J> 
 
 
 COLLECTED POEMS
 
 / 
 
 
 1)\.;-. 
 
 Ac*/^-t' 
 
 — ' /Yryyr' a r -TTxt^ .
 
 COLLECTED POEMS 
 
 1901-1918 
 
 BY 
 
 WALTER DE LA MARE 
 
 IN "n^O VOLUMES 
 VOL. I 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 
 1920
 
 Copyright, 1920 
 
 BY 
 
 Henry Holt and Company
 
 99 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 POEMS: 1906 
 
 Lyrical Poems — pace 
 
 Shadow 5 
 
 Unregarding 6 
 
 They Told Me 7 
 
 Sorcery 8 
 
 The Children of Stare 10 
 
 Age 12 
 
 The Glimpse 14 
 
 Remembr.\nce 16 
 
 Treachery 17 
 
 In Vain 18 
 
 The Miracle 19 
 
 Keep Innocency 21 
 
 The Phantom 23 
 
 Voices 25 
 
 Thule 26 
 
 The Birthnight: to F 27 
 
 The Death-Dream 28 
 
 "Where Is Thy Victory?" .... 29 
 
 Foreboding 31 
 
 Vain Finding 33 
 
 Napoleon 31 
 
 England 35 
 
 Truce 36 
 
 Evening 37 
 
 Night 39 
 
 The Universe 40
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 FAGl 
 
 Gloria Mundi 41 
 
 Idleness 43 
 
 G0LLA.TH 45 
 
 Characters from Shakespeare — 
 
 Falstaff 49 
 
 Macbeth 51 
 
 Banquo 52 
 
 Mercutio 53 
 
 Juliet's Nurse 54 
 
 Iago 56 
 
 Imogen 58 
 
 polonius 59 
 
 Ophelia 60 
 
 Hamlet 61 
 
 Sonnets — 
 
 The Happy Encounter 65 
 
 April 66 
 
 Sea-Magic 67 
 
 The Market-Place 68 
 
 Anatomy 69 
 
 Even in the Grave 70 
 
 Bright Life 71 
 
 Humanity 72 
 
 Virtue 73 
 
 Memories of Childhood — 
 
 Reverie 77 
 
 The Massacre 78 
 
 Echo 80 
 
 Fear 81 
 
 The Mermaids 83 
 
 vi
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PACE 
 
 Myself 8^1 
 
 Autumn 85 
 
 Winter 86 
 
 Envoi: To My Mother 91 
 
 THE LISTENERS: 1914 
 
 The Three Cherry Trees 95 
 
 Old Susan 96 
 
 Old Ben 97 
 
 Miss Loo 99 
 
 The Tailor 101 
 
 Martha 102 
 
 The Sleeper • • 104 
 
 The Keys of Morning 106 
 
 Rachel 103 
 
 Alone 109 
 
 The Bells HI 
 
 The Scarecrow 112 
 
 Nod 113 
 
 The Bindweed 114 
 
 Winter 115 
 
 There Blooms No Bud in May .... 116 
 
 Noon and Night Flower 117 
 
 Estranged 118 
 
 The Tired Cupid 119 
 
 Dreams 120 
 
 Faithless 121 
 
 The Shade 122 
 
 Be Angry Now No More 123 
 
 Exile 124 
 
 Where? 125 
 
 Music Unheard 126 
 
 All That's Past 128 
 
 When the Rose Is Faded 130 
 
 vji
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Sleep 131 
 
 The Stranger 132 
 
 Never More Sailor . 133 
 
 Arabia 135 
 
 The Montains 136 
 
 Queen Djenira 137 
 
 Never-to-Be 138 
 
 The Dark Chateau 140 
 
 The Dwelling-Place 142 
 
 The Listeners , . . . 144 
 
 Time Passes 146 
 
 Beware! 148 
 
 The Journey 149 
 
 Haunted 153 
 
 Silence 155 
 
 Winter Dusk 157 
 
 The Ghost 159 
 
 An Epitaph 160 
 
 "The Hawthorn Hath a Deathly Smell" 161 
 
 MOTLEY: 1919 
 
 The Little Salamander 165 
 
 The Linnet 166 
 
 The Sunken Garden 167 
 
 The Riddlers 168 
 
 Moonlight 170 
 
 The Blind Boy 171 
 
 The Quarry 172 
 
 Mrs. Grundy 173 
 
 The Tryst 175 
 
 Alone 177 
 
 The Empty House 178 
 
 Mistress Fell 180 
 
 The Ghost 182 
 
 viii
 
 CONTEiNTS 
 
 PACE 
 
 The Stranger 183 
 
 Betrayal 184 
 
 The Cage 185 
 
 The Revenant 186 
 
 Music 188 
 
 The Remonstrance 189 
 
 Nocturne 191 
 
 The Exile 192 
 
 The Unchanging 193 
 
 Invocation 191 
 
 Eyes 195 
 
 Life 196 
 
 The Disguise 197 
 
 Vain Questioning 199 
 
 Vigil 200 
 
 The Old Men 201 
 
 The Dreamer 202 
 
 Motley 203 
 
 The Marionettes 206 
 
 To E. T. : 1917 208 
 
 April Moon 209 
 
 The Fool's Song 210 
 
 Clear Eyes 211 
 
 Dust to Dust 212 
 
 The Three Strangers 213 
 
 Alexander 214 
 
 The Reawakening 216 
 
 The Vacant Day 217 
 
 The Flight 218 
 
 For All the Grief 219 
 
 The Scribe 220 
 
 Fare Well 222 
 
 is
 
 
 POEMS: 1906 
 TO HENRY NEWBOLT
 
 3Acjui ■yyu.Ji^-ciu^ /Tyy^^ /Ujt. ihu^ r^r»^ ha^j^ 
 
 LYRICAL POEMS
 
 t,^-/ ^ ' •, - ^.. — ^ r^<«-y^, 'hn^n.t alt-^ry^-r ^'t^zx.-,^ 
 
 - ■■a.--."
 
 
 SHADOW 
 
 iIjVEN the beauty of the rose cloth cast, 
 
 Wlien its bright, fervid noon is past, 
 
 A still and lengthening shadow in the dust, 
 
 Till darkness come 
 
 And take its strange dream home. 
 
 The transient bubbles of the water paint 
 'Neath their frail arch a shadow faint; 
 The golden nimbus of tlie windowed saint. 
 Till shine the stars, 
 Casts pale and trembling bars. 
 
 The loveliest thing earth halh, a shadow hath, 
 A dark and livelong hint of death, 
 Haunting it ever till its last faint breath. 
 
 Who, then, may tell 
 The beauty of heaven's shadowless asphodel?
 
 UNREGARDING 
 
 X UT by thy days like withered flowers 
 
 In twilight hidden away: 
 Memory shall upbuild thee bowers 
 
 Sweeter than they. 
 
 Hoard not from swiftness of thy stream 
 The shallowest cruse of tears: 
 
 Pools still as heaven shall lovelier dream 
 In future years. 
 
 Squander thy love as she that flings 
 
 Her soul away on night; 
 Lovely are love's far echoings, 
 
 Height unto height. 
 
 0, make no compact with the sun, 
 No compact with the moon! 
 
 Night falls full-cloaked, and light is gone 
 Sudden and soon.
 
 THEY TOLD ME 
 
 1 HEY told me Pan was dead, but I 
 Oft marvelled who it was that sang 
 
 Down the green valleys languidly 
 Where the grey elder-thickets hang. 
 
 Sometimes I thought it was a bird 
 My soul had charged with sorcery; 
 
 Sometimes it seemed my own heart heard 
 Inland the sorrow of the sea. 
 
 But even where the primrose sets 
 The seal of her pale loveliness, 
 
 I found amid the violets 
 
 Tears of an antique bitterness.
 
 SORCERY 
 
 What voice is that I hear 
 
 Crying across the pool? " 
 " It is the voice of Pan you hear, 
 Crying his sorceries shrill and clear, 
 
 In the twilight dim and cool." 
 
 " What song is it he sings, 
 
 Echoing from afar; 
 While the sweet swallow bends her wings, 
 Filling the air with twitterings, 
 
 Beneath the brightening star?" 
 
 The woodman answered me. 
 
 His faggot on his back: — 
 " Seek not the face of Pan to see; 
 Flee from his clear note summoning thee 
 
 To darkness deep and black! " 
 
 ** He dwells in thickest shade, 
 
 Piping his notes forlorn 
 Of sorrow never to be allayed; 
 Turn from his coverts sad 
 
 Of twilight unto morn! " 
 
 8
 
 SORCERY 
 
 The woodman passed away 
 
 Along the forest path; 
 His ax shone keen and grey 
 In the last beams of day: 
 
 And all was still as death: — 
 
 Only Pan singing sweet 
 
 Out of Earth's fragrant shade; 
 I dreamed his eyes to meet, 
 And found but shadow laid 
 
 Before my tired feet. 
 
 Comes no more dawn to me, 
 
 Nor bird of open skies. 
 Only his woods' deep gloom I see 
 
 Till, at the end of all, shall rise. 
 Afar and tranquilly, 
 Death's stretching sea.
 
 THE CHILDREN OF STARE 
 
 Winter is fallen early 
 On the house of Stare; 
 Birds in reverberating flocks 
 Haunt its ancestral box; 
 Bright are the plenteous berries 
 In clusters in the air. 
 
 Still is the fountain's music, 
 The dark pool icy still, 
 Whereupon a small and sanguine sun 
 Floats in a mirror on, 
 Into a West of crimson, 
 From a South of dafiFodil. 
 
 'Tis strange to see young children 
 In such a wintry house; 
 Like rabbits' on the frozen snow 
 Their tell-tale footprints go; 
 Their laughter rings like timbrels 
 'Neath evening ominous: 
 
 Their small and heightened faces 
 Like wine-red winter buds; 
 
 10
 
 THE CHILDREN OF STARE 
 
 Their frolic bodies gentle as 
 Flakes in the air that pass, 
 Frail as the twirling petal 
 From the briar of the woods. 
 
 Above them silence lours, 
 Still as an arctic sea; 
 Light fails; night falls; the wintry moon 
 Glitters; the crocus soon 
 Will ope grey and distracted 
 On earth's austerity: 
 
 Thick mystery, wild peril, 
 Law like an iron rod: — 
 Yet sport they on in Spring's attire. 
 Each with his tiny fire 
 Blown to a core of ardour 
 By the awful breath of God. 
 
 11
 
 AGE 
 
 1 HIS ugly old crone — 
 Every beauty she had 
 When a maid, when a maid. 
 Her beautiful eyes, 
 Too youthful, too wise, 
 Seemed ever to come 
 To so lightless a home, 
 Cold and dull as a stone. 
 And her cheeks — who would guess 
 Cheeks cadaverous as this 
 Once with colours were gay 
 As the flower on its spray? 
 Who would ever believe 
 Aught could bring one to grieve 
 So much as to make 
 Lips bent for love's sake 
 So thin and so grey? 
 Youth, come away! 
 As she asks in her lone, 
 This old, desolate crone. 
 She loves us no more; 
 She is too old to care 
 For the charms that of yore 
 Made her body so fair. 
 12
 
 AGE 
 
 Past repining, past care. 
 She lives but to bear 
 One or two fleeting years 
 Earth's indifi^erence: her tears 
 Have lost now their heat; 
 Her hands and her feet 
 Now shake but to be 
 Shed as leaves from a tree; 
 And her poor heart beats on 
 Like a sea — tlie storm gone. 
 
 13
 
 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 Art thou asleep? or have thy wings 
 Wearied of my unchanging skies? 
 Or, haply, is it fading dreams 
 Are in my eyes? 
 
 Not even an echo in my heart 
 Tells me the courts thy feet trod last, 
 Bare as a leafless wood it is, 
 The summer past. 
 
 My inmost mind is like a book 
 The reader dulls with lassitude, 
 Wherein the same old lovely words 
 Sound poor and rude. 
 
 Yet through this vapid surface, I 
 Seem to see old-time deeps; I see. 
 Past the dark painting of the hour, 
 Life's ecstasy. 
 
 Only a moment; as when day 
 Is set, and in the shade of night, 
 Through all the clouds that compassed her, 
 Stoops into sight 
 14
 
 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 Pale, changeless, everlasting Dian, 
 Gleams on the prone Endymion, 
 Troubles the dulness of his dreams: 
 And then is gone. 
 
 15
 
 REMEMBRANCE 
 
 1 HE sky was like a waterdrop 
 
 In shadow of a thorn, 
 Clear, tranquil, beautiful, 
 
 Dark, forlorn. 
 
 Lightning along its margin ran; 
 
 A rumour of the sea 
 Rose in profundity and sank 
 
 Into infinity. 
 
 Lofty and few the elms, the stars 
 In the vast boughs most bright; 
 
 I stood a dreamer in a dream 
 In the unstirring night. 
 
 Not wonder, worship, not even peace 
 Seemed in my heart to be: 
 
 Only the memory of one, 
 Of all most dead to me. 
 
 16
 
 TREACHERY 
 
 oHE had amid her ringlets bo.und 
 Green leaves to rival their dark hue; 
 How could such locks with beauty bound 
 Dry up their dew, 
 Wither tliem through and through? 
 
 She had within her dark eyes lit 
 Sweet fires to burn all doubt away; 
 Yet did those fires, in darkness lit, 
 Burn but a day, 
 Not even till twilight stay. 
 
 She had within a dusk of words 
 A vow in simple splendour set; 
 How, in the memory of such words, 
 Could she forget 
 That vow — the soul of it? 
 
 17
 
 IN VAIN 
 
 I KNOCKED upon thy door ajar, 
 While yet the woods with buds were grey; 
 Nought but a little child I heard 
 Warbling at break of day. 
 
 I knocked when June had lured her rose 
 To mask the sharpness of its thorn; 
 Knocked yet again, heard only yet 
 Thee singing of the morn. 
 
 The frail convolvulus had wreathed 
 Its cup, but the faint flush of eve 
 Lingered upon thy Western wall; 
 Thou hadst no word to give. 
 
 Once yet I came ; the winter stars 
 Above thy house wheeled wildly bright; 
 Footsore I stood before thy door — 
 Wide open into night. 
 
 18
 
 THE MIRACLE 
 
 W HO beckons the green ivy up 
 
 Its solitary tower of stone? 
 What spirit lures the bindweed's cup 
 
 Unfaltering on? 
 Calls even the starry lichen to climb 
 By agelong inches endless Time? 
 
 Who bids the hollyhock uplift 
 
 Her rod of fast-sealed buds on high; 
 Fling wide her petals — silent, swift, 
 
 Lovely to the sky? 
 Since as she kindled, so she will fade. 
 Flower above flower in squalor laid. 
 
 Ever the heavy billow rears 
 
 All its sea-length in green, hushed wall; 
 But totters as the shore it nears, 
 
 Foams to its fall; 
 Where was its mark? on what vain quest 
 Rose that great water from its rest? 
 
 So creeps ambition on; so climb 
 
 Man's vaunting thoughts. He, set on high. 
 Forgets his birth, small space, brief time. 
 That he shall die; 
 19
 
 LYRICAL POEMS 
 
 Dreams blindly in his dark, still air; 
 Consumes his strength; strips himself bare; 
 
 Rejects delight, ease, pleasure, hope, 
 
 Seeking in vain, but seeking yet, 
 Past earthly promise, earthly scope, 
 
 On one aim set: 
 As if, like Chaucer's child, he thought 
 All but "0 Alma! "nought. 
 
 20 
 
 i
 
 KEEP INNOCENCY 
 
 LjIKE an old battle, youth is wild 
 With bugle and spear, and counter cry, 
 Fanfare and drummery, yet a child 
 Dreaming of that sweet chivalry, 
 The piercing terror cannot see. 
 
 He, with a mild and serious eye 
 Along the azure of the years. 
 Sees the sweet pomp sweep hurtling by; 
 But he sees not death's blood and tears, 
 Sees not the plunging of the spears. 
 
 And all the strident horror of 
 
 Horse and rider, in red defeat. 
 
 Is only music fine enough 
 
 To lull him into slumber sweet 
 
 In fields where ewe and lambkin bleat. 
 
 0, if with such simplicity 
 Himself take arms and suffer war; 
 With beams his targe shall gilded be. 
 Though in the thickening gloom be far 
 The steadfast light of any star! 
 
 21
 
 LYRICAL POEMS 
 
 Though hoarse War's eagle on him perch, 
 Quickened with guilty lightnings — there 
 It shall in vain for terror search, 
 Where a child's eyes beneath bloody hair 
 Gaze purely through the dingy air. 
 
 And when the wheeling rout is spent. 
 Though in the heaps of slain he lie; ^ 
 Or lonely in his last content; 
 Quenchless shall burn in secrecy 
 The flame Death knows his victors by. 
 
 22
 
 THE PHANTOM 
 
 VV ILT thou never come again. 
 Beauteous one? 
 
 Yet the woods are green and dim, 
 Yet the birds' deluding cry 
 Echoes in the hollow sky, 
 Yet the falling waters brim 
 The clear pool which thou wast fain 
 To paint thy lovely cheek upon, 
 Beauteous one! 
 
 I may see the thorny rose 
 
 Stir and wake 
 The dark dewdrop on her gold; 
 But thy secret will she keep 
 Half-divulged — yet all untold. 
 Since a child's heart woke from sleep. 
 
 The faltering sunbeam fades and goes; 
 The night-bird whistles in tlie brake; 
 
 The willows quake; 
 Utter darkness walls; the wind 
 
 Sighs no more. 
 Yet it seems the silence yearns 
 But to catch thy fleeting foot; 
 Yet the wandering glowworm bums 
 
 23
 
 LYRICAL POEMS 
 
 Lest her lamp should light thee not — 
 Thee whom I shall never find; 
 Though thy shadow lean before, 
 Thou thyself return's! no more — 
 Never more. 
 
 All the world's woods, tree o'er tree, 
 
 Come to nought. 
 Birds, flowers, beasts, how transient they. 
 Angels of a flying day. 
 Love is quenched; dreams drown in sleep; 
 Ruin nods along the deep: 
 Only thou immortally 
 
 Hauntest on 
 This poor earth in Time's flux caught; 
 Hauntest on, pursued, unwon. 
 Phantom child of memory, 
 
 Beauteous one! 
 
 24
 
 VOICES 
 
 W HO is it calling by the darkened river 
 Vi'Tiere the moss lies smooth and deep, 
 And the dark trees lean unmoving arms, 
 
 Silent and vague in sleep, 
 And the bright-heeled constellations pass 
 
 In splendour through the gloom; 
 Who is it calling o'er the darkened river 
 In music, " Come! " ? 
 
 Who is it wandering in the summer meadows 
 Wliere the children stoop and play 
 
 In the green faint-scented flowers, spinning 
 The guileless hours away? 
 
 Wlio touches their bright hair? who puts 
 A wind-shell to each cheek. 
 
 Whispering betwixt its breathing silences, 
 "Seek! seek!"? 
 
 Who is it watching in the gathering twilight 
 
 Wlien the curfew bird hath flown 
 On eager wings, from song to silence, 
 
 To its darkened nest alone? 
 Who takes for brightening eyes the stars, 
 
 For locks the still moonbeam. 
 Sighs through the dews of evening peacefully 
 Falling, "Dream! "? 
 25
 
 I'HULE 
 
 If thou art sweet as they are sad 
 Who on the shores of Time's salt sea 
 
 Watch on the dim horizon fade 
 
 Ships bearing love to night and thee; 
 
 If past all beacons Hope hath lit 
 In the dark wanderings of the deep 
 
 They who unwilling traverse it 
 
 Dream not till dawn unseal their sleep; 
 
 Ah, cease not in thy winds to mock 
 Us, who yet wake, but cannot see 
 
 Thy distant shores; who at each shock 
 Of the waves' onset faint for thee! 
 
 26
 
 THE BIRTHNIGHT: TO F. 
 
 Dearest, it was a night 
 
 That in its darkness rocked Orion's stars; 
 A sighing wind ran faintly white 
 Along the willows, and the cedar boughs 
 Laid their wide hands in stealthy peace across 
 The starry silence of their antique moss: 
 No sound save rushing air 
 Cold, yet all sweet with Spring, 
 And in thy mother's arms, couched weeping there, 
 Thou, lovely thing. 
 
 91
 
 THE DEATH-DREAM 
 
 W) 
 
 HO, now, put dreams into thy slumbering 
 mind? 
 Who, with bright Fear's lean taper, crossed a hand 
 Athwart its beam, and stooping, truth maligned, 
 Spake so thy spirit speech should understand. 
 And with a dread " He's dead! " awaked a peal 
 Of frenzied bells along the vacant ways 
 Of thy poor earthly heart; waked thee to steal, 
 Like dawn distraught upon unhappy days. 
 To prove nought, nothing? Was it Time's large 
 
 voice 
 Out of the inscrutable future whispered so? 
 Or but the horror of a little noise 
 Earth wakes at dead of night? Or does Love know 
 When his sweet wings weary and droop, and even 
 In sleep cries audibly a shrill remorse? 
 Or, haply, was it I who out of dream 
 Stole but a little where shadows course, 
 Called back to thee across the eternal stream? 
 
 28
 
 "WHERE IS THY VICTORY?" 
 
 None, none can tell where I shall be 
 
 When the unclean earth covers me; 
 
 Only in surety if thou cry 
 
 Where my perplexed ashes lie. 
 
 Know, 'tis but death's necessity 
 
 That keeps my tongue from answering thee. 
 
 Even if no more my shadow may 
 
 Lean for a moment in thy day; 
 
 No more the whole earth lighten, as if, 
 
 Thou near, it had nought else to give: 
 
 Surely 'tis but Heaven's strategy 
 
 To prove death immortality. 
 
 Yet should I sleep — and no more dream, 
 Sad would the last awakening seem, 
 If my cold heart, with love once hot, 
 Had thee in sleep remembered not: 
 How could I wake to find that I 
 Had slept alone, yet easefully? 
 
 Or should in sleep glad visions come: 
 Sick, in an alien land, for home 
 Would be my eyes in their bright beam; 
 
 29
 
 LYRICAL POEMS 
 
 Awake, we know 'tis not a dream; 
 
 Asleep, some devil in the mind 
 
 Might truest thoughts with false enwind. 
 
 Life is a mockery if death 
 Have the least power men say it hath. 
 As to a hound that mewing waits, 
 Death opens, and shuts to, his gates; 
 Else even dry bones might rise and say, — 
 " 'Tis ye are dead and laid away." 
 
 Innocent children out of nought 
 Build up a universe of thought. 
 And out of silence fashion Heaven: 
 So, dear, is this poor dying even, 
 Seeing thou shalt be touched, heard, seen, 
 Better than when dust stood between. 
 
 30
 
 FOREBODING 
 
 1 HOU canst not see him standing by — 
 Time — with a poppied hand 
 Stealing thy youth's simplicity, 
 Even as falls unceasingly 
 His waning sand. 
 
 He will pluck thy childish roses, as 
 
 Summer from her bush 
 Strips all the loveliness that was; 
 Even to the silence evening has 
 
 Thy laughter hush. 
 
 Thy locks too faint for earthly gold, 
 
 The meekness of thine eyes, 
 He will darken and dim, and to his fold 
 Drive, 'gainst the night, thy stainless, old 
 Innocencies; 
 
 Thy simple words confuse and mar. 
 
 Thy tenderest thoughts delude, 
 Draw a long cloud athwart thy star, 
 Still with loud timbrels heaven's far 
 Faint interlude. 
 
 31
 
 LYRICAL POEMS 
 
 Thou canst not see; I see, dearest; 
 
 0, then, yet patient be. 
 Though love refuse thy heart all rest. 
 Though even love wax angry, lest 
 
 Love should lose thee? 
 
 32
 
 VAIN FINDING 
 
 lliVER before my face there went 
 
 Betwixt earth's buds and me 
 A beauty beyond earth's content, 
 
 A hope — half memory: 
 Till in the woods one evening — 
 
 Ah! eyes as dark as they, 
 Fastened on mine unwonledly, 
 
 Grey, and dear heart, how grey! 
 
 33
 
 NAPOLEON 
 
 (( 
 
 What is the world, soldiers? 
 It is I: 
 
 I, this incessant snow, 
 This northern sky; 
 Soldiers, this solitude 
 Through which we go 
 Is I." 
 
 34
 
 ENGLAND 
 
 JNo lovelier hills than thine have laid 
 
 My tired thoughts to rest: 
 No peace of lovelier valleys made 
 
 Like peace within my breast. 
 
 Thine are the woods whereto my soul, 
 
 Out of the noontide beam, 
 Flees for a refuge green and cool 
 
 And tranquil as a dream. 
 
 Thy breaking seas like trumpets peal; 
 
 Thy clouds — how oft have I 
 Watched their bright towers of silence steal 
 
 Into infinity! 
 
 My heart within me faints to roam 
 In thought even far from thee: 
 
 Thine be the grave whereto I come. 
 And thine my darkness be. 
 
 35
 
 TRUCE 
 
 r AR inland here Death's pinions mocked the roar 
 
 Of English seas; 
 We sleep to wake no more. 
 
 Hushed, and at ease; 
 Till sound a trump, shore on to echoing shore, 
 Rouse from a peace, unwonted then to war, 
 
 Us and our enemies. 
 
 36 

 
 EVENING 
 
 W HEN twilight darkens, and one by one, 
 The sweet birds to their nests have gone; 
 When to green banks the glow-worms bring 
 Pale lamps to brighten evening; 
 Then stirs in his thick sleep the owl 
 Through the dewy air to prowl. 
 
 Hawking the meadows swiftly he flits, 
 While the small mouse atrembling sits 
 With tiny eye of fear upcast 
 Until his brooding shape be past. 
 Hiding her where the moonbeams beat, 
 Casting black shadows in the wheat. 
 
 Now all is still: the field-man is 
 Lapped deep in slumbering silentness. 
 Not a leaf stirs, but clouds on high 
 Pass in dim flocks across the sky, 
 Pufl'ed by a breeze too light to move 
 Aught but these wakeful sheep above. 
 
 what an arch of light now spans 
 These fields by night no longer Man's! 
 
 37
 
 LYRICAL POEMS 
 
 Their ancient Master is abroad. 
 Walking beneath the moonlight cold: 
 His presence is the stillness, He 
 Fills earth with wonder and mystery. 
 
 38 
 
 J,
 
 NIGHT y 
 
 i\.LL from the light of the sweet moon 
 
 Tired men lie now abed; 
 Actionless, full of visions, soon 
 
 Vanishing, soon sped. 
 
 The starry night aflock with beams 
 Of crystal light scarce stirs: 
 
 Only its birds — the cocks, the streams, 
 Call 'neath heaven's wanderers. 
 
 All silent; all hearts still; 
 
 Love, cunning, fire fallen low: 
 When faint morn straying on the hill 
 
 Sighs, and his soft airs flow. 
 
 39
 
 THE UNIVERSE X 
 
 1 HEARD a little child beneath the stars 
 
 Talk as he ran along 
 To some sweet riddle in his mind that seemed 
 
 A-tiptoe into song. 
 
 In his dark eyes lay a wild universe, — 
 Wild forests, peaks, and crests; 
 
 Angels and fairies, giants, wolves and he 
 Were that world's only guests. 
 
 Elsewhere was home and mother, his warm bed: — 
 
 Now, only God alone 
 Could, armed with all His power and wisdom, make 
 
 Earths richer than his own. 
 
 Man! — thy dreams, thy passions, hopes, 
 desires ! — 
 
 He in his pity keep 
 A homely bed where love may lull a child's 
 
 Fond Universe asleep! 
 
 40
 
 GLORIA MUNDI 
 
 U PON a bank, easeless with knobs of gold, 
 Beneath a canopy of noonday smoke, 
 
 I saw a measureless Beast, morose and bold, 
 With eyes like one from filthy dreams awoke, 
 
 Wlio stares upon the daylight in despair 
 
 For very terror of th e nothing tliere. 
 
 This beast in one flat hand clutched vulture-wise 
 
 A glittering image of itself in jet. 
 And with the other groped about its eyes 
 
 To drive away the dreams that pestered it; 
 And never ceased its coils to toss and beat 
 The mire encumbering its feeble feet. 
 
 Sharp was its hunger, though continually 
 It seemed a cud of stones to ruminate. 
 
 And often like a dog let glittering lie 
 
 This meatless fare, its foolish gaze to sate; 
 
 Once more convulsively to stoop its jaw, 
 
 Or seize the morsel with an envious paw. 
 
 Indeed, it seemed a hidden enemy 
 
 Must lurk within the clouds above that bank. 
 It strained so wildly its pale, stubborn eye, 
 
 To pierce its own foul vapours dim and dank; 
 
 41
 
 LYRICAL POEMS 
 
 Till, wearied out, it raved in wrath and foam. 
 Daring that Nought Invisible to come. 
 
 Ay, and it seemed some strange delight to find 
 In this unmeaning din, till, suddenly, 
 
 As if it heard a rumour on the wind, 
 Or far away its freer children cry. 
 
 Lifting its face made-quiet, there it stayed, 
 
 Till died the echo its own rage had made. 
 
 That place alone was barren where it lay; 
 
 Flowers bloomed beyond, utterly sweet and fair; 
 And even its own dull heart might think to stay 
 
 In livelong thirst of a clear river there. 
 Flowing from unseen hills to unheard seas. 
 Through a still vale of yew and almond trees. 
 
 And then I spied in the lush green below 
 Its tortured belly. One, like silver, pale, 
 
 With fingers closed upon a rope of straw. 
 
 That bound the Beast, squat neck to hoary tail; 
 
 Lonely in all that verdure faint and deep, 
 
 He watched the monster as a shepherd sheep. 
 
 I marvelled at the power, strength, and rage 
 
 Of this poor creature in such slavery bound; 
 Tettered with worms of fear; forlorn with age; 
 Its blue wing-stumps stretched helpless on the 
 ground; 
 While twilight fnded into darkness deep, 
 And he who watched it piped its pangs asleep. 
 
 42
 
 IDLENESS 
 
 1 SAW old Idleness, fat, with great cheeks 
 PufiFed to the huge circumference of a sigh, 
 But past all tinge of apples long ago. 
 His boyish fingers twiddled up and down 
 The filthy remnant of a cup of physic 
 That ihicked in odour all the while he stayed. 
 His eyes were sad as fishes that swim up 
 And stare upon an element not tlieirs 
 Through a thin skin of shrewish water, then 
 Turn on a languid fin, and dip down, down, 
 Into unplumbed, vast, oozy deeps of dream. 
 His stomach was his master, and proclaimed it; 
 And never were such meagre puppets made 
 The slaves of such a tyrant, as his tlioughts 
 Of that obese epitome of ills. 
 Trussed up he sat, the mockery of himself; 
 And when upon the wan green of his eye 
 I marked the gathering lustre of a tear. 
 Thought I myself must weep, until I caught 
 A grey, smug smile of satisfaction smirch 
 His pallid features at his misery. 
 And laugh did I, to see the little snares 
 He had set for pests to vex him: his great feet 
 Prisoned in greater boots; so narrow a stool 
 
 43
 
 LYRICAL POEMS 
 
 ' To seat such elephantine parts as his; 
 Ay, and the book he read, a Hebrew Bible; 
 And, to incite a gross and backward wit, 
 An old, crabbed, wormed, Greek dictionary; and 
 A foxy Ovid bound in dappled calf. 
 
 44
 
 GOLIATH 
 
 oTILL as a mountain with dark pines and sun 
 He stood between the armies, and his shout 
 Rolled from the empyrean above the host: 
 " Bid any little flea ye have come forth. 
 And wince at death upon my finger-nail! " 
 He turned his large-boned face; and all his steel 
 Tossed into beams the lustre of the noon; 
 And all the shaggy horror of his locks 
 Rustled like locusts in a field of corn. 
 The meagre pupil of his shameless eye 
 Moved like a cormorant over a glassy sea. 
 He stretched his limbs, and laughed into the air, 
 To feel the groaning sinews of his breast, 
 And the long gush of his swollen arteries pause: 
 And, nodding, wheeled, towering in all his height. 
 Then, like a wind that hushes, gazed and saw 
 Down, down, far down upon the untroubled green 
 A shoplicrd-boy tliat swung a little sling. 
 Goliath shut his lids to drive that mote. 
 Which vexed the eastern azure of his eye. 
 Out of his vision; and stared down again. 
 Yet stood the youth there, ruddy in the flare 
 Of his vast shield, nor spake, nor quailed, gazed up, 
 As one might scan a mountain to be scaled. 
 
 45
 
 LYRICAL POEMS 
 
 Then, as it were, a voice unearthly still 
 
 Cried in the cavern of his bristling ear, 
 
 " His name is Death! "... And, like the flush 
 
 That dyes Sahara to its lifeless verge, 
 
 His brows' bright brass flamed into sudden crimson; 
 
 And his great spear leapt upward, lightning-like, 
 
 Shaking a dreadful thunder in the air; 
 
 Spun betwixt earth and sky, bright as a berg 
 
 That hoards the sunlight in a myriad spires. 
 
 Crashed: and struck echo through an army's heart. 
 
 Then paused Goliath, and stared down again. 
 
 And fleet-foot Fear from rolling orbs perceived 
 
 Steadfast, unharmed, a stooping shepherd-boy 
 
 Frowning upon the target of his face. 
 
 And wrath tossed suddenly up once more his hand; 
 
 And a deep groan grieved all his strength in him. 
 
 He breathed; and, lost in dazzling darkness, 
 
 prayed — 
 Besought his reins, his gloating gods, his youth: 
 And turned to smite what he no more could see. 
 Then sped the singing pebble-messenger. 
 The chosen of the Lord from Israel's brooks. 
 Fleet to its mark, and hollowed a light path 
 Down to the appalling Babel of his brain. 
 And like the smoke of dreaming Souff^riere 
 Dust rose in cloud, spread wide, slow silted down 
 Softly all softly on his armour's blaze. 
 
 46
 
 CHARACTERS FROM SHAKESPEARE
 
 FALSTAFF 
 
 TWAS in a tavern that with old age stooped 
 And leaned rheumatic rafters o'er hi> head — 
 A blowzed, prodigious man, which talked, and 
 
 stared, 
 And rolled, as if with purpose, a small eye 
 Like a sweet Cupid in a cask of wine, 
 I could not view his fatness for his soul. 
 Which peeped like harmless lightnings and was 
 
 gone; 
 As haps to voyagers of the summer air. 
 And when he laughed, Time trickled down those 
 
 beams. 
 As in a glass; and when in self-defence 
 He pufTed that paunch, and wagged that huge, 
 
 Greek head, 
 Nosed like a Punchinello, then it seemed 
 An hundred widows swept in his small voice, 
 Now tenor, and now bass of drummy war. 
 He smiled, compact of loam, this orchard man; 
 Mused like a midnight, webbed with moonbeam 
 
 snares 
 Of flitting Love; woke — and a King he stood, 
 Wliom all the world hath in sheer jest refused 
 For helpless laughter's sake. And then, forfend! 
 Bacchus and Jove reared vast Olympus there; 
 
 49
 
 CHARACTERS FROM SHAKESPEARE 
 
 And Pan leaned leering from Promethean eyes. 
 "Lord! " sighed his aspect, weeping o'er the jest, 
 " What simple mouse brought such a moimtain 
 forth? " 
 
 50
 
 MACBETH 
 
 IXOSE, like dim battlements, the hills and reared 
 
 Steep crags into the fading primrose sky; 
 
 But in the desolate valleys fell small rain. 
 
 Mingled with drifting cloud. I saw one come, 
 
 Like the fierce passion of that vacant place. 
 
 His face turned glittering to the evening sky; 
 
 His eyes, like grey despair, fixed satelessly 
 
 On the still, rainy turrets of the storm; 
 
 And all his armour in a haze of blue. 
 
 He held no sword, bare was his hand and clenched, 
 
 As if to hide the inextinguishable blood 
 
 Murder had painted there. And his wild mouth 
 
 Seemed spouting echoes of deluded thoughts. 
 
 Around his head, like vipers all distort. 
 
 His locks shook, heavy-laden, at each stride. 
 
 If fire may burn invisible to the eye; 
 
 O, if despair strive everlastingly; 
 
 Then haunted here the creature of despair, 
 
 Fanning and fanning flame to lick upon 
 
 A soul still childish in a blackened hell. 
 
 51
 
 BANQUO 
 
 W HAT dost thou here far from thy native place? 
 What piercing influences of heaven have stirred 
 Thy heart's last mansion all-corruptible to wake, 
 To move, and in the sweets of wine and fire 
 Sit tempting madness with unholy eyes? 
 Begone, thou shuddering, pale anomaly! 
 The dark presses without on yew and thorn; 
 Stoops now the owl upon her lonely quest; 
 The pomp runs high here, and our beauteous 
 
 women 
 Seek no cold witness — 0, let murder cry, 
 Too shrill for human ear, only to God. 
 Come not in power to wreak so wild a vengeance! 
 Thou knowest not now the limit of man's heart; 
 He is beyond thy knowledge. Gaze not then, 
 Horror enthroned lit with insanest light! 
 
 52
 
 MERCUTIO V 
 
 Along an avenue of almond-trees 
 
 Came three girls chaltering of their sweethearts 
 
 three. 
 And lo! Mercutio, with Cyronic ease, 
 Out of his philosophic eye cast all 
 A mere flowered twig of thought, whereat — 
 Three hearts fell still as when an air dies out 
 And Venus falters lonely o'er the sea. 
 But when within the further mist of bloom 
 His step and form were hid, the smooth child Ann 
 Said, " La, and what eyes he had! " and Lucy said, 
 "How sad a gentleman! " and Katherine, 
 " I wonder, now, wliat mischief he was at." 
 And these three also April hid away. 
 Leaving the Spring faint with Mercutio. 
 
 - ( \i^ h^ J<r^ : ' ^^^rx^ lUry^J^^ 4/^
 
 JULIET'S NURSE /^ 
 
 In old-world nursery vacant now of children, 
 With posied walls, familiar, fair, demure. 
 And facing southward o'er romantic streets. 
 Sits yet and gossips winter's dark away 
 One gloomy, vast, glossy, and wise, and sly: 
 And at her side a cherried country cousin. 
 Her tongue claps ever like a ram's sweet bell; 
 There's not a name but calls a tale to mind — 
 Some marrowy patty of farce or melodram; 
 There's not a soldier but hath babes in view; 
 There's not on earth what minds not of the midwife: 
 " 0, widowhood that left me still espoused! " 
 Beauty she sighs o'er, and she sighs o'er gold; 
 Gold will buy all things, even a sweet husband. 
 Else only Heaven is left and — farewell youth! 
 Yet, strangely, in that money-haunted head, 
 The sad, gemmed crucifix and incense blue 
 Is childhood once again. Her memory 
 Is like an ant-hill which a twig disturbs, 
 But twig stilled never. And to see her face, 
 Broad with sleek homely beams; her babied hands, 
 Ever like 'lighting doves, and her small eyes — 
 Blue wells a-twinkle, arch and lewd and pious — 
 To darken all sudden into Stygian gloom, 
 
 54
 
 JULIET'S NURSE 
 
 And paint disaster with uplifted whites, 
 
 Is life's epitome. She prates and prates — 
 
 A waterbrook of words o'er twelve small pebbles. 
 
 And when she dies — some grey, long, summer 
 
 evening, 
 When the bird shouts of childhood through the 
 
 dusk, 
 'Neath night's faint tapers — then her body shall 
 Lie stiff with silks of sixty thrifty years. 
 
 55
 
 lAGO 
 
 XI. DARK lean face, a narrow, slanting eye, 
 Whose deeps of blackness one pale taper's beam 
 Haunts with a fitting madness of desire; 
 A heart whose cinder at the breath of passion 
 Glows to a momentary core of heat 
 Almost beyond indifference to endure: 
 So parched lago frets his life away. 
 His scorn works ever in a brain whose wit 
 This world hath fools too many and gross to seek. 
 Ever to live incredibly alone. 
 Masked, shivering, deadly, with a simple Moor 
 Of idiot gravity, and one pale flower 
 Whose chill would quench in everlasting peace 
 His soul's unmeasured flame — paradox! 
 Might he but learn the trick! — to wear her heart 
 One fragile hour of heedless innocence, 
 And then, farewell, and the incessant grave. 
 "0 fool! villain! " — 'tis the shuttlecock 
 Wit never leaves at rest. It is his fate 
 To be a needle in a world of hay, 
 Where honour is the flattery of the fool; 
 Sin, a tame bauble; lies, a tiresome jest; 
 Virtue, a silly, whitewashed block of wood 
 For words to fell. Ah! but the secret lacking, 
 
 56
 
 UGO 
 
 The secret of the child, the bird, the night. 
 
 Faded, flouted, bespattered, in days so far 
 
 Hate cannot bitter them, nor wrath deny; 
 
 Else were this Desdemona. . . . X^Hiy! 
 
 Woman a harlot is, and life a nest 
 
 Fouled by long ages of forked fools. And God - 
 
 lago deals not with a tale so dull: 
 
 To have made the world! Fie on thee. Artisan! 
 
 57
 
 IMOGEN 
 
 Even she too dead! all languor on her brow, 
 
 All mute humanity's last simpleness, — 
 
 And yet the roses in her cheeks unf alien ! 
 
 Can death haunt silence with a silver sound? 
 
 Can death, that hushes all music to a close, 
 
 Pluck one sweet wire scarce-audible that trembles, 
 
 As if a little child, called Purity, 
 
 Sang heedlessly on of his dear Imogen? 
 
 Surely if some young flowers of Spring were put 
 
 Into the tender hollow of her heart, 
 
 'Twould faintly answer, trembling in their petals. 
 
 Poise but a wild bird's feather, it will stir 
 
 On lips that even in silence wear the badge 
 
 Only of truth. Let but a cricket wake, 
 
 And sing of home, and bid her lids unseal 
 
 The unspeakable hospitality of her eyes. 
 
 childless soul — call once her husband's name! 
 
 And even if indeed from these green hills 
 
 Of England, far, her spirit flits forlorn. 
 
 Back to its youthful mansion it will turn. 
 
 Back to the floods of sorrow these sweet locks 
 
 Yet heavy bear in drops; and Night shall see 
 
 Unwearying as her stars still Imogen, 
 
 Pausing 'twixt death and life on one hushed word. 
 
 58
 
 POLONIUS 
 
 There haunts in Time's bare house an active 
 
 ghost. 
 Enamoured of his name, Polonius. 
 He moves small fingers much, and all his speech 
 Is like a sampler of precisest words, 
 Set in the pattern of a simpleton. 
 His mirth floats eerily down chill corridors; 
 His sigh — it is a sound that loves a keyhole; 
 His tenderness a faint court-tarnished thing; 
 His wisdom prates as from a wicker cage; 
 His very belly is a pompous nought; 
 His eye a page that hath forgot his errand. 
 Yet in his brain — his spiritual brain — 
 Lies hid a child's demure, small, silver whistle 
 Which, to his horror, God blows, unawares, 
 And sets men staring. It is sad to think, 
 Might he but don indeed thin flesh and blood, 
 And pace important to Law's inmost room. 
 He would see, much marvelling, one immensely 
 
 wise. 
 Named Bacon, who, at sound of his youth's step. 
 Would turn and call him Cousin — for the likeness. 
 
 59
 
 OPHELIA 
 
 There runs a crisscross pattern of small leaves 
 
 Espalier, in a fading summer air, 
 ' And there Ophelia walks, an azure flower. 
 Whom wind, and snowflakes, and the sudden rain 
 Of love's wild skies have purified to heaven. 
 There is a beauty past all weeping now 
 In that sweet, crooked mouth, that vacant smile; 
 Only a lonely grey in those mad eyes, 
 Which never on earth shall learn their loneliness. 
 And when amid startled birds she sings lament, 
 Mocking in hope the long voice of the stream, 
 It seems her heart's lute hath a broken string. 
 Ivy she hath, that to old ruin clings; 
 And rosemary, that sees remembrance fade; 
 And pansies, deeper than the gloom of dreams; 
 But ah! if utterable, would this earth 
 Remain the base, unreal thing it is? 
 Better be out of sight of peering eyes; 
 Out — out of hearing of all-useless words, 
 Spoken of tedious tongues in heedless ears. 
 And lest, at last, the world should learn heart- 
 secrets ; 
 Lest that sweet wolf from some dim thicket steal; 
 Better the glassy horror of the stream. 
 
 60
 
 HAMLET 
 
 Umbrageous cedars murmuring symphonies 
 Stooped in lale twilight o'er dark Denmark's 
 
 Prince: 
 He sat, his eyes companioned with dream — 
 Lustrous large eyes that held the world in view 
 As some entranced child's a puppet show. 
 Darkness gave hirth to the all-trembling stars, 
 And a far roar of long-drawn cataracts, 
 Flooding immeasurable night with sound. 
 He sat so still, his very thoughts took wing, 
 And, lightest Ariels, the stillness haunted 
 With midge-like measures; but, at last, even they 
 Sank 'nealh the influences of his night. 
 The sweet dust shed faint perfume in the gloom; 
 Through all wild space the stars' bright arrows fell 
 On the lone Prince — the troubled son of man — 
 On Time's dark waters in unearthly trouble: 
 Then, as the roar increased, and one fair tower 
 Of cloud took sky and stars with majesty. 
 He rose, his face a parchment of old age, 
 Sorrow hath scribbled o'er, and o'er, and o'er. 
 
 61
 
 SONNETS
 
 THE HAPPY ENCOUNTER 
 
 1 SAW sweet Poetry turn troubled eyes 
 On shaggy Science nosing in the grass, 
 For by that way poor Poetry must pass 
 
 On her long pilgrimage to Paradise. 
 
 He snuffled, grunted, squealed; perplexed by flies, 
 Parched, weatherworn, and near of sight, alas, 
 From peering close where very little was 
 
 In dens secluded from the open skies. 
 
 But Poetry in bravery went do\\Ti, 
 
 And called his name, soft, clear, and fearlessly; 
 Stooped low, and stroked his muzzle overgrown; 
 Refreshed his drought with dew; wiped pure and 
 free 
 
 His eyes: and lo! laughed loud for joy to see 
 In those grey deeps the azure of her own. 
 
 65
 
 APRIL 
 
 vjOME, then, with showers; I love thy cloudy face 
 Gilded with splendour of the sunbeam thro' 
 The heedless glory of thy locks. I know 
 
 The arch, sweet languor of thy fleeting grace, 
 
 The windy lovebeams of thy dwelling-place, 
 Thy dim dells where in azure bluebells blow, 
 The brimming rivers where thy lightnings go 
 
 Harmless and full and swift from race to race. 
 
 Thou takest all young hearts captive with thine 
 eyes; 
 At rumour of thee the tongues of children ring 
 Louder than bees; the golden poplars rise 
 
 Like trumps of peace; and birds, on homeward 
 wing. 
 Fly mocking echoes shrill along the skies, 
 Above the waves' grave diapasoning. 
 
 66
 
 
 SEA-MAGIC 
 To R. I. 
 
 iVl Y heart faints in me for the distant sea. 
 
 The roar of London is the roar of ire 
 
 The lion utters in his old desire 
 For Libya out of dim captivity. 
 The long bright silver of Cheapside I see, 
 
 Her gilded weathercocks on roof and spire 
 
 Exulting eastward in the western fire; 
 All things recall one heart-sick memory: — 
 
 Ever the rustle of the advancing foam, 
 The surges' desolate thunder, and the cry 
 As of some lone babe in the whispering sky; 
 
 Ever I peer into the restless gloom 
 To where a ship clad dim and loftily 
 
 Looms steadfast in the wonder of her home. 
 
 
 67
 
 THE MARKET-PLACE 
 
 M 
 
 Y mind is like a clamorous market-place. 
 All day in wind, rain, sun, its babel wells; 
 Voice answering to voice in tumult swells. 
 Chaffering and laughing, pushing for a place, 
 My thoughts haste on, gay, strange, poor, simple, 
 base; 
 This one buys dust, and that a bauble sells: 
 But none to any scrutiny hints or tells 
 The haunting secrets hidden in each sad face. 
 
 'O 
 
 Dies down the clamour when the dark draws near; 
 Strange looms the earth in twilight of the West, 
 
 Lonely with one sweet star serene and clear, 
 Dwelling, when all this place is hushed to rest. 
 On vacant stall, gold, refuse, worst and best, 
 
 Abandoned utterly in haste and fear. 
 
 68
 
 ANATOMY 
 
 i5Y chance my fingers, resting on my face, 
 Stayed suddenly where in its orbit shone 
 The lamp of all things beautiful; then on, 
 
 Following more heedfully, did softly trace 
 
 Each arch and prominence and hollow place 
 
 That shall revealed be when all else is gone — 
 Warmth, colour, roundness — to oblivion, 
 
 And nothing left but darkness and disgrace. 
 
 Life like a moment passed seemed then to be; 
 
 A transient dream this raiment that it wore; 
 While spelled my hand out its mortality 
 
 Made certain all that had seemed doubt before: 
 Proved — how vaguely, yet how lucidly! — 
 
 How much death does; and yet can do no more. 
 
 69
 
 EVEN IN THE GRAVE 
 
 1 LAID my inventory at the hand 
 
 Of Death, who in his gloomy arbour sate; 
 And while he conned it, sweet and desolate 
 
 I heard Love singing in that quiet land. 
 
 He read the record even to the end — 
 The heedless, livelong injuries of Fate, 
 The burden of foe, the burden of love and hate; 
 
 The wounds of foe, the bitter wounds of friend: 
 
 All, all, he read, ay, even the indifference, 
 The vain talk, vainer silence, hope and dream. 
 
 He questioned me: "What seek'st thou then 
 instead? " 
 I bowed my face in the pale evening gleam. 
 
 Then gazed he on me with strange innocence: 
 
 " Even in the grave thou wilt have thyself," he said. 
 
 70
 
 BRIGHT LIFE 
 
 LiOME now," I said, " put of! these webs of 
 
 death, 
 Distract this leaden yearning of thine eyes 
 From lichened banks of peace, sad mysteries 
 Of dust fallen-in where passed the flitting breath: 
 Turn thy sick thoughts from him that slumbereth 
 In mouldered linen to the living skies, 
 The sun's bright-clouded principalities, 
 The salt deliciousness the sea-breeze hath! 
 
 Lay thy warm hand on earth's cold clods and think 
 What exquisite greenness sprouts from these to 
 grace 
 
 The moving fields of summer; on the brink 
 Of arched waves the sea-horizon trace. 
 
 Whence wheels night's galaxy; and in silence sink 
 The pride in rapture of life's dwelling-place! " 
 
 71
 
 HUMANITY 
 
 iLVER exulting in thyself, on fire 
 To flaunt the purple of the Universe, 
 To strut and strut, and thy great part rehearse; 
 
 Ever the slave of every proud desire; 
 
 Come now a little down where sports thy sire; 
 Choose thy small better from thy abounding 
 
 worse; 
 Prove thou thy lordship who hadst dust for nurse, 
 
 And for thy swaddling the primeval mire! " 
 
 Then stooped our Manhood nearer, deep and still. 
 As from earth's mountains an unvoyaged sea, 
 
 Hushed my faint voice in its great peace until 
 It seemed but a bird's cry in eternity; 
 
 And in its future loomed the undreamable, 
 And in its past slept simple men like me. 
 
 72
 
 VIRTUE 
 
 llER breast is cold; her hands how faint and 
 wan! 
 
 And the deep wonder of her starry eyes 
 
 Seemingly lost in cloudless Paradise, 
 And all earth's sorrow out of memory gone. 
 Yet sings her clear voice unrelenting on 
 
 Of loveliest impossibilities; 
 
 Though echo only answer her with sighs 
 Of effort wasted and delights foregone. 
 
 Spent, baffled, 'wildered, hated and despised, 
 Her straggling warriors hasten to defeat; 
 
 By wounds distracted, and by night surprised. 
 Fall where death's darkness and oblivion meet: 
 
 Yet, yet: breast how cold! hope how far! 
 
 Grant my son's ashes lie where these men's are! 
 
 73
 
 MEMORIES OF CHILDHOOD
 
 REVERIE 
 
 Bring not bright candles, for his eyes 
 In twilight have sweet company; 
 
 Bring not bright candles, else they fly — 
 His phantoms fly — 
 
 Gazing aggrieved on thee! 
 
 Bring not bright candles, startle not 
 The phantoms of a vacant room, 
 
 Flocking above a child that dreams — 
 Deep, deep in dreams, — 
 
 Hid, in the gathering gloom! 
 
 Bring not bright candles to those eyes 
 That between earth and stars descry, 
 
 Lovelier for the shadows there, 
 Children of air. 
 
 Palaces in the sky! 
 
 77
 
 THE MASSACRE X^ 
 
 1 HE shadow of a poplar tree 
 
 Lay in that lake of sun, 
 As I with my little sword went in — 
 
 Against a thousand, one. 
 
 Haughty and infinitely armed. 
 
 Insolent in their wrath, 
 Plumed high with purple plumes they held 
 
 The narrow meadow path. 
 
 The air was sultry; all was still; 
 
 The sun like flashing glass; 
 And snip-snap my light-whispering steel 
 
 In arcs of light did pass. 
 
 Lightly and dull fell each proud head, 
 
 Spiked keen without avail, 
 Till swam my uncontented blade 
 
 With ichor green and pale. 
 
 78
 
 THE MASSACRE 
 
 And silence fell: ihe rushing sun 
 Stood still in paths of heat. 
 
 Gazing in waves of horror on 
 The dead about my feet. 
 
 Never a whir of wing, no bee 
 Stirred o'er the shameful slain; 
 
 Nought but a thirsty wasp crept in, 
 Stooped, and came out again. 
 
 The very air trembled in fear; 
 
 Eclipsing shadow seemed 
 Rising in crimson waves of gloom — 
 
 On one who dreamed. 
 
 79
 
 ECHO 
 
 "Who called? " I said, and the words 
 Through the whispering glades, 
 
 Hither, thither, baffled the birds — 
 " Who called? Who called? " 
 
 The leafy boughs on high 
 
 Hissed in the sun; 
 The dark air carried my cry 
 
 Faintingly on: 
 
 Eyes in the green, in the shade, 
 
 In the motionless brake. 
 Voices that said what I said, 
 
 For mockery's sake: 
 
 "Who cares? " I bawled through my tears; 
 
 The wind fell low: 
 In the silence, " Who cares? who cares? '* 
 
 Wailed to and fro. 
 
 80
 
 FEAR 
 
 I KNOW where lurk 
 The eyes of Fear; 
 I, I alone, 
 
 Where shadowy-clear, 
 Watching for me, 
 Lurks Fear. 
 
 'Tis ever still 
 And dark, despite 
 All singing and 
 All candlelight, 
 'Tis ever cold, 
 And night. 
 
 He touches me; 
 
 Says quietly, 
 
 " Stir not, nor whisper, 
 
 I am nigh; 
 
 Walk noiseless on, 
 
 I am by!" 
 
 He drives me 
 As a dog a sheep; 
 Like a cold stone 
 81
 
 MEMORIES OF CHILDHOOD 
 
 I cannot weep. 
 He lifts me 
 Hot from sleep 
 
 In marble hands 
 To where on high 
 The jewelled horror 
 Of his eye 
 Dares me to struggle 
 Or cry. 
 
 No breast wherein 
 
 To chase away 
 
 That watchful shape! 
 
 Vain, vain to say 
 
 " Haunt not with night 
 
 The Day!'" 
 
 83
 
 THE MERMAIDS 
 
 i^AND, sand; hills of sand; 
 
 And the wind where nothing is 
 Green and sweet of the land; 
 
 No grass, no trees, 
 
 No bird, no butterfly, 
 But hills, hills of sand, 
 
 And a burning sky. 
 
 Sea, sea, mounds of the sea. 
 
 Hollow, and dark, and blue, 
 Flashing incessantly 
 
 The whole sea through; 
 
 No flower, no jutting root, 
 Only the floor of the sea, 
 
 With foam afloat. 
 
 Blow, blow, winding shells; 
 
 And the watery fish. 
 Deaf to the hidden bells. 
 
 In the water splash; 
 No streaming gold, no eyes, 
 
 Watching along the waves, 
 But far-blown shells, faint bells. 
 
 From the darkling caves. 
 83
 
 MYSELF 
 
 1 HERE is a garden, grey 
 
 With mists of autumntide; 
 Under the giant boughs, 
 
 Stretched green on every side. 
 
 Along the lonely paths, 
 
 A little child like me. 
 With face, with hands, like mine, 
 
 Plays ever silently; 
 
 On, on, quite silently, 
 
 When I am there alone. 
 Turns not his head; lifts not his eyes; 
 
 Heeds not as he plays on. 
 
 After the birds are flown 
 
 From singing in the trees, 
 When all is grey, all silent, 
 
 Voices, and winds, and bees; 
 
 And I am there alone: 
 
 Forlornly, silently, 
 Plays in the evening garden 
 
 Myself with me. 
 
 84
 
 AUTUMN 
 
 llIERE is a wind where the rose was; 
 Cold rain where sweet grass was; 
 
 And clouds like sheep 
 
 Stream o'er the steep 
 Grey skies where the lark was. 
 
 Nought gold where your hair was; 
 Nought warm where your hand was; 
 
 But phantom, forlorn, 
 
 Beneath the thorn. 
 Your ghost where your face was. 
 
 Sad winds where your voice was; 
 Tears, tears where my heart was; 
 
 And ever with me. 
 
 Child, ever with me. 
 Silence where hope was. 
 
 85
 
 WINTER 
 
 Green Mistletoe! 
 
 Oh, I remember now 
 
 A dell of snow, 
 
 Frost on the bough ; 
 
 None there but I: 
 
 Snow, snow, and a wintry sky. 
 
 None there but I, 
 
 And footprints one by one, 
 
 Zigzaggedly, 
 
 Where I had run; 
 
 Where shrill and powdery 
 
 A robin sat in the tree. 
 
 And he whistled sweet; 
 
 And I in the crusted snow 
 
 With snow-clubbed feet 
 
 Jigged to and fro, 
 
 Till, from the day. 
 
 The rose-light ebbed away. 
 
 And the robin flew 
 Into the air, the air, 
 The white mist through; 
 And small and rare 
 86
 
 WINTER 
 
 The night-frost fell 
 
 In the calm and misty dell. 
 
 And the du.-k gathered low, 
 And the silver moon and stars 
 On the frozen snow 
 Drew taper bars, 
 Kindled winking fires 
 In the hooded briers. 
 
 And the sprawling Bear 
 Growled deep in the sky; 
 And Orion's hair 
 Streamed sparkling by: 
 But the North sighed low, 
 "Snow, snow, more snow! " 
 
 87
 
 ENVOI
 
 TO MY MOTHER 
 
 IHINE is my all, how little when 'tis told 
 
 Beside tliy gold! 
 Thine the first peace, and mine the livelong strife; 
 Thine the clear dawn, and mine the night of life; 
 
 Thine the unstained belief, 
 
 Darkened in grief. 
 
 Scarce even a flower but thine its beauty and name, 
 
 Dimmed, yet the same; 
 Never in twilight comes the moon to me. 
 Stealing thro' those far woods, but tells of thee, 
 
 Falls, dear, on my wild heart, 
 
 And takes thy part. 
 
 Thou art the child, and I — how steeped in age! 
 
 A blotted page 
 From that clear, little book life's taken away: 
 How could I read it, dear, so dark the day? 
 
 Be it all memory 
 
 Twixt thee and me! 
 
 91
 
 II 
 
 Zmi t^:i^a M^zL^yyx. 'oyt^y^^ /u^^ 
 
 THE LISTENERS: 1914

 
 THE THREE CHERRY TREES 
 
 1 HERE were three cherry trees once, 
 Grew in a garden all shady; 
 And there for delight of so gladsome a sight, 
 Walked a most beautiful lady. 
 Dreamed a most beautiful lady. 
 
 Birds in those branches did sing. 
 Blackbird and throstle and linnet, 
 But she walking there was by far the most fair — 
 Lovelier than all else within it. 
 Blackbird and throstle and linnet. 
 
 But blossoms to berries do come. 
 All hanging on stalks light and slender, 
 And one long summer's day charmed that lady 
 away. 
 With vows sweet and merry and tender; 
 A lover witli voice low and tender. 
 
 Moss and lichen the green branches deck; 
 Weeds nod in its paths green and shady: 
 Yet a light footstep seems there to wander in 
 dreams, 
 The ghost of that beautiful lady. 
 That happy and beautiful lady. 
 
 95
 
 OLD SUSAN 
 
 When Susan's work was done, she would sit, 
 With one fat guttering candle lit, 
 And window opened wide to win 
 The sweet night air to enter in. 
 There, with a thumb to keep her place. 
 She would read, with stern and wrinkled face, 
 Her mild eyes gliding very slow 
 Across the letters to and fro. 
 While wagged the guttering candle flame 
 In the wind that through the window came. 
 And sometimes in the silence she 
 Would miunble a sentence audibly, 
 Or shake her head as if to say, 
 " You silly souls, to act this way! " 
 And never a sound from night I would hear, 
 Unless some far-off^ cock crowed clear; 
 Or her old shuffling thumb should turn 
 Another page; and rapt and stern, 
 Through her great glasses bent on me, 
 She would glance into reality; 
 And shake her round old silvery head. 
 With — "You! — I thought you was in bed! " — 
 Only to tilt her book again, 
 And rooted in Romance remain. 
 
 96
 
 OLD BEN 
 
 Sad is old Ben Tristlewaite, 
 
 Now his clay is clone, 
 And all his children 
 
 Far away are gone. 
 
 He sits beneath his jasmined porch, 
 
 His stick between his knees, 
 His eyes fixed vacant 
 
 On his moss-grown trees. 
 
 Grass springs in the green path. 
 His flowers are lean and dry. 
 
 His thatch hangs in wisps against 
 The evening sky. 
 
 He has no heart to care now, 
 
 Though the winds will blow 
 Whistling in his casement, 
 
 And the rain drip tlirough. 
 
 He thinks of his old Bettie, 
 
 How she'd shake her head and say, 
 
 *' You'll live to wish my sharp old tongue 
 Could scold — some day." 
 97
 
 THE LISTENERS: 1914 
 
 But as in pale high autumn skies 
 The swallows float and play, 
 
 His restless thoughts pass to and fro. 
 But nowhere stay. 
 
 Soft, on the morrow, they are gone; 
 
 His garden then will be 
 Denser and shadier and greener, 
 
 Greener the moss-grown tree. 
 
 53
 
 MISS LOO 
 
 . vV HEN ihin-strewn memory I look through, 
 I see most clearly poor Miss Loo, 
 Her tabby cat, her cage of birds. 
 Her nose, her hair, her muffled words, 
 And how she would open her green eyes. 
 As if in some immense surprise, 
 Wlienever as we sat at tea 
 She made some small remark to me. 
 
 'Tis always drowsy summer when 
 
 From out the past she comes again; 
 
 The westering sunshine in a pool 
 
 Floats in her parlour still and cool; 
 
 While the slim bird its lean wires shakes, 
 
 As into piercing song it breaks; 
 
 Till Peter's pale-green eyes ajar 
 
 Dream, wake; wake, dream, in one brief bar. 
 
 And I am sitting, dull and shy, 
 
 And she with gaze of vacancy. 
 
 And large hands folded on the tray. 
 Musing the afternoon away; 
 Her satin bosom heaving slow 
 "With sighs that softly ebb and flow. 
 
 99
 
 THE LISTENERS: 1914 
 
 And her plain face in such dismay, 
 It seems unkind to look her way: 
 Until all cheerful back will come 
 Her gentle gleaming spirit home: 
 And one would think that poor Miss Loo 
 Asked nothing else, if she had you. 
 
 100
 
 THE TAILOR 
 
 r EW footsteps stray when dusk droops o'er 
 
 The tailor's old stone-lintelled door. 
 
 There sits he stitching half asleep, 
 
 Beside his smoky tallow dip. 
 
 "Click, click," his needle hastes, and shrill 
 
 Cries back the cricket beneath the sill. 
 
 Sometimes he stays, and over his thread 
 
 Leans sidelong his old tousled head; 
 
 Or stoops to peer with half-shut eye 
 
 When some strange footfall echoes by; 
 
 Till clearer gleams his candle's spark 
 
 Into the dusty summer dark. 
 
 Then from his crosslegs he gets down. 
 
 To find how dark the evening is grown; 
 
 And hunched-up in his door he will hear 
 
 The cricket whistling crisp and clear; 
 
 And so beneath the starry grey 
 
 Will mutter half a seam away. 
 
 101
 
 MARTHA ^ 
 
 vJNCE . . . once upon a time . . .*' 
 Over and over again, 
 Martha would tell us her stories, 
 In the hazel glen. 
 
 Hers were those clear grey eyes 
 You watch, and the story seems 
 
 Told by their beautifulness 
 Tranquil as dreams. 
 
 She would sit with her two slim hands 
 Clasped round her bended knees; 
 
 While we on our elbows lolled, 
 And stared at ease. 
 
 Her voice and her narrow chin, 
 
 Her grave small lovely head, 
 Seemed half the meaning 
 
 Of the words she said. 
 
 " Once . . . once upon a time . . ." 
 Like a dream you dream in the night, 
 
 Fairies and gnomes stole out 
 In the leaf-green light. 
 102
 
 MARTHA 
 
 And her beauty far away 
 
 Would fade, as her voice ran on, 
 
 Till hazel and summer sun 
 And all were gone: 
 
 All fordone and forgot; 
 
 And like clouds in the height of the sky. 
 Our hearts stood still in the huih 
 
 Of an age gone by. 
 
 103
 
 THE SLEEPER 
 
 J\S Ann came in one summer's day, 
 
 She felt that she must creep. 
 So silent was the clear cool house, 
 
 It seemed a house of sleep. 
 And sure, when she pushed open the door, 
 
 Rapt in the stillness there. 
 Her mother sat, with stooping head, 
 
 Asleep upon a chair; 
 Fast — fast asleep ; her two hands laid 
 
 Loose-folded on her knee. 
 So that her small unconscious face 
 
 Looked half unreal to be: 
 So calmly lit with sleep's pale light 
 
 Each feature was; so fair 
 Her forehead — every trouble was 
 
 Smoothed out beneath her hair. 
 But though her mind in dream now moved, 
 
 Still seemed her gaze to rest — 
 From out beneath her fast-sealed lids, 
 
 Above her moving breast — 
 On Ann; as quite, quite still she stood; 
 
 Yet slumber lay so deep 
 Even her hands upon her lap 
 
 Seemed saturate with sleep. 
 
 104
 
 THE SLEEPER 
 
 Anfl as Ann peeped, a cloudlike dread 
 
 Stole over her, and then. 
 On steahhy, mouselike feet she trod, 
 
 And tiptoed out again. 
 
 105
 
 THE KEYS OF MORNING ^ ^ 
 
 While at her bedroom window once, 
 
 Learning her task for school, 
 Little Louisa lonely sat 
 
 In the morning clear and cool. 
 She slanted her small bead-brown eyes 
 
 Across the empty street, 
 And saw Death softly watching her 
 
 In the sunshine pale and sweet. 
 
 His was a long lean sallow face; 
 
 He sat with half-shut eyes, 
 Like an old sailor in a ship 
 
 Becalmed 'neath tropic skies. 
 Beside him in the dust he had set 
 
 His staff and shady hat; 
 These, peeping small, Louisa saw 
 
 Quite clearly where she sat — 
 
 The thinness of his coal-black locks, 
 
 His hands so long and lean 
 They scarcely seemed to grasp at all 
 
 The keys that hung between: 
 Both were of gold, but one was small, 
 
 And with this last did he 
 106
 
 THE KEYS OF MORNING 
 
 Wag in the air, as if to say, 
 " Come hither, child, to me! " 
 
 Louisa laid her lesson book 
 
 On the cold window-sill; 
 And in the sleepy sunshine house 
 
 Went softly down, until 
 She stood in the half-opened door. 
 
 And peeped. But strange to say, 
 Where Death just now had sunning sat 
 
 Only a shadow lay: 
 Just the tall chimney's round-topped cowl, 
 
 And the small sun behind. 
 Had with its shadow in the dust 
 
 Called sleepy Deatli to mind. 
 But most she thought how strange it was 
 
 Two keys that he should bear. 
 And that, when beckoning, he should wag 
 
 The littlest in the air. 
 
 107
 
 
 RACHEL 
 
 J\ACHEL sings sweet 
 
 Oh yes, at night, 
 Her pale face bent 
 
 In the candle-light, 
 Her slim hands touch 
 
 The answering keys, 
 And she sings of hope 
 
 And of memories: 
 Sings to the little 
 
 Boy that stands 
 Watching those slim. 
 
 Light, heedful hands. 
 He looks in her face; 
 
 Her dark eyes seem 
 Dark with a beautiful 
 
 Distant dream; 
 And still she plays, 
 
 Sings tenderly 
 To him of hope, 
 
 And of memory. 
 
 108
 
 ALONE V 
 
 A VERY old woman 
 Lives in yon house. 
 The squeak of tlie cricket. 
 The stir of the niousc, 
 Are all she knows 
 Of the earth and us. 
 
 Once she was young, 
 Would dance and play, 
 Like many another 
 Young popinjay; 
 And run to her mother 
 At dusk of day. 
 
 And colours bright 
 She delighted in; 
 The fiddle to hear, 
 And to lift her chin, 
 And sing as small 
 As a twittering wren. 
 
 But age apace 
 Comes at last to all; 
 109
 
 THE LISTENERS: 1914 
 
 And a lone house filled 
 With the cricket's call; 
 And the scampering mouse 
 In the hollow wall. 
 
 110
 
 THE BELLS 
 
 Shadow and light both strove to be 
 The eight bell-ringers' company, 
 As with his gliding rope in hand, 
 Counting his changes, each did stand; 
 \^Tiile rang and trembled every stone, 
 To music by the bell-mouths blown: 
 Till the bright clouds that towered on high 
 Seemed to re-echo cry with cry. 
 Still swang the clappers to and fro. 
 When, in the far-spread fields below, 
 I saw a ploughman with his team 
 Lift to the bells and fix on them 
 His distant eyes, as if he would 
 Drink in the utmost sound he could; 
 While near him sat his children three. 
 And in the green grass placidly 
 Played undistracted on, as if 
 What music earthly bells might give 
 Could only faintly stir their dream. 
 And stillness make more lovely seem. 
 Soon night hid horses, children, all 
 In sleep deep and ambrosial. 
 Yet, yet, it seemed, from star to star. 
 Welling now near, now faint and far, 
 Those echoing bells rang on in dream. 
 And stillness made even lovelier seem. 
 
 Ill
 
 THE SCARECROW 
 
 All winter through I bow my head 
 
 Beneath the driving rain;v 
 The North Wind powders me with snow 
 
 And blows me back again; 
 At midnight 'neath a maze of stars 
 
 I flame with glittering rime, 
 And stand, above the stubble, stiff 
 
 As mail at morning-prime. 
 But when that child, called Spring, and all 
 
 His host of children, come. 
 Scattering their buds and dew upon 
 
 These acres of my home. 
 Some rapture in my rags awakes; 
 
 I lift void eyes and scan 
 The skies for crows, those ravening foes, 
 
 Of my strange master, Man. 
 I watch him striding lank behind 
 
 His clashing team, and know 
 Soon will the wheat swish body high 
 
 Where once lay sterile snow; 
 Soon shall I gaze across a sea 
 
 Of sun-begotten grain. 
 Which my unflinching watch hath sealed 
 
 For harvest once again. 
 
 112
 
 NOD 
 
 Softly along the road of evening, 
 
 In a twili^'hl dim with rose, 
 Wrinkled with age, and drenched with dew. 
 
 Old Nod, the shepherd, goes. 
 
 His drowsy flock streams on before him, 
 Their fleeces charged with gold. 
 
 To where the sun's last beam leans low 
 On Nod the shepherd's fold. 
 
 The hedge is quick and green with brier. 
 From their sand the conies creep; 
 
 And all the birds that fly in heaven 
 Flock singing home to sleep. 
 
 His lambs outnumber a noon's roses, 
 
 Yet, when night's shadows fall, 
 His blind old sheep-dog. Slumber-soon, 
 
 Misses not one of all. 
 
 His are the quiet steeps of dreamland. 
 
 The waters of no-more-pain. 
 His ram's bell rings 'neath an arch of stars, 
 
 " Rest, rest, and rci-t again." 
 
 113
 
 THE BINDWEED 
 
 1 HE bindweed roots pierce down 
 
 Deeper than men do lie, 
 Laid in their dark-shut graves 
 
 Their slumbering kinsmen by. 
 
 Yet what frail thin-spun flowers 
 
 She casts into the air, 
 To breathe the sunshine, and 
 
 To leave her fragrance there. 
 
 But when the sweet moon comes. 
 
 Showering her silver down, 
 Half-wreathed in faint sleep. 
 
 They droop where they have blown. 
 
 So all the grass is set, 
 
 Beneath her trembling ray. 
 With buds that have been flowers, 
 
 Brimmed with reflected day. 
 
 114
 
 WINTER 
 
 Clouded wiui snow 
 
 The cold winds blow, 
 And shrill on leafless bough 
 The robin with its burning breast 
 
 Alone sings now. 
 
 The rayless sun, 
 
 Day's journey done. 
 Sheds its last ebbing light 
 On fields in leagues of beauty spread 
 
 Unearthly white. 
 
 Thick draws the dark, 
 
 And spark by spark, 
 The frost-fires kindle, and soon 
 Over that sea of frozen foam 
 
 Floats the white moon. 
 
 115
 
 THERE BLOOMS NO BUD IN MAY 
 
 IHERE blooms no bud in May 
 Can for its white compare 
 
 With snow at break of day, 
 On fields forlorn and bare. 
 
 For shadow it hath rose, 
 
 Azure, and amethyst; 
 And every air that blows 
 
 Dies out in beauteous mist. 
 
 It hangs the frozen bough 
 
 With flowers on which the night 
 
 Wheeling her darkness through 
 Scatters a starry light. 
 
 Fearful of its pale glare 
 In flocks the starlings rise; 
 
 Slide through the frosty air. 
 And perch with plaintive cries. 
 
 Only the inky rook, 
 
 Hunched cold in ruffled wings, 
 Its snowy nest forsook, 
 
 Caws of unnumbered Springs. 
 116
 
 NOON AND NIGHT FLOWER 
 
 IMOT any flower that blows 
 
 But shining watch doth keep; 
 Every swift changing chequered hour it knows 
 Now to break forth in beauty; now to sleep. 
 
 This for the roving bee 
 
 Keeps open house, and this 
 Stainless and clear is, that in darkness she 
 May lure the moth to where her nectar is. 
 
 Lovely beyond the rest 
 
 Are these of all delight: — 
 The tiny pimpernel that noon loves best. 
 The primrose palely burning through the night. 
 
 One 'nealh day's burning sky 
 
 With ruby decks her place, 
 The other when Eve's chariot glideth by 
 Lifts her dim torch to light tlial dreaming face. 
 
 117
 
 ESTRANGED 
 
 N one was with me there — 
 Happy I was — alone; 
 Yet from the sunshine suddenly 
 A joy was gone. 
 
 A bird in an empty house 
 Sad echoes makes to ring. 
 Flitting from room to room 
 On restless wing: 
 
 Till from its shades he flies, 
 And leaves forlorn and dim 
 The narrow solitudes 
 
 So strange to him. 
 
 So, when with fickle heart 
 I joyed in the passing day, 
 A presence my mood estranged 
 Went grieved away. 
 
 118
 
 THE TIRED CUPID 
 
 1 HE thin moonlight willi trickling ray, 
 Thridding the boughs of silver may, 
 Trembles in beauty, pale and cool. 
 On folded flower, and mantled pool. 
 All in a haze the rushes lean — 
 And he — he sits, with chin between 
 His two cold hands; his bare feet set 
 Deep in the grasses, green and wet. 
 About his head a hundred rings 
 Of gold loop down to meet his wings. 
 Whose feathers, arched their stillness through, 
 Gleam with slow-gathering drops of dew. 
 The mouse-bat peers; the stealthy vole 
 Creeps from the covert of its hole; 
 A shimmering moth its pinions furls. 
 Grey in tlie moonshine of his curls; 
 'Neath the faint stars the night-airs stray, 
 Scattering the fragrance of the may; 
 And with each stirring of the bough 
 Shadow beclouds his childlike brow. 
 
 119
 
 DREAMS 
 
 IjE gentle, hands of a child; 
 Be true: like a shadowy sea 
 In the starry darkness of night 
 Are your eyes to me. 
 
 But words are shallow, and soon 
 Dreams fade that the heart once knew; 
 And youth fades out in the mind, 
 In the dark eyes too. 
 
 What can a tired heart say, 
 
 Which the wise of the world have made dumb? 
 Save to the lonely dreams of a child, 
 " Return again, come ! " 
 
 120
 
 FAITHLESS 
 
 llIE words you said grow faint; 
 
 The lamps you lit burn dim; 
 Yet, still be near your faithless friend 
 
 To urge and counsel him. 
 
 Still with returning feet 
 
 To where life's shadows brood, 
 
 With steadfast eyes made clear in death 
 Haunt his vague solitude. 
 
 So he, beguiled with earth, 
 Yet with its vain things vexed, 
 
 Keep even to his own heart unknown 
 Your memory unperplexed. 
 
 121
 
 THE SHADE 
 
 JL/ARKER than night; and oh, much darker she, 
 Whose eyes in deep night darkness gaze on me. 
 No stars surround her ; yet the moon seems hid 
 Afar somewhere, beneath that narrow lid. 
 She darkens against the darkness; and her face 
 Only by adding thought to thought I trace, 
 Limned shadowily: dream, return once more 
 To gloomy Hades and the whispering shore! 
 
 122
 
 BE ANGRY NOW NO MORE 
 
 DE angry now no more! 
 
 If I have grieved thee — if 
 Thy kindness, mine before, 
 No hope may now restore: 
 
 Only forgive, forgive! 
 
 If still resentment burns 
 
 In thy cold breast, oh if 
 No more to pity turns, 
 No more, once tender, yearns 
 
 Thy love; oh yet forgive! . . , 
 
 Ask of the winter rain 
 
 June's witliered rose again; 
 
 Ask grace of the salt sea: 
 
 She will not answer thee. 
 
 God would ten times have shriven 
 
 A heart so riven; 
 
 In her cold care thou would'st be 
 
 Still unforgiven. 
 
 123
 
 EXILE 
 
 V 
 
 £1 AD the gods loved me I had lain 
 
 Where darnel is, and thorn, 
 And the wild night-bird's nightlong strain 
 
 Trembles in boughs forlorn. 
 
 Nay, but they loved me not; and I 
 
 Must needs a stranger be, 
 Whose every exiled day gone by 
 
 Aches with their memory. 
 
 124
 
 WHERE? 
 
 Wi 
 
 HERE is my love — 
 In silence and shadow she lies, 
 Under the April-grey, calm waste of the skies; 
 And a bird above. 
 In the darkness tender and clear. 
 Keeps saying over and over, Love lies here! 
 
 Not that she's dead; 
 Only her soul is flown 
 Out of its last pure earthly mansion; 
 And cries instead 
 In the darkness, tender and clear, 
 Like the voice of a bird in the leaves, Love — 
 Love lies here. 
 
 125
 
 MUSIC UNHEARD 
 
 ibWEET sounds, begone — 
 
 Whose music on my ear 
 Stirs foolish discontent 
 
 Or lingering here; 
 When, if I crossed 
 
 The crystal verge of death, 
 Him I should see. 
 
 Who these sounds murmureth. 
 
 Sweet sounds, begone — 
 
 Ask not my heart to break 
 Its bond of bravery for 
 
 Sweet quiet's sake; 
 Lure not my feet 
 
 To leave the path they must 
 Tread on, unfaltering, 
 
 Till I sleep in dust. 
 
 Sweet sounds, begone! 
 
 Though silence brings apace 
 Deadly disquiet 
 
 Of this homeless place; 
 
 126
 
 MUSIC UNHE/VRD 
 
 And all I love 
 
 In beauty cries to me, 
 " We but vain shadows 
 
 And reflections be." 
 
 127
 
 ALL THAT'S PAST 
 
 Very oM are the woods; 
 
 And the buds that break 
 Out of the brier's boughs, 
 
 When March winds wake, 
 So old with their beauty are — 
 
 Oh, no man knows 
 Through what wild centuries 
 
 Roves back the rose. 
 
 Very old are the brooks; 
 
 And the rills that rise 
 Where snow sleeps cold beneath 
 
 The azure skies 
 Sing such a history 
 
 Of come and gone. 
 Their every drop is as wise 
 
 As Solomon. 
 
 Very old are we men; 
 
 Our dreams are tales 
 Told in dim Eden 
 
 By Eve's nightingales; 
 
 128
 
 ALL THAT'S PAST 
 
 We wake and whisper awhile, 
 But, the day gone by. 
 
 Silence and sleep like fields 
 Of amaranth lie. 
 
 129
 
 WHEN THE ROSE IS FADED 
 
 When the rose is faded, 
 Memory may still dwell on 
 
 Her beauty shadowed, 
 
 And the sweet smell gone. 
 
 That vanishing loveliness. 
 That burdening breath 
 
 No bond of life hath then 
 Nor grief of death. 
 
 *Tis the immortal thought 
 
 Whose passion still 
 Makes of the changing 
 
 The unchangeable. 
 
 Oh, thus thy beauty. 
 
 Loveliest on earth to me, 
 
 Dark with no sorrow, shines 
 And burns, with Thee. 
 
 130
 
 SLEEP 
 
 iVlKN all, and birds, and creeping beasts, 
 When the dark of night is deep, 
 
 From the moving wonder of their lives 
 Commit themselves to sleep. 
 
 Witliout a thought, or fear, they shut 
 
 The narrow gates of sense; 
 Heedless and quiet, in slumber turn 
 
 Their strength to impotence. 
 
 The transient strangeness of the earth 
 
 Their spirits no more see: 
 Within a silent gloom withdrawn, 
 
 They slumber in secrecy. 
 
 Two worlds they have — a globe forgot 
 Wlieeling from dark to light; 
 
 And all the enchanted realm of dream 
 That burgeons out of night. 
 
 131
 
 THE STRANGER 
 
 HaLF-HIDDEN in a graveyard, 
 
 In the blackness of a yew, 
 Where never living creature stirs, 
 
 Nor sunbeam pierces through, 
 
 Is a tomb, green and crooked, — 
 
 Its faded legend gone, — 
 With but one rain-worn cherub's head 
 
 Of smouldering stone. 
 
 There, when the dusk is falling, 
 
 Silence broods so deep 
 It seems that every wind that breathes 
 
 Blows from the field of sleep. 
 
 Day breaks in heedless beauty. 
 
 Kindling each drop of dew, 
 But unforsaking shadow dwells 
 
 Beneath this lonely yew. 
 
 And, all else lost and faded. 
 
 Only this listening head 
 Keeps with a strange unanswering smile 
 
 Its secret with the dead. 
 132
 
 NEVER MORE SAILOR 
 
 i> E\'ER more, Sailor, 
 
 Shalt thou be 
 
 Tossed on the wind-ridden, 
 
 Restless sea. 
 
 Its tides may labour; 
 
 All the world 
 
 Shake 'neath that weight 
 
 Of waters hurled: 
 
 But its whole shock 
 
 Can only stir 
 
 Thy dust to a quiet 
 
 Even quieter. 
 
 Thou mock'st at land 
 
 Who now art come 
 
 To such a small 
 
 And shallow home; 
 
 Yet bore the sea 
 
 Full many a care 
 
 For bones that once 
 
 A sailor's were. 
 
 And though the grave's 
 
 Deep Boundlessness 
 
 Thy once sea-deafened 
 
 Ear distress, 
 
 133
 
 THE LISTENERS: 1914 
 
 No robin ever 
 On the deep 
 Hopped with his song 
 To haunt thy sleep. 
 
 134
 
 ARABIA 
 
 -tfae-UAX- 
 
 r AR are the shades of Arabia, 
 
 Where the Princes ride at noon, 
 'Mid the verdurous vales and thickets, 
 
 Under the ghost of the moon; 
 And so dark is that vaulted purple 
 
 Flowers in the forest rise 
 And toss into blossom 'gainst the phantom stars 
 
 Pale in the noonday skies. 
 
 Sweet is the music of Arabia 
 
 In my heart, when out of dreams 
 I still in the thin clear mirk of dawn 
 
 Descry her gliding streams; 
 Hear her strange lutes on the green banks 
 
 Ring loud with the grief and delight 
 Of the dim-silked dark-haired Musicians 
 
 In the brooding silence of night. 
 
 Tliey haunt me — her lutes and her forests; 
 
 No beauty on earth I see 
 But shadowed with that dreams recalls 
 
 Her loveliness to me: 
 Still eyes look coldly upon me. 
 
 Cold voices whisper and say — 
 "He is crazed with the spell of far Arabia, 
 
 They have stolen his wits away." 
 
 135
 
 THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 i^TILL, and blanched, and cold, and lone. 
 
 The icy hills far off from me 
 With frosty ulys overgrown 
 
 Stand in their sculptured secrecy. 
 
 No path of theirs the chamois fleet 
 Treads, with a nostril to the wind; 
 
 O'er their ice-marbled glaciers beat 
 No wings of eagles in my mind — 
 
 Yea, in my mind these mountains rise, 
 Their perils dyed with evening's rose; 
 
 And still my ghost sits at my eyes 
 
 And thirsts for their untroubled snows. 
 
 136
 
 QUEEN DJENIRA 
 
 W HEN Queen Djenira slumbers through 
 
 The sultry noon's repose, 
 From out her dreams, as soft she lies, 
 
 A faint thin music flows. 
 
 Her lovely hands lie narrow and pale 
 
 With gilded nails, her head 
 Couched in its banded nets of gold 
 
 Lies pillowed on her bed. 
 
 The little Nubian boys who fan 
 
 Her cheeks and tresses clear. 
 Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful voices 
 
 Seem afar to hear. 
 
 They slide their eyes, and nodding, say, 
 " Queen Djenira walks to-day 
 
 The courts of the lord Pthamasar 
 
 Where the sweet birds of Psuthys are." 
 
 And those of earth about her porch 
 
 Of shadow cool and grey 
 Their sidelong beaks in silence lean, 
 
 And silent flit away. 
 137
 
 NEVER-TO-BE 
 
 UOWN by the waters of the sea 
 ReigTis the King of Never-to-be. 
 His palace walls are black with night; 
 His torches star and moon's light, 
 And for his timepiece deep and grave 
 Beats on the green unhastening wave. 
 
 Windswept are his high corridors; 
 His pleasance the sea-mantled shores; 
 For sentinel a shadow stands 
 With hair in heaven, and cloudy hands; 
 And round his bed, king's guards to be, 
 Watch pines in iron solemnity. 
 
 His hound is mute; his steed at will 
 Roams pastures deep with asphodel; 
 His queen is to her slumber gone; 
 His courtiers mute lie, hewn in stone; 
 He hath forgot where he did hide 
 His sceptre in the mountain-side. 
 
 Grey-capped and muttering, mad is he- 
 The childless King of Never-to-be; 
 For all his people in the deep 
 
 138
 
 NEVER-TO-BE 
 
 Keep, everlasting, fast asleep; 
 And all his realm is foam and rain, 
 Whispering of what comes not again. 
 
 139
 
 THE DARK CHATEAU 
 
 In dreams a dark chateau 
 
 Stands ever open to me, 
 In far ravines dream-waters flow, 
 
 Descending soundlessly; 
 Above its peaks the eagle floats, 
 
 Lone in a sunless sky; 
 Mute are the golden woodland throats 
 
 Of the birds flitting by. 
 
 No voice is audible. The wind 
 
 Sleeps in its peace. 
 No flower of the light can find 
 
 Refuge beneath its trees; 
 Only the darkening ivy climbs 
 
 Mingled with wilding rose, 
 And cypress, morn and evening, time's 
 
 Black shadow throws. 
 
 All vacant, and unknown; 
 
 Only the dreamer steps 
 From stone to hollow stone. 
 
 Where the green moss sleeps. 
 Peers at the rivers in its deeps. 
 
 The eagle lone in the sky, 
 140
 
 THE DARK CHATEAU 
 
 While the dew of evening drips, 
 Coldly and silently. 
 
 Would that I could steal in! — 
 
 Into each secret room; 
 Would that my sleep-bright eyes could win 
 
 To the inner gloom; 
 Gaze from its high windows, 
 
 Far down its mouldering walls. 
 Where amber-clear still Lethe flows, 
 
 And foaming falls. 
 
 But ever as I gaze, 
 
 From slumber soft doth come 
 Some touch my stagnant sense to raise 
 
 To its old earthly home; 
 Fades then that sky serene; 
 
 And peak of ageless snow; 
 Fades to a paling dawn-lit green, 
 
 My dark chateau. 
 
 141
 
 THE DWELLING-PLACE 
 
 UEEP in a forest where the kestrel screamed, 
 
 Beside a lake of water, clear as glass, 
 The time-worn windows of a stone house gleamed 
 Named only " Alas." 
 
 Yet happy as the wild birds in the glades 
 
 Of that green forest, thridding the still air 
 With low continued heedless serenades. 
 Its heedless people were. 
 
 The throbbing chords of violin and lute, 
 
 The lustre of lean tapers in dark eyes. 
 Fair colours, beauteous flowers, faint-bloomed fruit 
 Made earth seem Paradise 
 
 To them that dwelt within this lonely house: 
 Like children of the gods in lasting peace. 
 They ate, sang, danced, as if each day's carouse 
 Need never pause, nor cease. 
 
 Some to the hunt would wend, with hound and horn, 
 
 And clash of silver, beauty, bravery, pride, 
 Heeding not one who on white horse upborne 
 With soundless hoofs did ride. 
 142
 
 THE DWELLING-PLACE 
 
 Dreamers there were who watched the hours away 
 
 Beside a fountain's foam. And in the sweet 
 Of phantom evening, 'neath the night-l-iird's lay. 
 Did loved with loved-one meet. 
 
 All, all were children, for, the long day done, 
 They barred the heavy door against lightfoot 
 fear; 
 And few words spake tliough one kno^vn face was 
 gone. 
 
 Yet still seemed hovering near. 
 
 They heaped the bright fire higher; poured dark 
 wine; 
 And in long revelry dazed the questioning eye; 
 Curtained three-fold the heart-dismaying shine 
 Of midnight streaming by. 
 
 They shut the dark out from the painted wall. 
 
 With candles dared the shadow at the door, 
 Sang down the faint reiterated call 
 
 Of those who came no more. 
 
 Yet clear above that portal plain was writ, 
 Confronting each at length alone to pass 
 Out of its beauty into night star-lit. 
 That word "Alas!" 
 
 143
 
 THE LISTENERS 
 
 (( 
 
 Is there anybody there?" said the Traveller, 
 
 Knocking on the moonlit door; 
 And his horse in the silence champed the grasses 
 
 Of the forest's ferny floor: 
 And a bird flew up out of the turret, 
 
 Above the Traveller's head: 
 And he smote upon the door again a second time; 
 
 " Is there anybody there? " he said. 
 But no one descended to the Traveller; 
 
 No head from the leaf-fringed sill 
 Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes, 
 
 Where he stood perplexed and still. 
 But only a host of phantom listeners 
 
 That dwelt in the lone house then 
 Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight 
 
 To that voice from the world of men: 
 Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark 
 stair. 
 
 That goes down to the empty hall, 
 Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken 
 
 By the lonely Traveller's call. 
 And he felt in his heart their strangeness, 
 
 Their stillness answering his cry, 
 
 144
 
 THE LISTENERS 
 
 While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf, 
 
 'Neath the starred and leafy sky; 
 For he suddenly smote on the door, even 
 
 Louder, and lifted his head: — 
 "Tell them I came, and no one answered, 
 
 That I kept my word," he said. 
 Never the least stir made the listeners, 
 
 Though every word he spake 
 Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still 
 house 
 
 From the one man left awake: 
 Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup. 
 
 And the sound of iron on stone. 
 And how the silence surged softly backward, 
 
 When tlie plunging hoofs were gone. 
 
 145
 
 TIME PASSES 
 
 1 HERE was nought in the Valley 
 
 But a Tower of Ivory, 
 Its base enwreathed with red 
 
 Flowers that at evening 
 
 Caught the sun's crimson 
 As to Ocean low he sped. 
 
 Lucent and lovely 
 
 It stood in the morning 
 Under a trackless hill; 
 
 With snows eternal 
 
 Muffling its summit, 
 And silence ineffable. 
 
 Sighing of solitude 
 Winds from the cold heights 
 Haunted its yellowing stone; 
 At noon its shadow 
 Stretched athwart cedars 
 Whence every bird was flown. 
 
 Its stair was broken, 
 
 Its starlit walls were 
 
 Fretted; its flowers shone 
 
 146
 
 TIME PASSES 
 
 Wide at the portal. 
 Full-blown and fading, 
 Their last faint fragrance gone. 
 
 And on high in its lantern 
 A shape of the living 
 Watched o'er a shoreless sea, 
 From a Tower rotting 
 With age and weakness, 
 Once lovely as ivory. 
 
 147
 
 BEWARE! 
 
 An ominous bird sang from its branch, 
 
 " Beware, Wanderer ! 
 Night 'mid her flowers of glamourie spilled 
 
 Draws swiftly near: 
 
 " Night with her darkened caravans, 
 Piled deep with silver and myrrh, 
 
 Draws from the portals of the East, 
 Wanderer near." 
 
 " Night who walks plumed through the fields 
 Of stars that strangely stir — 
 Smitten to fire by the sandals of him 
 Who walks with her." 
 
 148
 
 THE JOURNEY 
 
 llEART-SICK of his journey was the Wanderer; 
 
 Footsore and parched was he; 
 And a Witch who long had lurked by the wayside, 
 
 Looked out of sorcery. 
 
 " Lift up your eyes, you lonely Wanderer," 
 Slie peeped from her casement small; 
 
 " Here's shelter and quiet to give you rest, young 
 man. 
 And apples for thirst withal." 
 
 And he looked up out of his sad reverie, 
 
 And saw all the woods in green. 
 With birds that flitted feathered in the dappling. 
 
 The jewel -bright leaves between. 
 
 And he lifted up his face towards her lattice, 
 
 And there, alluring-wise. 
 Slanting through the silence of the long past. 
 
 Dwelt the still green Witch's eyes. 
 
 And vaguely from the hiding-place of memory 
 
 Voices seemed to cry; 
 " What is the darkness of one brief life-time 
 
 To the deaths thou hast made us die? 
 
 149
 
 THE LISTENERS: 1914 
 
 " Heed not the words of the Enchantress 
 
 Wlio would us still betray! " 
 And sad with the echo of their reproaches, 
 
 Doubting, he turned away. 
 
 " I may not shelter beneath your roof, lady, 
 Nor in this wood's green shadow seek repose, 
 
 Nor will your apples quench the thirst 
 A homesick wanderer knows." 
 
 "'Homesick' forsooth!" she softly mocked him: 
 
 And the beauty in her face 
 Made in the sunshine pale and trembling 
 
 A stillness in that place. 
 
 And he sighed, as if in fear, that young Wanderer, 
 
 Looking to left and to right, 
 Wliere the endless narrow road swept onward. 
 
 Till in distance lost to siarht. 
 
 '&* 
 
 And there fell upon his sense the brier. 
 
 Haunting the air with its breath, 
 And the faint shrill sweetness of the birds' throats, 
 
 Their tent of leaves beneath. 
 
 And there was the Witch, in no wise heeding; 
 
 Her arbour, and fruit-filled dish, 
 Her pitcher of well-water, and clear damask — 
 
 All that the weary wish. 
 
 150
 
 THE JOURNEY 
 
 And the last gold beam across the green world 
 
 Faltered and failed, as he 
 Remembered his solitude and the dark night's 
 
 Inhospitality. 
 
 And he looked upon the Witch with eyes of sorrow 
 
 In the darkening of the day; 
 And turned him aside into oblivion; 
 
 And the voices died away. . . . 
 
 And tlie Witch stepped down from her casement: 
 
 In the hush of night he heard 
 The calling and wailing in dewy thicket 
 
 Of bird to hidden bird. 
 
 And gloom stole all her burning crimson, 
 
 Remote and faint in space 
 As stars in gathering shadow of the evening 
 
 Seemed now her phantom face. 
 
 And one night's rest shall be a myriad. 
 
 Midst dreams that come and go; 
 Till heedless fate, unmoved by weakness, bring him 
 
 This same strange by-way through: 
 
 To the beauty of earth that fades in ashes, 
 
 The lips of welcome, and the eyes 
 More beauteous than the feeble shine of Hesper 
 
 Lone in the lightening skies: 
 
 151
 
 THE LISTENERS: 1914 
 
 Till once again the Witch's guile entreat him; 
 
 But, worn with wisdom, he 
 Steadfast and cold shall choose the dark night's 
 
 Inhospitality. 
 
 152
 
 HAUNTED 
 
 1 HE rabbit in his burrow keeps 
 No guarded watch, in peace he sleeps; 
 The wolf that howls in challenging night 
 Cowers to her lair at morning light; 
 The simplest bird entwines a nest 
 Where she may lean her lovely breast, 
 Couched in the silence of the bough. 
 But thou, man, what rest hast thou? 
 
 Thy emptiest solitude can bring 
 Only a subtler questioning 
 In thy divided heart. Thy bed 
 Recalls at dawn what midnight said. 
 Seek how thou wilt to feign content. 
 Thy flaming ardour's quickly spent; 
 Soon thy last company is gone, 
 And leaves thee — with thyself — alone. 
 
 Pomp and great friends may hem thee round, 
 A thousand busy tasks be found; 
 Earth's thronging beauties may beguile 
 Thy longing lovesick heart awhile; 
 And pride, like clouds of sunset, spread 
 A changing glory round thy head; 
 
 153
 
 THE LISTENERS: 1914 
 
 But fade will all; and thou must come, 
 Hating thy journey, homeless, home. 
 
 Rave how thou wilt; unmoved, remote, 
 That inward presence slumbers not. 
 Frets out each secret from thy breast, 
 Gives thee no rally, pause, nor rest. 
 Scans close thy very thoughts, lest they 
 Should sap his patient power away, 
 Answers thy wrath with peace, thy cry 
 With tenderest taciturnity. 
 
 154
 
 SILENCE 
 
 With 
 
 changeful sound life beats upon the ear; 
 Yet, striving for release. 
 The most seductive string's 
 Sweet jargonings, 
 The happiest throat's 
 Most easeful, lovely notes 
 Fall back into a veiling silentness. 
 
 'D 
 
 Even 'mid the rumour of a moving host, 
 Blackening the clear green earth, 
 Vainly 'gainst that thin wall 
 The trumpets call, 
 Or with loud hum 
 The smoke-bemuffled drum: 
 From that high quietness no reply comes forth. 
 
 When, all at peace, two friends at ease alone 
 Talk out their hearts, — yet still 
 Between the grace-notes of 
 The voice of love 
 From each to each 
 Trembles a rarer speech. 
 And with its presence every pause doth fill. 
 
 155
 
 THE LISTENERS: 1914 
 
 Unmoved it broods, this all-encompassing hush 
 Of one who stooping near, 
 No smallest stir will make 
 
 Our fear to wake; 
 
 But yet intent 
 Upon some mystery bent 
 Harkens the lightest word we say, or hear. 
 
 156
 
 WINTER DUSK 
 
 UARK frost was in the air without. 
 
 The dusk was still with cold and gloom. 
 
 When less than even a shadow came 
 And stood within the room. 
 
 But of the three around the fire, 
 
 None turned a questioning head to look, 
 Still read a clear voice, on and on, 
 Still stooped they o'er their book. 
 
 The children watched their mother's eyes 
 
 Moving on softly line to line; 
 It seemed to listen too — that shade, 
 Yet made no outward sign. 
 
 The fire-flames crooned a tiny song. 
 
 No cold wind moved the wintry tree; 
 The children both in Faerie dreamed 
 Beside their mother's knee. 
 
 And nearer yet that spirit drew 
 
 Above that heedless one, intent 
 Only on what the simple words 
 Of her small story meant. 
 157
 
 THE LISTENERS: 1914 
 
 No voiceless sorrow grieved her mind, 
 
 No memory her bosom stirred, 
 Nor dreamed she, as she read to two, 
 'Twas surely three who heard. 
 
 Yet when, the story done, she smiled 
 From face to face, serene and clear, 
 A love, half dread, sprang up, as she 
 Leaned close and drew them near. 
 
 158
 
 THE GHOST 
 
 1 EACE in thy hands. 
 Peace in thine eyes, 
 Peace on thy brow; 
 Flower of a moment in the eternal hour, 
 Peace with me now. 
 
 Not a wave breaks. 
 Not a bird calls. 
 My heart, like a sea, 
 Silent after a storm that hath died, 
 Sleeps within me. 
 
 All the night's dews. 
 All the world's leaves, 
 All winter's snow 
 Seem with their quiet to have stilled in life's dream 
 All sorrowing now. 
 
 159
 
 AN EPITAPH <^ 
 
 XxERE lies a most beautiful lady, 
 
 Light of step and heart was she; 
 
 I think she was the most beautiful lady 
 
 That ever was in the West Country. 
 
 But beauty vanishes; beauty passes; 
 
 However rare — rare it be; 
 
 And when I crumble, who will remember 
 
 This lady of the West Country? 
 
 160
 
 "THE HAWTHORN HATH A DEATHLY 
 SMELL " 
 
 1 HE flowers of the field 
 
 Have a sweet smell ; 
 Meadowsweet, tansy, th)Tne, 
 
 And faint-heart pimpernel; 
 But sweeter even than these, 
 
 The silver of the may 
 Wreathed is with incense for 
 
 The Judgment Day. 
 
 An apple, a child, dust, 
 
 When falls the evening rain, 
 Wild brier's spiced leaves, 
 
 Breathe memories again; 
 With further memory fraught, 
 
 The silver of the may 
 Wreallied is with incense for 
 
 The Judgment Day, 
 
 Eyes of all loveliness — 
 
 Shadow of strange delight. 
 Even as a flower fades 
 
 Must thou from sight; 
 But oh, o'er thy grave's mound, 
 
 Till come the Judgment Day, 
 Wreathed shall with incense be 
 
 Thy sharp-thorned may. 
 161
 
 MOTLEY : 1918
 
 frv IK. tLZJCbu AhyynjLa 
 
 O'^ Uf\^ /Wt>#t 'tr A^>ui4iy
 
 THE LITTLE SALAMANDER 
 
 TO MARGOT 
 
 When I go free, 
 
 I think 'twill be 
 
 A night of stars and snow, 
 
 And the wild fires of frost shall light 
 
 My footsteps as I go; 
 
 Nobody — nobody will be there 
 
 With groping touch, or sight. 
 
 To see me in my bush of hair 
 
 Dance burning tlirough the night. 
 
 165
 
 THE LINNET 
 
 U 
 
 PON tliis leafy bush 
 
 With thorns and roses in it, 
 Flutters a thing of light, 
 
 A twittering linnet. 
 And all the throbbing world 
 
 Of dew and sun and air 
 By this small parcel of life 
 
 Is made more fair; 
 As if each bramble-spray 
 And mounded gold-wreathed furze, 
 
 Harebell and little thyme. 
 
 Were only hers; 
 As if this beauty and grace 
 
 Did to one bird belong, 
 And, at a flutter of wing. 
 
 Might vanish in song. 
 
 166
 
 THE SUNKEN GARDEN 
 
 OPEAK not — whisper not; 
 Here blowelh thyme and bergamot; 
 Softly on the evening hour, 
 Secret herbs their spices shower. 
 Dark-spiked rosemary and myrrh, 
 Lean-stalked, purple lavender; 
 Hides within her bosom, too. 
 All her sorrows, bitter rue. 
 
 Breathe not — trespass not; 
 Of this green and darkling spot, 
 Latticed from the moon's beams. 
 Perchance a distant dreamer dreams; 
 Perchance upon its darkening air. 
 The unseen ghosts of children fare. 
 Faintly swinging, sway and sweep. 
 Like lovely sea-flowers in its deep; 
 While, unmoved, to watch and ward. 
 Amid its gloomed and daisied sward. 
 Stands with bowed and dewy head 
 That one little leaden Lad. 
 
 167
 
 THE RIDDLERS 
 
 («i 
 
 Thou solitary! " the Blackbird cried, 
 " I, from the happy Wren, 
 Linnet and Blackcap, Woodlark, Thrush, 
 Perched all upon a sweetbrier bush, 
 Have come at cold of midnight-tide 
 To ask thee, Why and when 
 Grief smote thy heart so thou dost sing 
 In solemn hush of evening, 
 So sorrowfully, lovelorn Thing — 
 Nay, nay, not sing, but rave, but wail. 
 Most melancholic Nightingale? 
 Do not the dews of darkness steep 
 All pinings of the day in sleep? 
 Why, then, when rocked in starry nest 
 We mutely couch, secure, at rest, 
 Doth thy lone heart delight to make 
 Music for sorrow's sake? " 
 A Moon was there. So still her beam. 
 It seemed the whole world lay in dream, 
 Lulled by the watery sea. 
 And from her leafy night-hung nook 
 Upon this stranger soft did look 
 The Nightingale: sighed he: — 
 
 " 'Tis strange, my friend ; the Kingfisher 
 But yestermorn conjured me here 
 
 168
 
 THE RIDDLERS 
 
 Out of his green and gold to say 
 
 Why thou, in splendour of the noon, 
 
 Wearest of colour but golden shoon, 
 
 And else dost thee array 
 
 In a most sombre suit of black? 
 
 ' Surely,' he sighed, ' some load of grief, 
 
 Past all our thinking — and belief — 
 
 Must weigh upon his back! ' 
 
 Do, then, in turn, tell me. If joy 
 
 Thy heart as well as voice employ 
 
 Wliy do^t thou now most Sable, shine 
 
 In plumage woefuUer far than mine? 
 
 Thy silence is a sadder thing 
 
 Than any dirge I sing! " 
 
 Thus, then, these two small birds, perched there, 
 
 Breathed a strange riddle both did share 
 
 Yet neither could expound. 
 
 And we — who sing but as we can. 
 
 In the small knowledge of a man — 
 
 Have we an answer found? 
 
 Nay, some are happy whose delight 
 
 Is hid even from themselves from sight; 
 
 And some win peace who spend 
 
 The skill of words to sweeten despair 
 
 Of finding consolation where 
 
 Life has but one dark end; 
 
 Wlio, in rapt solitude, tell o'er 
 
 A tale as lovely as forlore. 
 
 Into the midnight air. 
 
 169
 
 MOONLIGHT 
 
 1 HE far moon maketh lovers wise 
 
 In her pale beauty trembling down, 
 Lending curved cheeks, dark lips, dark eyes, 
 
 A strangeness not her own. 
 And, though they shut their lids to kiss. 
 
 In starless darkness peace to win. 
 Even on that secret world from this 
 
 Her twilight enters in. 
 
 170
 
 THE BLIND BOY 
 
 1 HAVE no master," said the Blind Boy, 
 " My mother, ' Dame Venus ' they do call; 
 Cowled in this hood she sent me begging 
 For whate'er in pity may befall. 
 
 " Hard was her visage, me adjuring, — 
 'Have no fond mercy on the kind! 
 
 Here be sharp arrows, bunched in quiver. 
 Draw close ere striking — thou art blind.' 
 
 " So stand I here, my woes entreating, 
 In this dark alley, lest the Moon 
 
 Point with her sparkling my barbed armoury 
 Shine on my silver-laced shoon. 
 
 "Oh, sir, unkind this Dame to me-ward; 
 
 Of the salt billow was her birth. . . . 
 In your sweet charity draw nearer 
 
 The saddest rogue on Earth! " 
 
 171
 
 THE QUARRY 
 
 JL OU hunted me with all the pack, 
 
 Too blind, too blind, to see 
 By no wild hope of force or greed 
 Could you make sure of me. 
 
 And like a phantom through the glades, 
 
 With tender breast aglow. 
 The goddess in me laughed to hear 
 
 Your horns a-roving go. 
 
 She laughed to think no mortal ever 
 
 By dint of mortal flesh 
 The very Cause that was the Hunt 
 
 One moment could enmesh: 
 
 That though with captive limbs I lay. 
 Stilled breath and vanquished eyes, 
 
 He that hunts Love with horse and hoimd 
 Hunts out his heart and eyes. 
 
 172
 
 MRS. GRUNDY 
 
 oTEP very softly, sweet Quiet-foot, 
 Stumble not, whisper not, smile not: 
 By this dark ivy stoop cheek and brow. 
 Still even thy heart! \^Tiat seest thou? . . ." 
 
 " High-coifed, broad-browed, aged, suave yet grim, 
 A large flat face, eyes keenly dim, 
 Staring at nothing — that's me! — and yet, 
 With a hate one could never, no, never forget . . ." 
 
 " This is my world, my garden, my home, 
 Hither my father bade mother to come 
 And bear me out of the dark into light, 
 And happy I was in her tender sight. 
 
 " And then, thou frail flower, she died and went, 
 Forgetting my pitiless banishment, 
 And that Old Woman — an Aunt — she said, 
 Came hither, lodged, fattened, and made her bed. 
 
 " Oh yes, tliou most blessed, from Monday to 
 
 Sunday, 
 Has lived on me, preyed on me, Mrs. Grundy: 
 Called me, ' dear Nephew '; on each of those chairs 
 Has gloated in righteousness, heard my prayers. 
 
 173
 
 MOTLEY: 1918 
 
 " Why didst thou dare the thorns of the grove, 
 Timidest trespasser, huntress of love? 
 Now thou hast peeped, and now dost know 
 What kind of creature is thine for foe. 
 
 " Not that she'll tear out thy innocent eyes> 
 Poison thy mouth with deviltries. 
 Watch thou, wait thou: soon will begin 
 The guile of a voice: hark! . . ." " Come in, Come 
 in!" 
 
 174
 
 THE TRYST 
 
 Jl lee into some forgotten night and be 
 Of all dark long my moon-bright company: 
 Beyond the rumour even of Paradise come. 
 There, out of all remembrance, make our home: 
 Seek we some close hid shadow for our lair. 
 Hollowed by Noah's mouse beneath the chair 
 Wherein the Omnipotent, in slumber bound, 
 Nods till the piteous Trump of Judgment sound. 
 Perchance Leviathan of the deep sea 
 Would lease a lost mermaiden's grot to me, 
 There of your beauty we would joyance make — 
 A music wistful for the sea-nymph's sake: 
 Hai)ly Elijah, o'er his spokes of fire, 
 Cresting steep Leo, or the heavenly Lyre, 
 Spied, tranced in azure of inanest space, 
 Some eyrie hostel, meet for human grace, 
 Where two might happy be — just you and I^ 
 Lost in the uttermost of Eternity. 
 Think! In Time's smallest clock's minutest beat 
 Might there not rest be found for wandering feet? 
 Or, 'twixt the sleep and wake of Helen's dream, 
 Silence wherein to sing love's requiem? 
 
 175
 
 MOTLEY: 1918 
 
 No, no. Nor earth, nor air, nor fire, nor deep 
 Could lull poor mortal longingness asleep. 
 Somewhere there Nothing is; and there lost Man 
 Shall win what changeless vague of peace he can. 
 
 176
 
 ALONE 
 
 1 HE abode of the nightingale is bare. 
 Flowered frost congeals in the gelid air, 
 The fox howls from his frozen lair: 
 
 Alas, my loved one is gone, 
 
 I am alone: 
 
 It is winter. 
 
 Once the pink cast a winy smell. 
 
 The wild bee hung in the hyacintli bell. 
 
 Light in effulgence of beauty fell: 
 
 Alas, my loved one is gone, 
 
 I am alone: 
 
 It is winter. 
 
 My candle a silent fire doth shed. 
 
 Starry Orion hunts o'erhead; 
 
 Come moth, come shadow, tlie world is dead; 
 
 Alas, my loved one is gone, 
 
 I am alone: 
 
 It is winter. 
 
 177
 
 THE EMPTY HOUSE 
 
 oEE this house, how dark it is 
 
 Beneath its vast-boughed trees! 
 
 Not one trembling leaflet cries 
 
 To that Watcher in the skies — 
 
 *' Remove, remove thy searching gaze, 
 
 Innocent, of heaven's ways. 
 
 Brood not. Moon, so wildly bright, 
 
 On secrets hidden from sight." 
 
 " Secrets," sighs tlie night-wind, 
 " Vacancy is all I find ; 
 Every keyhole I have made 
 Wails a summons, faint and sad, 
 No voice ever answers me. 
 
 Only vacancy." 
 "Once, once ..." the cricket shrills. 
 And far and near the quiet fills 
 With its tiny voice, and then 
 
 Hush falls again. 
 
 Mute shadows creeping slow 
 Mark how the hours go. 
 Every stone is mouldering slow. 
 And the least winds that blow 
 
 173
 
 THE EMPTY HOUSE 
 
 Some minutest atom shake, 
 
 Some fretting ruin make 
 
 In roof and walls. How black it is 
 
 Beneath the&e thick-boutrhed trees! 
 
 179
 
 MISTRESS FELL 
 
 W HOM seek you here, sweet Mistress Fell? " 
 " One who loved me passing well. 
 Dark his eye, wild his face — 
 Stranger, if in this lonely place 
 Bide such an one, then, prythee, say 
 / am come here to-day." 
 
 "Many his like, Mistress Fell? " 
 " I did not look, so cannot tell. 
 Only this I surely know, 
 When his voice called me, I must go; 
 Touched me his fingers, and my heart 
 Leapt at the sweet pain's smart." 
 
 " Why did he leave you. Mistress Fell? " 
 " Magic laid its dreary spell. — 
 Stranger, he was fast asleep; 
 Into his dream I tried to creep; 
 Called his name, soft was my cry; 
 He answered — not one sigh. 
 
 " The flower and the thorn are here; 
 Falleth the night-dew, cold and clear; 
 
 180
 
 MISTRESS FELL 
 
 Out of her bower the bird replies, 
 Mocking the dark with ecstasies, 
 See how the earth's green grass doth grow, 
 Praising what sleeps below! 
 
 " Thus have they told me. And I come, 
 As flies the wounded wild-bird home. 
 Not tears I give; but all that he 
 Clasped in his arms, sweet charity; 
 All that he loved — to him I bring 
 For a close whispering." 
 
 181
 
 THE GHOST 
 
 "Who knocks? " " I, who was beautiful. 
 
 Beyond all dreams to restore, 
 I, from the roots of the dark thorn am hither. 
 
 And knock on the door." 
 
 " Who speaks? " "I — once was my speech 
 
 Sweet as the bird's on the air, 
 When echo lurks by the waters to heed; 
 
 'Tis I speak thee fair." 
 
 " Dark is the hour! " " Ay, and cold." 
 " Lone is my house." " Ah, but mine? '* 
 Sight, touch, lips, eyes yearned in vain." 
 Long dead these to thine . . ." 
 
 
 Silence. Still faint on the porch 
 Brake the flames of the stars. 
 
 In gloom groped a hope-wearied hand 
 Over keys, bolts, and bars. 
 
 A face peered. All the grey night 
 In chaos of vacancy shone; 
 
 Nought but vast sorrow was there — 
 The sweet cheat gone. 
 
 182
 
 THE STRANGER 
 
 In the woods as I did walk, 
 
 Dappled with the moon's beam, 
 
 I did with a Stranger talk, 
 And his name was Dream. 
 
 Spurred his heel, dark his cloak. 
 Shady-wide his bonnet's brim; 
 
 His horse beneath a silvery oak 
 Grazed as I talked with him. 
 
 Softly his breast-brooch burned and shone; 
 
 Hill and deep were in his eyes; 
 One of his hands held mine, and one 
 
 The fruit that makes men wise. 
 
 Wondrously strange was earth to see, 
 Flowers white as milk did gleam; 
 
 Spread to Heaven the Assyrian Tree, 
 Over my head with Dream. 
 
 Dews were still betwixt us twain; 
 
 Stars a trembling beauty shed; 
 Yet — not a whisper comes again 
 
 Of the words he said. 
 183
 
 BETRAYAL 
 
 OHE will not die, they say, 
 She will but put her beauty by 
 And hie away. 
 
 Oh, but her beauty gone, how lonely 
 Then will seem all reverie. 
 How black to me! 
 
 All things will sad be made 
 And every hope a memory, 
 All gladness dead. 
 
 Ghosts of the past will know 
 My weakest hour, and whisper to me, 
 And coldly go. 
 
 And hers in deep of sleep, 
 Clothed in its mortal beauty I shall see, 
 And, waking, weep. 
 
 Naught will my mind then find 
 In man's false Heaven my peace to be: 
 All blind, and blind. 
 
 184
 
 THE CAGE 
 
 Why did you flutter in vain hope, poor bird, 
 
 Hard-pressed in your small cage of clay? 
 
 'Twas but a sweet, false echo tliat you heard, 
 
 Caught only a feint of day. 
 
 Still is the night all dark, a homeless dark. 
 
 Burn yet the unanswering stars. And silence 
 brings 
 The same sea's desolate surge — sans bound or 
 mark — 
 
 Of all your wanderings. 
 
 Fret now no more; be still. Those steadfast eyes, 
 Those folded hands, they cannot set you free; 
 
 Only with beauty wake wild memories — 
 
 Sorrow for where you are, for where you would 
 be. 
 
 185
 
 THE REVENANT 
 
 \J ALL ye fair ladies with your colours and your 
 graces, 
 And your eyes clear in flame of candle and 
 hearth, 
 Toward the dark of this old window lift not up 
 your smiling, faces, 
 Where a Shade stands fo-rlorn from the cold of 
 the earth. \ 
 
 God knows I could not rest for one I still was 
 thinking of; 
 Like a rose sheathed in beauty her spirit was to 
 me; 
 Now out of unforgottenness a bitter draught I'm 
 drinking of, 
 'Tis sad of such beauty unremembered to be. 
 
 Men all all shades, Woman. — Winds wist not 
 of the way they blow. 
 Apart from your kindness, life's at best but a 
 snare. 
 Though a tongue now past praise this bitter thing 
 doth say, I know 
 What solitude means, and how, homeless, I fare. 
 
 186
 
 THE REVENANT 
 
 Strange, strange, are ye all — except in beauty 
 shared with her — 
 Since I seek one I loved, yet was faithless to in 
 death. 
 Not life enough I heaped, so thus my heart must 
 fare with her. 
 Now wrapt in the gross clay, bereft of life's 
 breath. 
 
 187
 
 MUSIC 
 
 W HEN music sounds, gone is the earth I know, 
 And all her lovely things even lovelier grow; 
 Her flowers in vision flame, her forest trees, 
 Lift burdened branches, stilled with ecstasies. 
 
 When music sounds, out of the water rise 
 Naiads whose beauty dims my waking eyes, 
 Rapt in strange dreams burns each enchanted face. 
 With solemn echoing stirs their dwelling-place. 
 
 When music sounds, all that I was I am 
 Ere to this haunt of brooding dust I came; 
 While from Time's woods break into distant song 
 The swift-winged hours, as I hasten along. 
 
 188
 
 THE REMONSTR.\NCE 
 
 1 WAS at peace until you came 
 And set a careless mind aflame. 
 I lived in quiet; cold, content; 
 All longing in safe banishment, 
 Until your ghostly lips and eye3 
 Made wisdom unwise. 
 
 Naught was in me to tempt your feet 
 To seek a lodging. Quite forgot 
 Lay the sweet solitude we two 
 In childhood used to wander through; 
 Time's cold had closed my heart about; 
 And shut you out. 
 
 Well, and what then? ... vision grave, 
 Take all the little all I have! 
 Strip me of what in voiceless thought 
 Life's kept of life, unhoped, unsought! — 
 Reverie and dream that memory must 
 Hide deep in dust! 
 
 This only I say: — Though cold and bare 
 The haunted house you have chosen to share, 
 Still 'neath its walls tlie moonbeam goes 
 
 189
 
 MOTLEY: 1918 
 
 And trembles on the untended rose; 
 Still o'er its broken roof-tree rise 
 The starry arches of the skies; 
 And in your lightest word shall be 
 The thunder of an ebbing sea. 
 
 190
 
 NOCTURNE 
 
 lis not my voice now speaks; but a bird 
 In darkling forest hollows a sweet throat — 
 Pleads on till distant echo too hath heard 
 
 And doubles every note: 
 So love that shrouded dwells in mystery 
 Would cry and waken thee. 
 
 Thou Solitary, stir in thy still sleep; 
 All the night waits thee, yet thou still dream'st on. 
 Furtive the shadows that about thee creep, 
 And cheat the shining footsteps of the moon: 
 Unseal thine eyes, it is my heart that sings, 
 And beats in vain its wings. 
 
 Lost in heaven's vague, the stars burn softly through 
 The world's dark lalticings, we prisoned stray 
 \^'ithin its lovely labyrinth, and know 
 
 Mute seraphs guard the way 
 Even from silence unto speech, from love 
 To that self's self it still is dreaming of. 
 
 191
 
 THE EXILE X 
 
 1 AM that Adam who, with Snake for guest, 
 
 Hid anguished eyes upon Eve's piteous breast. 
 
 I am that Adam who, with broken wings. 
 
 Fled from the Seraph's brazen trumpetings. 
 
 Betrayed and fugitive, I still must roam 
 
 A world where sin, and beauty, whisper of Home. 
 
 Oh, from wide circuit, shall at length I see 
 Pure daybreak lighten again on Eden's tree? 
 Loosed from remorse and hope and love's distress, 
 Enrobe me again in my lost nakedness? 
 No more with wordless grief a loved one grieve, 
 But to Heaven's nothingness re-welcome Eve? 
 
 192
 
 THE UNCHANGING 
 
 After the songless rose of evening, 
 
 Night quiet, dark, still. 
 In nodding cavalcade advancing 
 
 Starred the deep hill: 
 You, in the valley standing, 
 
 In your quiet wonder took 
 All that glamour, peace, and mystery 
 
 In one grave look. 
 Beauty hid your naked body. 
 
 Time dreamed in your bright hair, 
 In your eyes the constellations 
 
 Burned far and fair. 
 
 193
 
 INVOCATION 
 
 1 HE burning fire shakes in the night, 
 On high her silver candles gleam. 
 
 With far-flung arms enflamed with light, 
 The trees are lost in dream. 
 
 Come in thy beauty ! 'tis my love, 
 Lost in far-wandering desire. 
 
 Hath in the darkling deep above 
 Set stars and kindled fire. 
 
 194
 
 EYES 
 
 KJ STRANGE devices that alone divide 
 
 The setir from the seen — 
 
 The very highway of earth's pomp and pride 
 
 That lies between 
 
 The traveller and the cheating, sweet delight 
 
 Of where he longs to be, 
 
 But which, bound hand and foot, he, close on night. 
 
 Can only see. 
 
 195
 
 LIFE 
 
 llEARKEN, dear, now strikes the hour we die; 
 We, who in our strange kiss 
 Have proved a dream the world's realities, 
 Turned each from other's darkness with a sigh, 
 Need heed no more of life, waste no more breath 
 On any other journey, but of death. 
 
 And yet: Oh, know we well 
 
 How each of us must prove Love's infidel ; 
 
 Still out of ecstasy turn trembling back 
 
 To earth's same empty track 
 
 Of leaden day by day, and hour by hour, and be 
 
 Of all things lovely the cold mortuary. 
 
 196
 
 THE DISGUISE 
 
 Why in my heart, Grief, 
 Dost thou in beauty hide? 
 Dead is my well-content, 
 And buried deep my pride. 
 Cold are their stones, beloved, 
 To hand and side. 
 
 The shadows of even are gone. 
 Shut are the day's clear flowers, 
 Now have her birds left mute 
 Tlieir singing bowers. 
 Lone shall we be, we twain. 
 In the night hours. 
 
 Thou with thy cheek on mine. 
 And dark hair loosed, shalt see 
 Take the far stars for fruit 
 The cypress tree, 
 And in the yew's black 
 Shall the moon be. 
 
 We will tell no old tales. 
 Nor heed if in wandering air 
 197
 
 MOTLEY: 1918 
 
 Die a lost song of love 
 Or the once fair; 
 Still as well-water be 
 The thoughts we share! 
 
 And, while the ghosts keep 
 Tryst from chill sepulchres, 
 Dreamless our gaze shall sleep, 
 And sealed our ears; 
 Heart unto heart will speak, 
 Without tears. 
 
 0, thy veiled, lovely face — 
 Joy's strange disguise — 
 Shall be the last to fade 
 From these rapt eyes. 
 Ere the first dart of daybreak 
 Pierce the skies. 
 
 198
 
 VAIN QUESTIONING 
 
 W HAT neeclesl thou? — a few brief hours of re?t 
 Wherein to seek thyself in thine own breast; 
 A transient silence wherein truth could say 
 Such was thy constant hope, and this thy way? — 
 O burden of life that is 
 A livelong tangle of perplexities! 
 
 What seekest thou? — a truce from that thou art; 
 
 Some steadfast refuge from a fickle heart; 
 
 Still to be thou, and yet no thing of scorn, 
 
 To find no stay here, and yet not forlorn? — 
 riddle of life that is 
 An endless war 'twixt contrarieties. 
 
 Leave this vain questioning. Is not sweet the rose? 
 Sings not the wild bird ere to rest he goes? 
 Hath not in miracle brave June returned? 
 Burns not her beauty as of old it burned? 
 
 foolish one to roam 
 
 So far in thine own mind away from home! 
 
 WTiere blooms the flower when her petals fade, 
 Where sleepelh echo by earth's music made. 
 Where all things transient to the changeless win, 
 There waits the peace thy spirit dwelleth in. 
 
 199
 
 VIGIL 
 
 U ARK is the night, 
 
 The fire burns faint and low, 
 Hours — days — years, 
 
 Into grey as'hes go; 
 I strive to read. 
 
 But sombre is the glow. 
 
 Thumbed are the pages. 
 And the print is small; 
 
 Mocking the winds 
 
 That from the darkness call; 
 
 Feeble the fire that lends 
 Its light withal. 
 
 ^o' 
 
 O ghost, draw nearer; 
 
 Let thy shadowy hair, 
 Blot out the pages 
 
 That we cannot share; 
 Be ours the one last leaf 
 
 By Fate left bare! 
 
 Let's Finis scrawl. 
 
 And then Life's book put by; 
 Turn each to each 
 
 In all simplicity: 
 Ere the last flame is gone 
 
 To warm us by. 
 200
 
 THE OLD MEN 
 
 
 
 LD and alone, sit we. 
 Caged, riddle-rid men; 
 Lost to Earth's " Listen! " and " See! " 
 Thought's " Wherefore? " and " Wlien? 
 
 Only far memories stray 
 
 Of a past once lovely, but now 
 
 Wasted and faded away, 
 
 Like green leaves from the bough. 
 
 Vast broods the silence of night, 
 
 The ruinous moon 
 Lifts on our faces her light, 
 
 Whence all dreaming is gone. 
 
 We speak not; trembles each head; 
 
 In their sockets our eyes are still; 
 Desire as cold as the dead; 
 
 Without wonder or will. 
 And One, with a lanthorn, draws near, 
 
 At clash with the moon in our eyes: 
 " Where art tliou? " he asks: " I am here," 
 
 One by one we arise. 
 
 And none lifts a hand to withhold 
 A friend from the touch of that foe: 
 
 Heart cries unto heart, "Thou art old! " 
 Yet, reluctant, we go. 
 201
 
 THE DREAMER 
 
 \J THOU who giving helm and sword, 
 
 Gav'st, too, the rusting rain, 
 And starry dark's all tender dews 
 To blunt and stain: 
 
 Out of the battle I am sped, 
 
 Unharmed, yet stricken sore; 
 A living shape amid whispering shades 
 On Lethe's shore. 
 
 No trophy in my hands I bring, 
 
 To this sad, sighing stream. 
 The neighings and the trumps and cries 
 Were but a dream. 
 
 Traitor to life, of life betrayed: 
 
 0, of thy mercy deep, 
 A dream my all, the all I ask 
 Is sleep. 
 
 202
 
 MOTLEY 
 
 Come, Death, I'd have a word with thee; 
 
 And thou, poor Innocency; 
 
 And love — a Lad with broken wing; 
 
 And Pity, too: 
 
 The Fool shall sing to you, 
 
 As Fools will sing. 
 
 Ay, music hath small sense. 
 
 And a tune's soon told, 
 
 And Earth is old. 
 
 And my poor wits are dense; 
 
 Yet have I secrets, — dark, my dear. 
 
 To breathe you all: Come near. 
 
 And lest some hideous listener tells, 
 
 I'll ring my bells. 
 
 They are all at war! — 
 Yes, yes, their bodies go 
 'Neath burning sun and icy star 
 To chaunted songs of woe, 
 Dragging cold cannon through a mire 
 Of rain and blood and spouting fire, 
 The new moon glinting hard on eyes 
 Wide widi insanities! 
 
 203
 
 MOTLEY: 1918 
 
 Hush! ... I use words 
 
 I hardly know the meaning of; 
 
 And the mute birds 
 
 Are glancing at Love 
 
 From out their shade of leaf and flower, 
 
 Trembling at treacheries 
 
 Which even in noonday cower. 
 
 Heed, heed not what I said 
 
 Of frenzied hosts of men. 
 
 More fools than I, 
 
 On envy, hatred fed, 
 
 Who kill, and die — 
 
 Spake I not plainly, then? 
 
 Yet Pity whispered, "Why?" 
 
 Thou silly thing, off" to thy daisies go. 
 
 Mine was not news for child to know. 
 
 And Death — no ears hath. He hath supped where 
 
 creep 
 Eyeless worms in hush of sleep; 
 Yet, when he smiles, the hand he draws 
 Athwart his grinning jaws — 
 
 Faintly the thin bones rattle, and — There, there; 
 Hearken how my bells in the air 
 Drive away care! . . . 
 
 Nay, but a dream I had 
 Of a world all mad. 
 Not simply happy mad like me, 
 Who am mad like an empty scene 
 
 204
 
 MOTLEY 
 
 Of water and willow tree. 
 
 Where the wind halh been; 
 
 But that foul Satan-mad, 
 
 Who rots in his own head, 
 
 And counts the dead, 
 
 Not honest one — and two — 
 
 But for the ghosts they were, 
 
 Brave, faithful, true. 
 
 When, head in air. 
 
 In Earth's clear green and blue 
 
 Heaven they did share 
 
 With beauty who bade them tliere. 
 
 There, now ! Death goes — 
 
 Mayhap I've wearied him. 
 
 Ay, and the light doth dim. 
 
 And asleep's the rose, 
 
 And tired Innocence 
 
 In dreams is hence. . . . 
 
 Come, Love, my lad. 
 
 Nodding that drowsy head, 
 
 'Tis time ihy prayers were said! 
 
 205
 
 THE MARIONETTES 
 
 IjET the foul Scene proceed: 
 There's laughter in the wings; 
 
 'Tis sawdust that they bleed, 
 But a box Death brings. 
 
 How rare a skill is theirs 
 
 These extreme pangs to show, 
 
 How real a frenzy wears 
 Each feigner of woe! 
 
 Gigantic dins uprise! 
 
 Even the gods must feel 
 A smarting of the eyes 
 
 As these fumes upsweal. 
 
 Strange, such a Piece is free, 
 While we Spectators sit. 
 
 Aghast at its agony, 
 Yet absorbed in it! 
 
 Dark is the outer air. 
 
 Cold the night draughts blow 
 Mutely we stare, and stare 
 
 At the frenzied Show. 
 206
 
 THE MARIONETTES 
 
 Yet heaven hath its quiet shroud 
 Of deep, iimnutaljle blue — 
 
 We cry " An end ! " We are bowed 
 By the dread, "Tis true! " 
 
 While the Shape who hoofs applause 
 
 Behind our deafened ear, 
 Hoots — angel-wise — " the Cause! " 
 
 And affright even fear. 
 
 207
 
 TO E. T. : 1917 
 
 Y OU sleep too well — too far away, 
 For sorrowing word to soothe or wound; 
 
 Your very quiet seems to say 
 
 How longed-for a peace you have found. 
 
 Else, had not death so lured you on, 
 
 You would have grieved — 'twixt joy and fear 
 
 To know how my small loving son 
 Had wept for you, my dear. 
 
 208
 
 APRIL MOON 
 
 IXOSES are sweet to smell and see, 
 
 And lilies on the stem; 
 But rarer, stranger buds there be, 
 
 And she was like to them. 
 
 The little moon that April brings. 
 More lovely shade than li[^'ht, 
 
 That, setting, silvers lonely hills 
 Upon the rerge of night — 
 
 Close to the world of my poor heart 
 So stole she, still and clear; 
 
 Now that she's gone, dark, and dark. 
 The solitude, the fear. 
 
 209
 
 THE FOOL'S SONG 
 
 IN EVER, no never, listen too long, 
 To the chattering wind in the willow, the night 
 bird's song. 
 
 Tis sad in sooth to lie under the grass, 
 But none too gladsome to wake and grow cold 
 where life's shadows pass. 
 
 Dumb the old Toll-Woman squats, 
 And, for every green copper battered and worn, 
 doles out Nevers and Nots. 
 
 I know a Blind Man, too, 
 Who with a sharp ear listens and listens the whole 
 world through. 
 
 Oh, sit we snug to our feast, 
 With platter and finger and spoon — and good 
 victuals at least. 
 
 210
 
 CLEAR EYES 
 
 V-iLEAR eyes do dim at last, 
 And cheeks outlive their rose. 
 
 Time, heedless of the past, 
 No loving-kindness knows; 
 
 Chill unto mortal lip 
 Still Lethe flows. 
 
 Griefs, too, but brief while stay, 
 And sorrow, being o'er, 
 
 Its salt tears shed away, 
 
 Woundeth the heart no more. 
 
 Stealthily lave those waters 
 That solemn shore. 
 
 Ah, then, sweet face burn on, 
 While yet quick memory lives! 
 
 And Sorrow, ere thou art gone. 
 Know that my heart forgives — 
 
 Ere yet, grown cold in peace, 
 It loves not, nor grieves. 
 
 211
 
 DUST TO DUST 
 
 Heavenly Archer, bend thy bow; 
 Now the flame of life burns low, 
 Youth is gone; I, too, would go. 
 
 Even Fortune leads to this: 
 Harsh or kind, at last she is 
 Murderess of all ecstasies. 
 
 Yet the spirit, dark, alone, 
 Bound in sense, still hearkens on 
 For tidings of a bliss foregone. 
 
 Sleep is well for dreamless head. 
 At no breath astonished, 
 From the Gardens of the Dead. 
 
 I the immortal harps hear ring. 
 By Babylon's river languishing. 
 Heavenly Archer, loose thy string. 
 
 212
 
 THE THREE STRANGERS 
 
 r AR are those tranquil hills, 
 
 Dyed witli fair evening's rose; 
 On urgent, secret errand bent, 
 A traveller goes. 
 
 Approach him strangers three, 
 
 Barefooted, cowled; their eyes 
 Scan t!ie lone, hastening solitary 
 With dumb surmise. 
 
 One instant in close speech 
 
 With them he doth confer: 
 God-sped, he hasteneth on, 
 
 That anxious traveller . . . 
 
 I was that man — in a dream: 
 
 And each world's night in vain 
 
 I patient wait on sleep to unveil 
 
 Those vivid hills again. 
 
 ^o"- 
 
 Would that they three could know 
 
 How yet burns on in me 
 Love — from one lost in Paradise — 
 For their grave courtesy. 
 213
 
 ALEXANDER 
 
 It was the Great Alexander, 
 Capped with a golden helm, 
 Sate in the ages, in his floating ship. 
 In a dead calm. 
 
 Voices of sea-maids singing 
 
 Wandered across the deep: 
 The sailors labouring on their oars 
 Rowed, as in sleep. 
 
 All the high pomp of Asia, 
 
 Charmed by that siren lay. 
 Out of their weary and dreaming minds, 
 Faded away. 
 
 Like a bold boy sate their Captain, 
 His glamour withered and gone, 
 In the souls of his brooding mariners. 
 While the song pined on. 
 
 Time, like a falling dew. 
 
 Life, like the scene of a dream. 
 Laid between slumber and slumber. 
 Only did seem. . . . 
 214
 
 ALEXANDER 
 
 Alexander, then, 
 
 In all us mortals too, 
 Wax thou not bold — too bold 
 On the wave dark-blue! 
 
 Come the calm, infinite night. 
 
 Who then will hear 
 Aught save the singing 
 
 Of the sea-maids clear? 
 
 215
 
 THE REAWAKENING 
 
 VjREEN in light are the hills, and a calm wind 
 flowing 
 Filleth the void with a flood of the fragrance of 
 Spring; 
 Wings in this mansion of life are coming and going, 
 Voices of unseen loveliness carol and sing. 
 
 Coloured with buds of delight the boughs are sway- 
 ing, 
 Beauty walks in the woods, and wherever she rove 
 
 Flowers from wintry sleep, her enchantment obey- 
 ing, 
 Stir in the deep of her dream, reawaken to love. 
 
 Oh, now begone sullen care — this light is my see- 
 ing; 
 I am the palace, and mine are its windows and 
 walls; 
 Daybreak is come, and life from the darkness of 
 being 
 Springs, like a child from the womb, when the 
 lonely one calls. 
 
 216
 
 THE VACANT DAY 
 
 As I did walk in meadows green 
 I heard the summer noon resound 
 
 With call of myriad things unseen 
 
 That leapt and crept upon the ground. 
 
 High overhead the windless air 
 
 Throbbed with the homesick coursing cry 
 Of swallows that did everywhere 
 
 Wake echo in the sky. 
 
 Beside me, too, clear waters coursed 
 Which willow branches, lapsing low, 
 
 Breaking their crystal gliding forced 
 To sing as they did flow. 
 
 I listened; and my heart was dumb 
 With praise no language could express; 
 
 Longing in vain for him to come 
 Who had breatlied such blessedness 
 
 On this fair world, wherein we pass 
 I So chequered and so brief a stay; 
 And yearned in spirit to learn, alas, 
 What kept him still away. 
 
 217
 
 THE FLIGHT 
 
 llOW do the days press on, and lay 
 Their fallen locks at evening down, 
 Whileas the stars in darkness play 
 
 And moonbeams weave a crown — 
 
 A crown of flower-like light in heaven, 
 
 Where in the hollow arch of space 
 Morn's mistress dreams, and the Pleiads seven 
 Stand watch about her place. 
 
 Stand watch — O days no number keep 
 Of hours when this dark clay is blind. 
 When the world's clocks are dumb in sleep 
 'Tis then I seek my kind. 
 
 218
 
 FOR ALL THE GRIEF 
 
 For all the grief I have given with words 
 
 May now a few clear flowers blow, 
 In the dust, and the heat, and the silence of birds, 
 Where the lonely go. 
 
 For the thing unsaid that heart asked of me 
 
 Be a dark, cool water calling — calling 
 To the footsore, benighted, solitary. 
 
 When the shadows are falling. 
 
 0, be beauty for all my blindness, 
 
 A moon in the air where the weary wend, 
 And dews burdened with loving-kindness 
 In the dark of the end. 
 
 219
 
 THE SCRIBE X 
 
 What lovely things 
 
 Thy hand hath made: 
 The smooth-plumed bird 
 
 In its emerald shade, 
 The seed of the grass. 
 
 The speck of stone 
 Which the wayfaring ant 
 
 Stirs — and hastes on! 
 
 Though I should sit 
 
 By some tarn in thy hills, 
 Using its ink 
 
 As the spirit wills 
 To write of Earth's wonders, 
 
 Its live, willed things, 
 Flit would the ages 
 
 On soundless wings. 
 Ere unto Z 
 
 My pen drew nigh; 
 Leviathan told, 
 
 And the honey-fly: 
 And still would remain 
 
 My wit to try — 
 220
 
 THE SCRIBE 
 
 My worn reeds broken, 
 The dark tarn dry, 
 
 All words forgotten — 
 Thou, Lord, and I. 
 
 221
 
 FARE WELL 
 
 W HEN I lie where shades of darkness 
 Shall no more assail mine eyes, 
 Nor the rain make lamentation 
 
 When the wind sighs; 
 How will fare the world whose wonder 
 Was the very proof of me? 
 Memory fades, must the remembered 
 
 Perishing be? 
 
 Oh, when this my dust surrenders 
 Hand, foot, lip, to dust again. 
 May these loved and loving faces 
 
 Please other men! 
 May the rustling harvest hedgerow 
 Still the Traveller's Joy entwine, 
 And as happy children gather 
 
 Posies once miae. 
 
 Look thy last on all things lovely. 
 
 Every hour. Let no night 
 
 Seal thy sense in deathly slumber 
 
 Till to delight 
 Thou have paid thy utmost blessing; 
 Since that all things thou wouldst praise 
 Beauty took from those who loved them 
 
 In other days. 
 
 222
 
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