down ; 
 
 There we sat gazing 
 Into the town,
 
 Thinking together 
 
 Under the sun ; 
 Nature was smiling 
 
 When we were one. 
 
 Grasshoppers whirring 
 Through the hot hours 
 
 Butterflies dancing 
 Over the flowers ; 
 
 Hedges of roses, 
 Murmuring bees, 
 
 Birds all around us, 
 Thyme in the breeze ; 
 
 Music in Nature, 
 We had our part ; 
 
 Beauty in Nature, 
 Love in the heart. 
 
 \ 42
 
 I had a friend once, 
 Now I have none ; 
 
 Bleak is the country, 
 Chill is the sun. 
 
 Fairer their faces, 
 Brighter their fame ; 
 
 1 cannot alter, 
 I am the same. 
 
 Love is undying ; 
 
 Friendship is done. 
 Go and be happy, 
 
 I am alone. 
 
 43
 
 SCIENCE 
 
 ROLL back incalculable time, 
 Make wisest man an idiot ape ; 
 Reduce him to a formless shape 
 
 That groped and grovelled in the slime : 
 
 Let all the world's amazing frame 
 And countless worlds of worlds unite 
 To wander through the primal night, 
 
 One awful mist of glowing flame : 
 
 Yet all the slow-unfurling scroll, 
 
 The stars, the seas, the bird, the man, 
 Are steps of one ascending plan, 
 
 The raiment of eternal Soul. 
 
 44
 
 THE ETERNAL SHADOW OF THE 
 MIGHT- HA VE-BEEN 
 
 IN dreams I saw a garden. Clinging mists 
 Wept over it, and on the wailing winds 
 Was felt a voiceless sorrow of despair, 
 Such woe as deepens in a widow's eyes 
 Who weeps an only son. Along dark paths, 
 Half seen in trailing vapour, draggled plants, 
 Deformed, rent, flowerless, earthy. Overhead 
 A glory, wherein gleamed ethereal flowers, 
 Like the rich blooms of hot Guiana woods, 
 Or Alpine pastures, where the thawing snow 
 Has left a flame of flowers ; but more fair 
 These spirit blossoms than the best on earth. 
 " What place is this ? " I murmured. Then a voice 
 
 Came floating to me, like a dying man's, 
 45
 
 Whose words come faintly from far fields of death, 
 Beyond the waters of oblivion : 
 
 " Hell ; 
 
 And we in Hell, who, being what we are, 
 Must here behold what we too might have been. 
 I lived a life that men call good, had wealth 
 My fathers left me, horses, servants, houses ; 
 These goods Death made another's. For know 
 
 well, 
 
 As in the body, so in mind and soul, 
 Not by the number of the things we own, 
 Not by the number of the facts we know, 
 Or rules of conduct studied, but by use 
 We brace the muscles, rouse the hidden powers, 
 Attain our full perfection. 11 
 
 Then another : 
 
 " Yea, for I lived encloistered, far from all 
 46
 
 Temptation. Lo, this flaccid soul, unnerved, 
 Having no care for effort." 
 
 And a third : 
 
 " I gathered books about me, lived in books, 
 And now the books have left me knowing naught. 
 Learn then to do thy thinking for thyself. 1 ' 
 
 Then saw I mine own soul. In spring the ferns 
 
 Along the ditches thrust up tiny curls, 
 
 Green coils, the promise of great leafy fronds. 
 
 So showed my soul a group of tiny coils. 
 
 Then voices whispered to me, " Tend them well, 
 
 By Effort : Effort feeds the growth of soul. 
 
 Think hard thoughts, do hard actions, such as 
 
 wake 
 
 The whole glad manhood of the heart, to strive, 
 To battle down resistance, and to stand 
 A little higher up the mountain side 
 47
 
 Whose summit glistens in the sun of God. 
 Go where the fight is fiercest. Daily fight 
 Makes the best fighters. So at last with peace 
 Pass through this Valley of the Might-have-been 
 Unshamed." 
 
 48
 
 DESPAIR 
 
 DARK, blind dark, tangible and infinite, 
 
 Overwhelms my world of sunshine, beauty, life. 
 
 Life but vague films, a maddening brain's romance, 
 
 Earth^ beauty, life, and sunshine one machine 
 
 Of grim precision, wheel on wheel for ever 
 
 Spun on by never-ending misery. 
 
 Man, sprung from age-long agony in brutes, 
 
 Born into agony, ephemeral ; and then 
 
 Annihilation. Earth a lifeless death. 
 
 And I alone. I know not if these men 
 
 Be aught ; they chatter, slumber, weep and die 
 
 Alone in formless night : the hurrying wheel 
 
 Hurls me forth, like a lonely constellation 
 
 A million million miles from any star,
 
 Blind, lightless, lifeless, thro 1 eternal night. 
 And yet I only know that I am I 
 Cast sprawling amid things that are not I 
 Mere shapes that grow before the closing eyes. 
 
 Yet something lives beneath the mortal veil : 
 From woodlands sleeping to the summer glare, 
 From the great winds that wail o'er the grey fen, 
 The chant of timeless waves, that rise and ebb 
 In storm or calm upon the timeless shores ; 
 The fair, calm eyes of children, or the peace 
 Of reverend age, or sight of happy homes, 
 From human gladness and from human tears, 
 The mellow sadness or the fire of Music, 
 From the soft looks of pictured beauty steals 
 A whispered echo to my inmost soul, 
 Like a friend's voice along the joining wires, 
 
 And spirit talks to spirit and is glad. 
 So
 
 In life's brief span, as in a darkened room, 
 With here and there a guttering light, we sit : 
 Without the lonely night, Infinity. 
 O, but to pierce the enwrapping mists, and see 
 A star above to guide us ! 
 
 I have stood 
 
 On a grey headland, when the lashing seas 
 Were wrapped in rolling vapours, and the mist 
 Stood like a wall between me and the land. 
 And I, alone in the grey chillness, felt 
 The horror of that primal chaos-gloom 
 When the " earth was without form and void." 
 
 Then swift 
 
 A flying sunbeam smote the fog aside, 
 And all was joyous light and loveliness. 
 " Let there be light, and there was light." So now, 
 Let there be light in this grey phantom world, 
 
 51 E 2
 
 Smite down the mortal mists, and let me see 
 What truth there be beyond. 
 
 What gentle presence steals unseen upon me, 
 More soft than summer breezes when they kiss 
 The moonlit bushes by a moonlit sea ? 
 An anodyne to fevered nerves, that soothes 
 My tangled brain, and floats my quieted sense 
 Upon the downy wings of waking dreams ? 
 
 DEATH : 
 On tortured limbs and aching brains 
 
 My mother-hands I lay : 
 My touch can still my children's pains 
 
 And soothe their tears away. 
 O ye that labour, faint, and weep, 
 Come unto me ; I give you sleep.
 
 IN A LONDON CEMETERY 
 
 1. 
 
 SIXTY years he laboured, 
 
 Weary, worn ; 
 Hark, the peaceful singing 
 
 Sunday morn. 
 
 2. 
 
 Pent in London's gloom and glare 
 
 Fifty summers past : 
 Boundless ocean, open sky, 
 
 God's own light at last. 
 
 53
 
 (ON NAMELESS TOMBS.) 
 
 Cradled in a crowded room, 
 Stabled, starved in filth and gloom, 
 Thrust into a nameless tomb, 
 What the object of our birth? 
 Croesus' splendour, Mammon's mirth- 
 Such is equity on earth. 
 
 4. 
 
 Within the secret cells of Life 
 He wrought by slow design. 
 At last the scaffolding is down ; 
 
 Behold the perfect shrine ! 
 
 54
 
 5. 
 
 Across our valley of Despair and Doubt, 
 Where chill the clinging vapours lie, 
 
 He travelled lightless, till at last shines out 
 The Sun of Certainty. 
 
 55
 
 FRAGMENTS
 
 FRAGMENTS OF A PLAY 
 
 A PROLOGUE. 
 
 I WALKED at even by a lonely sea. 
 
 Across the East a giant form of dark 
 
 Rose, spreading wings of cloud, to wrap the 
 
 sky. 
 
 Against his coming shrank the Lord of Light : 
 The whole sky blazed with battle, red as 
 
 blood ; 
 
 Then slowly faded into viewless depth. 
 The immemorial ocean sobbed, the wind 
 
 Wailed with the agony of dying worlds; 
 59
 
 And all my soul became a harp, whose strings 
 Were touched by spirits ; the strange wine of 
 
 knowledge 
 
 More full than mortal, flushed me, and I knew 
 Myself at one with the deep heart of things, 
 And felt the purpose of unfolding Time. 
 Then gushed within a well of wordless song. 
 
 60
 
 CHORUS : 
 
 PARODOS. 
 
 Out of a world of eternal fruition 
 
 Down to a world of probation we come; 
 
 Drawn by the might of a mortal's petition, 
 Leave we the joys of our heavenly home. 
 
 Pulsing for ever in onward creation 
 Out of the womb of the hazes of flame 
 
 Building the continents, seas, vegetation, 
 Animal, man ; then unbuilding the same : 
 
 Clothed in the beauty of Life never ending, 
 Changing for ever in secular strife, 
 
 Guiding the soul that is ever ascending 
 Up to the heavenly that is our life. 
 
 61
 
 STROPHE. 
 
 From the unfathomed abysses of Ocean, 
 From the great Deep and the darkness of 
 Death, 
 
 Where there is never a sound or a motion, 
 Up thro 1 the waters there rises a breath. 
 
 See on the surface a trouble, 
 Dimple of waves for a span, 
 
 Sunlit or shadowy bubble 
 
 Gone in an hour. That is Man. 
 
 62
 
 AXTISTROPHE. 
 
 Into the deep of the sunless abysses, 
 
 Fathomless caves that are under the earth, 
 
 See how the sunlight intrudes with its blisses, 
 Pierces the gloom with a needle of mirth. 
 
 Numberless atoms are leaping 
 Out of the dark for a span 
 
 Into the sunshine, then creeping 
 Back to the dark. That is Man.
 
 To the spirit eyes 
 
 Time is not, nor Space 
 All the centuries 
 
 Have their equal place. 
 
 Changes only seem : 
 Mortals only die 
 
 In the fevered dreams 
 Of the mortal eye. 
 
 Body's sense alone 
 
 Grasps a solid earth, 
 Solid rock and shore, 
 
 Solid death and birth. 
 
 64
 
 Spirit sense alone 
 
 Sees a spirit stair 
 Upwards to the Throne, 
 
 Always, everywhere. 
 
 Like a meteor's way 
 Stream the centuries, 
 
 Side by side to-day 
 Time's infinities. 
 
 To the spirit eyes 
 
 Stand they side by side ; 
 Nothing ever dies, 
 
 Nothing ever died.
 
 Portals are riven 
 
 So potent the spell : 
 Here is thy Heaven, 
 
 And here is thy Hell. 
 
 MY mortal world has flashed away 
 Like darkness shattered by the day. 
 Bewildered, dizzy, now I rage 
 From land to land, from age to age 
 And side by side I see them grow, 
 The form above, the soul below. 
 
 66
 
 OTHER FRAGMENTS 
 1. 
 
 O, bare the barren wastes of Thought, 
 Where naught is human, man is naught 
 The cause of Evil ? Yonder wood 
 May rest your doubts, for all is good. 
 Let be your problems ; here the Real 
 Is one, I doubt not, with the Ideal. 
 
 67 F 2
 
 2. 
 
 I THANK Thee, Lord, for Thy strong angel, 
 
 Pain, 
 
 Who frets and chisels this my shrine of Life, 
 Who tries the strength of stone by stone, 
 Removes the rotten and rejects the weak. 
 
 68
 
 3. 
 
 WITHIN the vast, impenetrable night 
 That never lightens to a living eye, 
 
 As in a garner, dreams the gathered grain, 
 Reaped from the furrows of mortality. 
 
 A land like summer nights, when folded flowers 
 Can scent the coming rain 
 
 And lift their fragrance to the moonless height 
 The expectant dark is living. Spirit powers 
 That move o'er still fields in the quiet hours 
 
 Illume the soul's deep waters with strange light. 
 
 69
 
 4. 
 
 O WINDS that whisper in yon living trees, 
 O sunbeams stirring these dark sods overhead, 
 When aching hearts awake each dreary morn 
 To tears and chill remembrance of the dead 
 In homes our childish voices gladdened, far 
 
 Amid Canadian corn, 
 In grimy cities of the Northern seas, 
 In lonely sheep-runs 'neath the Southern Star, 
 In every land that echoed England's war, 
 Go, whisper softly, " Peace ; they are at peace." 
 
 70
 
 5. 
 
 DANCING over the sunlit sand, 
 
 Rolls in the wave from the sea, 
 Singing the song of its stainless home 
 To the pebbles that dance in the creamy foam, 
 
 The song of Infinity : 
 Raising the spirit beyond the sphere 
 Of the petty discomforts that vex us here, 
 
 Shaking the fettered soul free. 
 
 Year after year the souls of men 
 
 Roll in from Eternity, 
 Vainly clutching at hopes that cheat, 
 All the refuse and dross that they meet. 
 Bearing with them the bitter gall 
 Of a wasted chance, of a hopeless fall, 
 
 Back they reel to the sea.
 
 6. 
 
 HEBREW POETS 
 
 IN the thunders of the torrent, 
 In the earthquake and the fire, 
 
 In the desert glare abhorrent, 
 
 We have heard Him speak in ire. 
 
 GREEK POETS: * 
 
 In the fairest human faces, 
 
 In the prime of manhood"^ flower, 
 In the youthful body's graces, 
 
 We have felt His softer power. 
 
 72
 
 BOTH : 
 Was His might and His majesty only a 
 
 dream ? 
 
 Was it only delusion, that god-like gleam ? 
 Is Nature so terrible, Man so fair, 
 A pitiless, will-less machine of despair ? 
 
 73
 
 TRANSLATIONS
 
 THE FAREWELL OF SOCRATES 
 
 To THOSE THAT VOTED FOE HIM. 
 
 REMEMBER, too, that much would bid us hope. 
 Death is a gain, whatever death may be 
 Whether the dead man turns to nothingness, 
 A senseless sleep or else, as fables say, 
 A pilgrimage, a change of home, is all 
 
 That waits him dead. And if a senseless 
 sleep, 
 
 Eternal sleep wherein no dreams may come, 
 What bliss is death ! What, to a dreamless sleep 
 Compared, are worth a thousand days and 
 
 nights 
 
 77
 
 Such as a man nay, e'en a monarch sees? 
 
 A' dreamless sleep, to all Eternity 
 
 Would seem no longer than a passing night. 
 
 And if this death be like a pilgrimage 
 Hence to some other place, and true the tale 
 That there await our coming all the dead 
 What greater boon can be than death, my 
 
 friends ? 
 
 Whereby a man may rid him of these shams, 
 Judges that know not justice, and attain 
 The unseen world and faultless judgment bar. 
 Minos and Rhadamanthus, Aeacus, 
 Triptolemus, and all the storied dead 
 Served justice in their generation. This 
 A punishment? Nay, but the best of boons. 
 Converse with Orpheus, Homer, Hesiod 
 
 Who would not buy it for his all ? If this 
 78
 
 Be death, 111 gladly die a thousand deaths. 
 There should my soul with Palamedes meet, 
 And Ajax son of Telamon, and all 
 Who died by unjust judgments in the past, 
 And joy to rival them in suffering told. 
 There should I question who was truly wise, 
 Who in his own conceit alone, as here. 
 Who would not give his all to question him 
 That led the banded hosts of Greece to 
 
 Troy, 
 
 Or wise Odysseus, or the myriad dead, 
 Both men and women ? ay, and freely, too. 
 Inquiry is no crime in Heav'n, methinks. 
 Death then but gains far happier life than 
 
 this, 
 If tales be true, and immortality. 
 
 Ye too, my judges, must be confident 
 79
 
 In face of death, and hold this truth for 
 
 sure : 
 
 The good man cannot come to any ill 
 In life or death, nor do the Gods desert 
 His paths. For this my fate is not, I see, 
 Due to blind chance; but it is best for me 
 To die, and rid me of this weary world. 
 Therefore, with those who brought me to my 
 
 death 
 
 I am not very angry, though they meant 
 Not good but ill 'tis that alone I blame. 
 
 One last request I make : if, when my sons 
 Are grown to manhood, ye shall find them 
 
 vain, 
 
 Lovers of aught in preference to the Good, 
 Rebuke them with that old persistent cry 
 
 Wherewith I goaded you these many years: 
 80
 
 " Your wisdom is but blindness ; seek the 
 
 true." 
 
 Thus shall ye do me justice and my sons. 
 Farewell! Time bids us part, and so we go, 
 I to my death, ye to your life ; but whose 
 The better fortune knoweth none but God. 
 PLATO, Apology, xxxii.-end 
 
 81
 
 THE SOUL 
 
 BLEST the fortune that awardeth 
 Toilsome life its latest breath, 
 
 When the mortal body fleeteth 
 Down the ways of mighty Death. 
 
 All that came from God surviveth 
 Life's reflection, past the goal 
 
 Death's dark barrier. But in lifetime, 
 Wakes the body, sleeps the soul. 
 
 Yet in dreams the soul awaketh, 
 Vision-taught begins to know 
 
 How a severance creepeth nearer, 
 Good from evil, weal from woe. 
 
 PINDAR, Fragment 131. 
 82
 
 THE MYSTERIES 
 
 THRICE happy he, who ere he die 
 That vision gains ; he knows 
 
 The heavenly source of life, 
 And what its close. 
 
 PINDAR, Fragment 137. 
 
 83 G 2
 
 PRATER AVE ATQUE VALE 
 
 O'ER many a sea I have hurried, 
 
 O'er many a land I have sped 
 To see thee ; but ah ! thou art buried, 
 
 My gifts are but gifts to the dead : 
 To speak with thee ah ! there replieth 
 
 No voice, and thy ashes are dumb ; 
 To see thee but fortune denieth : 
 
 I see not thyself, but thy tomb. 
 
 And hence I must journey to-morrow ; 
 
 Yet take what I bring thee to-day, 
 The primitive tokens of sorrow, 
 
 Traditional dues and display.
 
 Oh ! bitter, my brother, our meeting, 
 Too young, too unsullied to die ! 
 
 A torrent of tears is our greeting, 
 Our welcome eternal good-bye ! 
 
 CATULLUS, ci.
 
 57 QUICQbAM MUTIS 
 
 IF through the grave's dumb walls our sorrow 
 
 sends 
 
 Dim echoes down that cheer the dead below, 
 When yearning hearts on earth bewail lost 
 
 friends, 
 
 And would recall the loves of long ago 
 Weep on. Thy lost one, torn from joys 
 
 above 
 So young, forgets that sorrow in thy love. 
 
 86
 
 A DEAD SLAVE 
 
 BOY Alcimus, whom ere thy prime 
 
 Death snatched from me, thy lord, 
 And laid thee in thy little grave 
 
 Beneath Labican sward : 
 Take, lad, no weight of costly stone 
 
 That soon should pass away 
 Such gift as Sorrow vainly gives 
 
 Her dead, and sees decay 
 But what my toil has wrought for thee, 
 
 Turf dewy with my tears, 
 Deep bowered in vines and bending box. 
 
 That shall not yield to years. 
 87
 
 Receive my gift, dear lad, and lie 
 
 As I myself would lie, 
 When Fate has cut my latest thread 
 
 Of life, and bids me die. 
 
 MARTIAL, i. 88.
 
 EPILOGUE 
 
 As languid petals from a rose in June 
 
 Fall fragrant to the last, 
 
 Through breathless airs in a rich garden 
 close, 
 
 So he who left us passed. 
 
 89
 
 RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, LIMITED, 
 
 BKEAD STREET HILL, E.C., AND 
 
 BDNGAY, SUFFOLK.
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
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