HRLF 
 
 055 
 
IRELAND 
 WITH OTHER POEMS. 
 
-^IRELAND 
 
 WITH OTHER POEMS 
 
 BY 
 
 LIONEL JOHNSON 
 
 LONDON 
 
 ELKIN MATHEWS, VIGO STREET, W. 
 
 BOSTON: COPELAND AND DAY 
 
 1897 
 
CHISWICK PRESS : CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO. 
 
 TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON. 
 
/m 
 
 HIBERNIAE NITENTI 
 
 VICTORIAM OPTANS 
 
 SCRIPTOR. 
 
 M632846 
 
+ CONTENTS. 
 
 IRELAND : P. I. 
 JULIAN AT ELEUSIS 1 P. 9. 
 DE AMICITIA : P. 15. 
 DAWN OF REVOLUTION : P. 1 9. 
 
 A DESCANT UPON THE LITANY OF LORETTO 1 P. 22. 
 OUR LADY OF. THE MAY : P. 24. 
 A DREAM I P. 26. 
 
 IN HONOREM B. V. M. DE WINTON MARTYRUMQUE 
 WICCAMICORUM I P. 29. 
 
 OXFORD: p. 31. 
 
 LONDON TOWN : P. 33. 
 CYHIRAETH : P. 36. 
 LAMB I P. 39. 
 
 SATANAS : P. 41. 
 TO MORFYDD DEAD I P. 42. 
 THE DARKNESS I P. 44. 
 CHRISTMAS : P. 45. 
 CAROLS : P. 51. 
 
 CHRISTMAS AND IRELAND I P. 52. 
 
 MAGIC : p. 54. 
 
 FRIENDS I P. 57. 
 INCENSE I P. 59. 
 
 TO PASSIONS: p. 61. 
 HUGO : P. 62. 
 CROMWELL : P. 64. 
 KINGS OF MEN : P. 66. 
 SONGS : p. 66. 
 
 NINETY-EIGHT : P. 67. 
 COMRADES : P. 69. 
 THE FAITH I P. 71. 
 SURSUM CORDA : P. 72. 
 A MEMORY : P. 73. 
 IN A WORKHOUSE : P. 74. 
 
 ix 
 
PAX CHRISTI : P. 75. 
 WINCHESTER CLOSE : P. 76. 
 A STRANGER I P. 76. 
 DE PROFUNDIS : P. 77. 
 BEFORE THE CLOISTER : P. 78. 
 TO THE DEAD OF '98 : P. 79. 
 VINUM DAEMONUM : P. 80. 
 AN IDEAL I P. 8l. 
 
 HEDDON'S MOUTH : p. 82. 
 
 KNIGHT OF THE NORTH : P. 83. 
 DEAD I P. 84. 
 
 VESPERS : P. 85. 
 IESU COR : p. 86. 
 
 A DEATH : P. 87. 
 GRACE I P. 88. 
 AT ETON I P. 88. 
 THE SILENT : P. 89. 
 
 THE GLOOM : P. 90. 
 RIGHT AND MIGHT: P. 91. 
 THE SLEEP OF WILL : P. 92. 
 NIHILISM : P. 92. 
 THE RED MOON : P. 93. 
 COUNSEL : P. 94. 
 VICTORY : p. 95. 
 
 EVENING IN WALES I P. 95. 
 TIMON I P. 96. 
 
 UPON READING CERTAIN POEMS I P. 97. 
 
 GUARDIAN ANGELS I P. 98. 
 
 DOMINICA IN PALMIS : P. 99. 
 
 UNION : P. 99. 
 
 WESTWARD: p. 100. 
 
 COLLINS : P. 101. 
 
 TE MARTYRUM CANDID ATUS : P. I 01. 
 
 IN A COPY OF MR. GOSSE's IN RUSSET AND SILVER 
 
 P. 102. 
 
 CORNWALL : P. 103. 
 
 HAWKER OF MORWENSTOW *. P. 103. 
 
 MOTHER ANN: P. 104. 
 
 X 
 
MUNSTER : A.D. 1534: P. 104. 
 DOCTOR MAJOR : P. 105. 
 QUISQUE SUOS MANES I P. IO6. 
 MASTERY : P. I O6. 
 FLOS FLORUM I P. 1 07. 
 CULVER CLIFF : P. lOJ. 
 PROPHETA GENTIUM : P. I08. 
 CHILD OF WAR 1 P. IOQ. 
 THE END : P. lOQ. 
 LATE LOVE : P. IIO. 
 OLD SILVER I P. IIO. 
 
 WINDERMERE: P. in. 
 JULY : p. 1 1 1. 
 
 AD PATRONUM I P. 112. 
 
 LOVE'S WAYS : p. 112. 
 
 CHANCES : P. 112. 
 
 SEASONS : p. 113. 
 
 CHALKHILL : P. 113. 
 WINCHESTER : P. 113. 
 
POEMS 
 
 IRELAND. 
 
 To Mrs. Clement Shorter. 
 
 Si nhlifue fitern fui Iprutnlpm ; nhlidiiniii Jrti/r sJpvtfr/i ntfa. 
 
 ERRATUM. 
 
 Page 6, line 9, for " for their deep distress " read " in 
 the deeps of night." 
 
 w no wouldst tny cnnaren upon eartn surnce 
 For Paradise, and pure Hesperian rest j 
 Had not the violent and bitter fates 
 
 Burned up with fiery feet 
 The greenness of thy pastures ; had not hates, 
 Envies, and desolations, with fierce heat 
 Wasted thee, and consumed the land of grace, 
 
 Beauty's abiding place ; 
 And vexed with agony bright joy's retreat. 
 
 Swift at the word of the Eternal Will, 
 Upon thee the malign armed Angels came. 
 Flame was their winging, flame that laps thee still ; 
 And in the anger of their eyes was flame. 
 
 I B 
 
POEMS 
 
 IRELAND. 
 
 To Mrs. Clement Shorter. 
 
 Si oblitusfuero tut lerusalem : oblivioni detur dexter a me a. 
 
 THY sorrow, and the sorrow of the sea, 
 Are sisters ^ the sad winds are of thy race : 
 The heart of melancholy beats in thee, 
 And the lamenting spirit haunts thy face, 
 Mournful and mighty Mother ! who art kin 
 
 To the ancient earth's first woe, 
 When holy Angels wept, beholding sin. 
 For not in penance do thy true tears flow, 
 Not thine the long transgression : at thy name, 
 
 We sorrow not with shame, 
 But proudly : for thy soul is as the snow. 
 
 Old as the sorrow for lost Paradise 
 
 Seems thine old sorrow : thou in the mild West, 
 
 Who wouldst thy children upon earth suffice 
 
 For Paradise, and pure Hesperian rest j 
 
 Had not the violent and bitter fates 
 
 Burned up with fiery feet 
 The greenness of thy pastures ; had not hates, 
 Envies, and desolations, with fierce heat 
 Wasted thee, and consumed the land of grace, 
 
 Beauty's abiding place ; 
 And vexed with agony bright joy's retreat. 
 
 Swift at the word of the Eternal Will, 
 Upon thee the malign armed Angels came. 
 Flame was their winging, flame that laps thee still ; 
 And in the anger of their eyes was flame. 
 
 i B 
 
One was the Angel of the field of blood, 
 
 And one of lonelier death : 
 One saddened exiles on the ocean flood, 
 And famine followed on another's breath. 
 Angels of evil, with incessant sword, 
 
 Smote thee, O land adored ! 
 And yet smite : for the Will of God so saith. 
 
 A severing and sundering they wrought, 
 A rending of the soul. They turned to tears 
 The laughter of thy waters : and they brought, 
 To sow upon thy fields, quick seed of fears ; 
 That brother should hate brother, and one roof 
 
 Shelter unkindly hearts ; 
 Friend from his ancient friendship hold aloof, 
 And comrades learn to play sad alien parts ; 
 Province from noble province dwell estranged, 
 
 And all old trusts be changed ; 
 And treason teach true men her impious arts. 
 
 But yet in their reluctant hands they bore 
 Laurel, and palm, and crown, and bay : an host, 
 Heartened by wrath and sorrow more and more, 
 Strove ever, giving up the mighty ghost; 
 The field well fought, the song well sung, for sake, 
 
 Mother! of thee alone: 
 
 Sorrow and wrath bade deathless courage wake, 
 And struck from burning harps a deathless tone. 
 With palm and laurel won, with crown and bay, 
 
 Went proudly down death's way 
 Children of Ireland, to their deathless throne. 
 
 Proud and sweet habitation of thy dead ! 
 Throne upon throne, its thrones of sorrow filled ; 
 Prince on prince coming with triumphant tread, 
 All passion, save the love of Ireland, stilled. 
 By the forgetful waters they forget 
 Not thee, O Inisfail ! 
 
Upon thy fields their dreaming eyes are set, 
 They hear thy winds call ever through each vale. 
 Visions of victory exalt and thrill 
 
 Their hearts' whole hunger still: 
 High beats their longing for the living Gael. 
 
 Sarsfiefd is sad there with his last desire ; 
 FitzGerald mourns with Emmet; ancient chiefs 
 Dream on their saffron-mantled hosts, afire 
 Against the givers of their Mother's griefs. 
 Was it for nought, captain asks captain old, 
 
 Was it in vain, we fell f 
 Shall we have fallen like the leaves of ' gold. 
 And no green spring wake from the long dark spell? 
 Shall never a crown of summer fruitage come 
 
 From blood of martyrdom ? 
 Yet to our faith will we not say farewell ! 
 
 There the white soul of Davis, there the worn, 
 Waste soul of Mangan, there the surging soul 
 Of Grattan, hunger for thy promised morn : 
 There the great legion of thy martyr roll, 
 Filled with the fames of seven hundred years, 
 
 Hunger to hear the voice, 
 Sweeter than marriage music in their ears, 
 That shall bid thee and all thy sons rejoice. 
 There bide the spirits, who for thee yet burn : 
 
 Ah ! might we but return, 
 And make once more for thee the martyr choice 1 
 
 No swordsmen are the Christians ! Oisin cried : 
 
 O Patrick! thine is but a little race. 
 
 Nay, ancient Oisin ! they have greatly died 
 
 In battle glory and with warrior grace. 
 
 Signed with the Cross, they conquered and they fell ; 
 
 Sons of the Cross, they stand : 
 The Prince of Peace loves righteous warfare well, 
 And loves thine armies, O our Holy Land ! 
 3 
 
The Lord of Hosts is with thee, and thine eyes 
 
 Shall see upon thee rise 
 His glory, and the blessing of His Hand. 
 
 Thou hast no fear : with immemorial pride, 
 
 Bright as when Oscar ran the morning glades; 
 
 The knightly Fenian hunters at his side, 
 
 The sunlight through green leaves glad on their blades ; 
 
 The heart in thee is full of joyous faith. 
 
 Not in the bitter dust 
 
 Thou crouchest, heeding what the coward saith : 
 But, radiant with an everlasting trust, 
 Hearest thine ancient rivers in their glee 
 
 Sing themselves on to sea, 
 Thy winds make melody: O joy most just ! 
 
 Nay ! we insult thee not with tears, although 
 With thee we sorrow : not as for one dead 
 We mourn, for one in the cold earth laid low. 
 Still is the crown upon thy sovereign head, 
 Still is the sceptre within thy strong hand, 
 
 Still is the kingdom thine : 
 The armies of thy sons on thy command 
 Wait, and thy starry eyes through darkness shine. 
 Tears for the dear and dead ! For thee, All ball ! 
 
 Unconquered Inisfail ! 
 Tears for the lost: thou livest, O divine! 
 
 Thou passest not away : the sternest powers 
 Spoil not all beauty of thy face, nor mar 
 All peace of thy great heart, O pulse of ours ! 
 The darkest cloud dims thee not all, O star! 
 Ancient and proud thy sorrows, and their might 
 
 That of the murmuring waves: 
 They hearten us to fight the unceasing fight, 
 Filled with the grace, that flows from holy graves. 
 Sons pass away, and thou hast sons as true 
 
 To fight the fight anew : 
 Thy welfare, all the gain their warfare craves. 
 4 
 
Sweet Mother ! in what marvellous dear ways 
 Close to thine heart thou keepest all thine own ! 
 Far off, they yet can consecrate their days 
 To thee, and on the swift winds westward blown, 
 Send thee the homage of their hearts, their vow 
 
 Of one most sacred care ; 
 To thee devote all passionate power, since thou 
 Vouchsafest them, O land of love ! to bear 
 Sorrow and joy with thee. Each far son thrills 
 
 Toward thy blue dreaming hills, 
 And longs to kiss thy feet upon them, Fair ! 
 
 If death come swift upon me^ it will be 
 
 Because of the great love I bear the Gael ! 
 
 So sang upon the separating sea 
 
 Columba, while his boat sped out of hail, 
 
 And all grew lonely. But some sons thou hast, 
 
 Whose is an heavier lot, 
 Close at thy side : they see thy torment last, 
 And all their will to help thee helps thee not. 
 Mother ! their grief, to look on thy dear face, 
 
 Worn with each weary trace 
 Of fresh woes, and of old woes unforgotf 
 
 And yet great spirits ride thy winds : thy ways 
 Are haunted and enchaunted evermore. 
 Thy children hear the voices of old days 
 In music of the sea upon thy shore, 
 In falling of the waters from thine hills, 
 
 In whispers of thy trees : 
 A glory from the things eternal fills 
 Their eyes, and at high noon thy people sees 
 Visions, and wonderful is all the air. 
 
 So upon earth they share 
 Eternity : they learn it at thy knees. 
 
 Eternal is our faith in thee : the sun 
 
 Shall sooner fall from Heaven, than from our lives 
 
 5 
 
That faith ; and the great stars fade one by one, 
 Ere fade that light in which thy people strives. 
 Strong in the everlasting righteousness 
 
 Triumphs our faith : the fight 
 Hath holiest hosts to inspire it and to bless ; 
 Thy children lift true faces to the light. 
 Theirs are the visitations from on high, 
 
 Voices that call and cry : 
 Celestial comfort for their deep distress. 
 
 Charmed upon waters three, forlorn and cold, 
 The swans, Children of Lir, endured their doom : 
 From off their white wings flashed the morning gold, 
 And round their white wings closed the twilight gloom. 
 Yet on their stormy weird the Christian bell 
 
 Broke, and they stirred with dread: 
 The Coming of the Saints upon them fell ; 
 They woke to joy, and found their white wings fled. 
 And thou, in these last days, shalt thou not hear 
 
 A sound of sacred fear ? 
 God's bells shall ring, and all sad days be dead. 
 
 But desolate be the houses of thy foes : 
 
 Sorrow encompass them, and vehement wrath 
 
 Besiege them : be their hearts cold as the snows : 
 
 Let lamentation keen about their path. 
 
 The fires of God burn round them, and His night 
 
 Lie on their blinded eyes : 
 And when they call to the Eternal Light, 
 None shall make answer to their stricken cries. 
 Mercy and pity shall not know them more : 
 
 God shall shut to the door, 
 And close on them His everlasting skies. 
 
 How long ? Justice of Very God ! How long ? 
 The Isle of Sorrows from of old hath trod 
 The stony road of unremitting wrong, 
 The purple winepress of the wrath of God : 
 6 
 
Is then the Isle of Destiny indeed 
 
 To grief predestinate; 
 Ever foredoomed to agonize and bleed, 
 Beneath the scourging of eternal fate ? 
 Yet against hope shall we still hope, and still 
 
 Beseech the Eternal Will : 
 Our lives to this one service dedicate. 
 
 Ah, tremble into passion, Harp ! and sing 
 
 War song, O Sword ! Fill the fair land, great Twain ! 
 
 Wake all her heavy heart to triumphing : 
 
 To vengeance, and armed trampling of the plain ! 
 
 And you, white spirits on the mountain wind, 
 
 Cry between eve and morn ! 
 Cry, mighty Dead ! until the people find 
 Their souls a furnace of desire and scorn. 
 Call to the hosting upon Tara, call 
 
 The tribes of Eire all : 
 Trump of the Champions ! immemorial Horn ! 
 
 Shall not the Three Waves thunder for their King, 
 The Captain of thy people ? Shall not streams 
 Leap from thy mountains' heart, and many a spring 
 Gladden thy valleys, for the joy of dreams 
 Fulfilled, for glory of the battle won ? 
 
 Hast thou no prophet left ? 
 Is all thy Druid wizardry undone, 
 And thou of thy foreknowledge quite bereft? 
 Nay ! but the power of faith is prophecy, 
 
 Vision, and certainty : 
 Faith, that hath walked the waves, and mountains cleft. 
 
 As haunting Tirnanoge within the sea, 
 So hid within the Eyes of God thy fate 
 Lies dreaming: and when God shall bid it be, 
 Ah, then the fair perfection of thy state ! 
 Bravely the gold and silver bells shall chime, 
 When thou art wed with peace : 
 7 
 
Far to the desert of their own sad clime 
 
 Shall fly the ill Angels, when God bids them cease. 
 
 Thine shall be only a majestic joy, 
 
 No evil can destroy : 
 The sorrows of thy soul shall have release. 
 
 Thy blood of martyrs to the martyrs' Home 
 Cries from the earth : the altar of high Heaven 
 Is by their cries besieged and overcome : 
 The Rainbow Throne and flaming Spirits Seven 
 Know well the music of that agony, 
 
 That surge of a long sigh, 
 That voice of an unresting misery, 
 That ardour of anguish unto the Most High. 
 Thou from thy wronged earth pleadest with the Just, 
 
 Whose loving-mercy must 
 Hear, and command thy death in life to die. 
 
 Golden allies are thine, bright souls of Saints, 
 
 Glad choirs of intercession for the Gael : 
 
 Their flame of prayer ascends, their stream of plaints 
 
 Flows to the wounded Feet, for Inisfail. 
 
 Victor, the Angel of thy Patrick, pleads ; 
 
 Mailed Michael with his sword 
 Kneels there, the champion of thy bitter needs, 
 Prince of the shining armies of the Lord : 
 And there, Star of the Morning and the Sea, 
 
 Mary pours prayer for thee : 
 And unto Mary be thy prayers outpoured. 
 
 ORose! OLlly! O Lady full of grace ! 
 O Mary Mother ! O Mary Maid! hear thou. 
 Glory of Angels ! Pity y and turn thy face >, 
 Praying thy Son y even as we pray thee now^ 
 For thy dear sake to set thine Ireland free : 
 
 Pray thou thy little Child! 
 Ah ! who can help her^ but in mercy He ? 
 Pray then, pray thou for Ireland, Mother mild! 
 
O Heart of Mary! pray the Sacred Heart: 
 
 His^ at Whose word depart 
 Sorrows and bates y home to HeWs waste and wild. 
 
 1894. 
 
 JULIAN AT ELEUSIS. 
 
 To Edmund Gosse. 
 
 THERE lay Eleusis, there : O reverend haunt, 
 Eleusis, highly favoured ! whom the seas 
 Crown, that once rang with Salaminian shouts 
 Upon Eleusis' day, when Asia filled 
 Athens, and all her coasts : the seas, that once 
 When crouching Sparta hung in clouds of war 
 On Deceleia, down their glad tide bare 
 Thine else forgone processions : till in arms 
 Came godsped Alcibiades, and brought 
 Safely thy pomps along thine Holy Way, 
 Athens' true servant, then ! Thou, who dost lie 
 From her, the world's chief wonder, separate 
 By that sweet Sacred Way of roses, lit 
 With torches tossing in the mystic chace 
 Through odorous incense clouds ! Eleusis, thou 
 In majesty, in fearfulness, in awe, 
 Greater than Delphic or than Delian fanes, 
 Fallen Solyma, or Rome before false gods 
 Fallen from that high state, she had ! But thou 
 Livest among the immortal mysteries, 
 Though men have lost thy secret. So our road 
 Was lonelier than the ancient days beheld 
 Their Eleusinian companies : for once, 
 Upon the first morn of the nine days' feast, 
 In Boedromion beautiful with sheaves, 
 To Athens flocked the mystics. Then the cry, 
 Seaward ! Seaward ! O mystics / bade them wash 
 From soil and stain in the clear waters ; next, 
 Together having shared sweet honey cakes, 
 9 
 
Wended the first procession, round the car 
 
 That bore the basket of symbolic fruits, 
 
 Poppy seed with pomegranate : in chaste hands 
 
 Followed the sacred arks. On thee they cried, 
 
 Demeter! Mother of the fruits of earth ! 
 
 Yet not by that bland name they hailed thee^then : 
 
 Lady of Sorrow ! Heavy-hearted ^jieen ! 
 
 Cried they, remembering thy loneliness, 
 
 And lost Persephone. But when night fell, 
 
 With faces flashing beneath forest brands, 
 
 They sought Persephone along the shores, 
 
 While murmured all the sea. Then, chiefest rite, 
 
 Lord of the fiery and devouring vine, 
 
 lacchus, myrtle-coronalled, came forth 
 
 From Ceramicus : westward charioted 
 
 By thunders of a marching multitude, 
 
 And clangour of sonorous bronze. Men plead : 
 
 Christ hallows poverty, the Gods cared nought. 
 
 Nay ! rich with poor one company, on foot 
 
 Equal procession kept and equal love. 
 
 Unto Demeter's temple vast they came, 
 
 Past bridge and holy figtree : at midnight, 
 
 Through lustral waters purified, they passed 
 
 Within the veil; led by the hierophant, 
 
 His body chilled with hemlock, that the fires 
 
 Of passion should be hushed, still be his soul. 
 
 Without, the hosts of heaven were watching : there, 
 
 The dark, that once brooded upon the deep, 
 
 Ere any light was, heavy hung : and death, 
 
 Mystical death reigned in the vasty air, 
 
 And in that world was silence; save each heart 
 
 Trembled, each labouring heart and fearful soul. 
 
 Then from the ends of earth, sweeping the seas, 
 
 Fields, footless mountain tops, and lonely moors, 
 
 Wave upon wave of sound gathered : a moan, 
 
 Dreary as the thin voice of a forlorn wind 
 
 Through Daphne drifting down, fitful and slow; 
 
 Soon swelling to the full voice of a sea 
 
Roaring beneath wild winds; till on their fear, 
 
 With apparition of the Sacred Corn 
 
 And awefulness of imaged history, 
 
 Smote the great storm of sound from vault to floor, 
 
 Smote : and resigned again to silent gloom 
 
 The air of adoration : mighty deep 
 
 Shuddered to deep of darkness, under God. 
 
 Then on their eyes fast sealed, their dreading ears, 
 
 Thunder with flame broke through the san&uary : 
 
 And through the thunder, voices; through the flame, 
 
 Visions : and in the vision and the voice, 
 
 God's light, and the whole melody of God. 
 
 Not with the glory of such rites have I 
 
 Put on the spirit of Eleusis : yet, 
 
 A little company although we be, 
 
 Ours are the mysteries ; we also mount 
 
 With ancient prophets the mysterious way. 
 
 Beyond the shadowy threshold and gray bounds 
 
 Of purblind life I looked : then I beheld 
 
 Death's province peopled proudly! O great Death, 
 
 Imperial, perdurable, Ancient of Days ! 
 
 O Death, Master of mortals ! But they passed, 
 
 His people, through the limits of that realm, 
 
 And places purgatorial, till their brows 
 
 Shone ; and light fell upon them in fair Fields. 
 
 Tellus was there, who by Eleusis died, 
 
 And with divine simplicity dethroned 
 
 The Lydian's pompous fortune : there he reigned, 
 
 Italy's ancient prince, Pythagoras : 
 
 And Plato, lost in immortality. 
 
 Chance and change; chance and change ! strange chance, 
 
 hard change: 
 
 These fashion what I know, and mourning know. 
 Still am I faithful to the lonely faith. 
 Dreaming, alone and melancholy here, 
 In Antioch of the Christians ; would I saw 
 
Hymettus now, and purple lights of morn : 
 
 Apollo leap above Acropolis, 
 
 And strike the shrines with gold ! They are not here, 
 
 They are not mine, who there of old were mine, 
 
 Basil and Nazianzen : mighty tongues, 
 
 But mighty against all most dear to me. 
 
 A peasant has them captive : and the world, 
 
 Rome and the world bow down to Nazareth. 
 
 I only serve you, royal Gods ! I still : 
 
 With body's peril, soul's distress, I still. 
 
 Would I had lived at morning of the world ! 
 
 With music caught down from the Sun rang out 
 
 The lyres and chaunts of those rejoicing men : 
 
 Apollo was a glory on the heights ! 
 
 Can his day dawn again ? O faith most fair ! 
 
 I doubt not thee. When these ill days are done, 
 
 Glad will the cities be once more, with fires 
 
 Of sacrifice, and gleaming forms divine ; 
 
 Fair, as the fair perfection signified : 
 
 One great civility of Gods and men, 
 
 Calm Gods, and men serenely serving them. 
 
 Then to Eleusis would I bring again 
 
 Her desolate veneration : setting up 
 
 Temple and courts, girt with the sacred bay, 
 
 With laurel, and the comely olive branch : 
 
 And wisdom from the books of stone once more 
 
 Should nourish pure souls, and illuminate. 
 
 So, from the ruddy desert East, to her, 
 
 The bright Parisian city of my care, 
 
 Julian should be remembered by the Gods, 
 
 Their servant universal. O far dreams ! 
 
 far dreams, far beyond these weary eyes ! 
 
 1 shall do nothing : since the first king was, 
 Wisdom's crowned lover has the world not seen. 
 Nay! not one sceptred Caesar of them all, 
 
 Not grave Aurelius, whom I thought of old 
 To follow, but has fallen short therein : 
 Crossed by the grievous troubling of the world. 
 
Yet nothing of your praise have I not paid, 
 
 Lords of Olympus ! When the great Sun shines, 
 
 I am Apollo's priest : hers too I am, 
 
 The Mighty Mother, who from land to land 
 
 Moves with supreme and battlemented brows. 
 
 The robe of her anointing, hangs it not, 
 
 Tarnished and worn, upon my shoulder yet; 
 
 This robe, still dreadful with the bull's black blood ? 
 
 The citizens of Antioch scorn my state : 
 
 The purple-born, a scholar ! the world's king, 
 
 Hid in the cloak of sad philosophy. 
 
 O servants of a vain and distraught man, 
 
 111 taken for a god : is that your pride ? 
 
 I, who am Caesar; Caesar's too, these rags; 
 
 With a more proud humility disdain, 
 
 O Christians ! your imperial show and sin; 
 
 For I am votarist of Gods, who wore 
 
 Man's true flesh never : nor myself have worn 
 
 Man's empty shadows of magnificence, 
 
 But am the lover of magnificent Gods. 
 
 Wondrous Antinous ! Oh, fairer thou 
 
 Than the dim beauty of Christ crucified; 
 
 Thee too among the Everlasting Ones, 
 
 With Eleusinian feast, have I adored. 
 
 Beneath the vast night in old Egypt thou 
 
 Gavest thyself for Hadrian : neither foul, 
 
 Nor any slave's death, was thy death ; for Nile 
 
 Took thee. Then in the heavens burned one more star, 
 
 And earth reddened with unknown lily flowers, 
 
 O consecrate and fair ! for joy of thee. 
 
 Now am I votarist of thine, as I 
 
 Of each magnificent and marvellous God. 
 
 In their high converse only is my trust. 
 Through the dim German forests have I marched, 
 Prince of the Roman eagles, Mars my lord, 
 As in the triumphing days of Rome : Mars grant, 
 That through these oriental empires Rome 
 '3 
 
Triumph ! And Mars will grant it, even as thou 
 
 Foretellest me great glory, Maximus ! 
 
 A golden presage : "Julian shall increase^ 
 
 Till Alexander be less great a name. 
 
 Once with tumultuary voice of power, 
 
 August ! the Legions hailed me : me they bore, 
 
 In mail and purple, vehemently crowned 
 
 Their monarch, and the world's : who one day yet 
 
 May clash their swords through mine unarmoured breast. 
 
 But none can take from me the treasure : none 
 
 Mine adoration of Divinity. 
 
 Caverns of haunted Ephesus ! Your gloom, 
 
 Sweet with the dreamy incense, showed my youth 
 
 Its earliest of mysterious ways : whenceforth, 
 
 Up mounting, brightening, labyrinths I traced 
 
 Mine homeward journey to the eternal Light : 
 
 Till at Eleusis, as I strove to it, 
 
 The perfect benediction fell. And now, 
 
 When the abhorrent voices crowd on me, 
 
 Christian with Christian warring, all with truth, 
 
 Retired within the secret chambers, there 
 
 Eleusis comforts me : I know and live. 
 
 The earth has yet her holy motherhood : 
 
 The earth has honour yet, and honours some, 
 
 True children of her heart, and of the Sun ; 
 
 True masters of the mysteries, who walk 
 
 Surely and nobly the vast world, its kings : 
 
 Lords of the laws, that bind the Pleiades, 
 
 And order the outgoings of the morn. 
 
 O kingly prophet of the golden thigh ! 
 
 mighty Samian master ! Thy mild hand 
 Stroked in Crotona the white eagle : thou 
 Wast tamer of man's heart, the wild beast there ! 
 
 1 too, whom nations through the world revere, 
 Nor suffer me from old Lucretius' height 
 Contemplate the laborious march of men, 
 
 But draw me downward to their wants : I too 
 Salvation through the terrible midnight 
 
Have seen, lapped round with glory. So my soul, 
 Up to the golden air in welcome death 
 Passing, shall fall within the calms of God. 
 Yet not alone : thou too shalt pass with me, 
 Brother and friend upon that last of ways, 
 Divinest of all living men : mine own 
 Lover and counsellor, lamblichus! 
 One year shall free us both : one ecstasy 
 Make thy soul mine, mine thine ; both lost in Light. 
 
 1886-7. 
 
 DE AMICITIA. 
 
 To "A. E. n 
 
 BEAUTY of Israel ! thou on its high places 
 Fallen^ wonderful in thy love to me / 
 King David ! we too love with thee 
 Dear lovers' faces, 
 Infinite friendships, golden graces : 
 Hearts passionate, as the full and stirring sea. 
 We too have come upon the shining traces 
 Of white souls, while we walk this darker earth : 
 Celestial was their birth, 
 August, and issuing from Uranian races ; 
 Kin to the morning stars, their choral mirth, 
 A matin melody. 
 
 The glory of a crown, gold tried in fire, 
 Shadows their brows : 
 They know it not, but hungering desire 
 For the White City, in their ardent eyes, 
 Burns : and the pure palm boughs, 
 Holy and stately from their clean hands rise : 
 Such brightness and such bravery shall they win ! 
 And this of poor souls red with sin^ 
 Who with the darkness house ? 
 O thought, unkind, unwise! 
 With perfect faith we look within, 
 15 
 
Where the truth lies. 
 
 Dew of the morning and the evening falls, 
 Falls cool and sweet, upon the scarlet flames, 
 The furnace of each heart : 
 And through their stormy music, music calls 
 The wandering children by fond, wistful names, 
 Dear and apart : 
 
 Music with gently pleading claims, 
 Music descending from glad Sion walls. 
 Whiter than wool, whiter than snow, 
 By grace and love, the stained souls grow : 
 Lilies they stand, who lay so low 
 In shameful mire of wrong and woe ; 
 Lilies, to fill the Queen of Heaven's fair halls. 
 Angels of Mercy gently come and go 
 Between the Sacred Heart and these poor hearts : 
 Plying their ministrant strong parts, 
 With love in overflow. 
 Ah, friends too dear and goodly to be lost ! 
 Though you be tempest-tost 
 On bitter surges, raised by envious arts 
 Of the great Unholy Ghost, 
 Prince of ill Angels, Captain of Hell's host ! 
 Ah, friends of loving voices, and kind hands, 
 And eyes, that with all confidence accost 
 Ours in the silent eloquence of love, 
 As the heart understands ! 
 Our faith above 
 Our fear prevails, 
 Driving it into desolate lands. 
 You to the very far off Land your sails 
 Have stoutly set : 
 
 Whatever adverse and malignant gales 
 Make you awhile forget 
 
 The straight course, and the ever faithful star, 
 Constant above the winds and waves and war. 
 Ah, yet 
 
 The Land, where all true lovers are, 
 16 
 
1 Shall greet us with celestial hails : 
 | The Land, that lures us from afar ; 
 
 Land of the Love, that never fails, 
 
 The Light, that never pales; 
 
 The long, sweet Patience, that allows no let, 
 
 Though with disdain her pains be met, 
 
 Saying : They shall be yet 
 
 The captives of the Everlasting Love! 
 
 O gracious voice and unoracular ! 
 
 Dove's voice indeed, but not Dodona's dove. 
 
 Wherefore above 
 
 Our fear triumphs our faith, 
 
 And saith 
 
 No word of dark and comfortless regret. 
 
 Ah, dear our friends, ours past the mists of death ! 
 
 Ours, where the loved disciple, great Saint John, 
 
 Pillows his head upon 
 
 The only rest, 
 
 God's Breast ! 
 
 Ours, in the strength of that enamoured breath, 
 
 Which rang from Patmos' exile guest : 
 
 God is Love! And of all men he knew best, 
 
 Who lay upon that Breast, 
 
 And heard the beating of the Heart of God : 
 
 Who Calvary trod, 
 
 And stood, 
 
 With Mary in her mourning Motherhood, 
 
 Beneath the Rood. 
 
 Friends, whose true care for us is our best proof, 
 
 From grace and good we keep not quite aloof ! 
 
 Dear brother and dear brother, 
 
 We shall clasp hands beneath the eternal roof, 
 
 And see Saint John the Loved with Mary Mother F 
 
 Friends ever, as of old : 
 
 But there, with joy untold; 
 
 Joy, mightier than our mortal hearts can hold. 
 
 But hearts immortal made can never be 
 
 Feeble, nor overbold : 
 
 17 c 
 
Hearts greatly stationed in eternity. 
 Friends, dear our friends, O fellowship of gold ! 
 By ways of land and sea, 
 Ways manifold, 
 Ways marvellous, 
 Brought near to us ! 
 
 Since you have found our friendship something worth, 
 And in our hearts, not a mere dust, nor dearth 
 Of what your own hearts hold so perfectly, 
 Courage and constancy : 
 
 Bear with us, while we bear the bonds of earth ! 
 Bear with us, for if friendship pine, 
 Waver and wane, 
 Not yours, but ours, 
 
 Will be the sad fault, the disastrous sign, 
 Of friendship's drear decline 
 And drooping flowers : 
 But you against ourselves will we maintain 
 Friends without stain, 
 Of the true line. 
 Our visions are not vain ! 
 
 Yours are the crown, the palm, the blessed reign, 
 The marvellous high strain 
 Of triumph trumpets blown from Sion walls. 
 Fair as her lilies you indeed shall stand, 
 Hand fast in hand, 
 
 Along the Queen of Heaven's high halls. 
 Black wind never yet blew, 
 Shall whelm and vanquish you 
 Riding the seas safe homeward to that strand, 
 Where from of old, though new, 
 The City of the eternal golden spires, 
 The valiant City of the Saints, desires 
 You for her citizens, past seas and fires, 
 Made white, 
 
 Fit for the Angels' and the Saints' delight, 
 Fit for God's sight. 
 Amid Seraphic and Uranian quires, 
 18 
 
We hear your music celebrate your fight 
 
 Well fought, well won : 
 
 We know your night 
 
 Ended, your everlasting day begun : 
 
 We see you splendid in His Living Light, 
 
 The Lamb your Sun. 
 
 O royal David ! we too love, like thee, 
 
 Friendship's confederacy : 
 
 Friends, than the cedars of Mount Lebanon, 
 
 Stronger; than orchards of Isle Avalon, 
 
 Fairer : O king ! we love, like thee, 
 
 Friends, in their charity, 
 
 Wonderful : and we know them God's, each one. 
 
 1894. 
 
 DAWN OF REVOLUTION. 
 
 To Thomas Hardy. 
 
 TO-NIGHT, there 's music on the air ; 
 Strange stirring, and rich turbulence : 
 Hope turned to pride ; crowns for despair ; 
 Night, and night's vast magnificence. 
 
 The flowers are swaying with delight, 
 And incense burdens the warm wind : 
 Now is incomparable night ! 
 Stars in the vault, and Heaven behind. 
 
 Night hath fierce loveliness : clouds race 
 Past star and still unconquered star : 
 While, rivalling their mighty chace, 
 Rides, reigns, a marvellous moon afar. 
 
 What means the night ? Backseats mine heart 
 Answer : Night teems with prophecy : 
 And thou ! hast thou fore-hailed thy party 
 And played thine own posterity ? 
 '9 
 
Praising thy soul of fire^ thy sword 
 Of death ^ thy death ofviftory? 
 Beheld thee on the crimson sward 
 Slain ? Seen the eagles swoop to thee ? 
 
 And turned thee, where thou standest bronze 
 
 Above the passing peoples praise : 
 
 Or liest marble^ where the sons 
 
 Of men thank God on triumph days? 
 
 The wind witches me ; the hot air 
 Inflames my brows, and burns my blood : 
 No vehement love night flames so fair, 
 No feast of the vine pours such a flood. 
 
 Faces are wild before me : steel 
 Whirls its blue lightning, veined with red. 
 Palaces tremble down, or reel 
 To ruin, while the stars in dread 
 
 Fade far into their quiet deeps, 
 Before the deep destroying roar : 
 Heavenward the costliest incense leaps, 
 And madness falls from Heaven the more. 
 
 Ah, the strained eyes, the frantic hands, 
 The bloody, racing feet ! Where trod 
 His priests of sacrifice, now stands 
 Each gaunt, starved enemy of God. 
 
 What is the end ? Nay ! what know I, 
 With these drums thundering through mine ears, 
 Through the changed earth, the unchanging sky : 
 The wreck of immemorial years ? 
 
 Liberty ! for the end is come : 
 The end, that shall begin new earth, 
 20 
 
And end the old Heavens : that look down dumb 
 Upon no second fair, calm birth 
 
 Of morning stars in melody, 
 
 But the sad birth through bitter stress, 
 
 And elemental misery, 
 
 Of freedom's newfound righteousness. 
 
 But I grow tired in a pause of wind : 
 The clouds drag, the worn flowers are still. 
 Courage ! fresh visions troop behind 
 That gloomiest cloud, that shadowy hill. 
 
 There ! from the soft heart of the cloud 
 Dance forth wild choirs with wantoning hair : 
 The angels of rebellion, vowed 
 To pour their passion on the air. 
 
 Distraught sublimity of death 
 Wilders them : Oh, to storm life out, 
 Destroying life at every breath, 
 With cry of lust, with battle shout ! 
 
 Over the vines an heady shower 
 Sweeps, of enamouring windy rain : 
 Each shrivelled bough and dusty flower 
 Loves the swift dew, and lives again. 
 
 And falling with the vehement streams, 
 And welling from the violent springs, 
 Come virtues with their faery dreams : 
 Bright eyes, and flash of fiery wings. 
 
 O piteous eyes, that long and long 
 To win one welcoming look from God ! 
 O burning brains, and labouring tongue ! 
 O hands that strain, and feet flame-shod ! 
 
 21 
 
You grow dim unto death : you grasp 
 Never the far off wisdom : you 
 Find not free words : you never clasp 
 God's hands : you wander the waste through. 
 
 Swept down the flooding terror's path, 
 Into the night the dreamers go : 
 On earth abide the men of wrath, 
 For whose delight the stormwinds blow. 
 
 So hot the air still : Oh, that morn 
 Were on me, and with morning, calm ! 
 These tumults of the night downborne, 
 And peace upon me for a balm ! 
 
 Still strong, you visions ! For the strip 
 Of crawling light below the gloom 
 Shows like the Pit's unfolding lip : 
 Menace of fire and hungry doom. 
 
 Well I know, truth is in my dream, 
 With sad and haggard countenance : 
 Red shafts of sullen sunrise gleam, 
 And slowly the fierce hours advance. 
 
 1888. 
 
 A DESCANT UPON THE LITANY 
 OF JLORETTO. 
 
 To Mrs. Meynell. 
 
 A FLOOD of chaunted love, 
 
 Love white and virginal, 
 Makes this rich temple gloom more musical, 
 Than woodland glooms j where slow winds nightly 
 move 
 
 Soft leaves, that rise and fall 
 Upon the branches of clear nightingales ; 
 Whose rapture, touched with lovelier sorrow, wails, 
 
 22 
 
And thrills, and thrills, 
 
 Until night fails ; 
 
 And, in the sunrise on the eternal hills, 
 The Angels of the Morning stand, 
 
 Blessing with lifted hand 
 
 The labouring land : 
 But here the glory of our holy song, 
 
 Sorrowless, flies along 
 Reaches of Heaven adoring and adored : 
 Where Angels worship ; whither men aspire, 
 
 Wielding their faith, a sword 
 
 Tempered and tried in fire. 
 Sorrowless song ! for each predestined pang, 
 
 Of Calvary and Nazareth, 
 Changed to a passion of delight, when rang 
 
 An universal breath 
 Of salutation over death cast down : 
 
 When upon Mary's brow the crown, 
 For all her lowliness, proclaimed her Queen 
 Of Heaven and of our woes : she, who had been 
 Woe once incarnate, as high God in her. 
 
 Wherefore the pure concent 
 Of each fair voice, found fit to minister 
 
 Its music to her ear, 
 
 Floods, with no underflow of doubt and fear, 
 This sacred house : while infinite content 
 
 Urges forgetfulness 
 Of that, which makes the Angels' rapture less ; 
 
 The passionate countenance, 
 Wherewith the Prince of this World still blasphemes 
 
 Against its God, and gleams 
 Angrily against Michael's lifted lance, 
 
 Then falls beneath his glance. 
 
 So be not quick to take 
 Your death of beauty on this trembling air ! 
 
 A little longer yet, 
 
 O voices piercing to the golden stair ! 
 A little longer, let the world look fair : 
 2 3 
 
A little longer make 
 Anguish of heart, a light thing to forget : 
 
 A little longer yet ! 
 She will not weary of your harmonies, 
 The gentle Mother : for her memories 
 
 Are full of ancient melodies, 
 Raised in the fashion of old Israel, 
 
 Beside the cold rock well : 
 Under the glow of calm and splendid skies ; 
 
 Jesus upon her breast, 
 
 Fronting the shadowy land, the solemn west. 
 Ah, Mother ! whom with many names we name, 
 By lore of love, which in our earthly tongue 
 Is all too poor, though rich love's heart of flame, 
 To sing thee as thou art, nor leave unsung 
 The greatest of the graces thou hast won, 
 
 Thy chiefest excellence ! 
 Ivory Tower ! Star of the Morning ! Rose 
 Mystical ! Tower of David, our Defence ! 
 
 To thee our music flows, 
 Who makest music for us to thy Son. 
 
 So, when the shadows come, 
 Laden with all contrivances of fear ! 
 
 Ah, Mary ! lead us home, 
 
 Through fear, through fire : 
 To where with faithful companies we may hear 
 That perfect music, which the love of God, 
 
 Who this dark way once trod, 
 Creates among the imperishable choir. 
 
 1885. 
 
 OUR LADY OF THE MAY. 
 
 To the Very Rev. Fr. Fassall, C.SS.R. 
 O FLOWER of flowers, our Lady of the May ! 
 
 Thou gavest us the World's one Light of Light : 
 Under the stars, amid the snows, He lay ; 
 24 
 
While Angels, through the Galilean night 
 
 Sang glory and sang peace : 
 
 Nor doth their singing cease, 
 
 For thou their Queen and He their King sit crowned 
 Above the stars, above the bitter snows ; 
 They chaunt to thee the Lily, Him the Rose, 
 
 With white Saints kneeling round. 
 Gone is cold night : thine now are spring and day : 
 O Flower of flowers, our Lady of the May ! 
 
 O Flower of flowers, our Lady of the May ! 
 
 Thou gavest us the blessed Christmas mirth : 
 And now, not snows, but blossoms, light thy way ; 
 We give thee the fresh flower-time of the earth. 
 
 These early flowers we bring, 
 
 Are angels of the spring, 
 Spirits of gracious rain and light and dew. 
 Nothing so like to thee the whole earth yields, 
 As these pure children of her vales and fields, 
 
 Bright beneath skies of blue. 
 Hail, Holy l^ueen I their fragrant breathings say : 
 O Flower of flowers^ our Lady of the May ! 
 
 O Flower of flowers, our Lady of the May ! 
 
 Breathe from God's garden of eternal flowers 
 Blessing, when we thy little children pray : 
 Let thy soul's grace steal gently over ours. 
 
 Send on us dew and rain, 
 
 That we may bloom again, 
 Nor wither in the dry and parching dust. 
 Lift up our hearts, till with adoring eyes, 
 O Morning Star ! we hail thee in the skies, 
 
 Star of our hope and trust ! 
 
 Sweet Star, sweet Flower, there bid thy beauty stay : 
 O Flower of flowers, our Lady of the May ! 
 
 O Flower of flowers, our Lady of the May ! 
 Thou leftest lilies rising from thy tomb: 
 25 
 
They shone in stately and serene array, 
 Immaculate amid death's house of gloom. 
 Ah, let thy graces be 
 Sown in our dark hearts ! We 
 Would make our hearts gardens for thy dear care ; 
 Watered from wells of Paradise, and sweet 
 With balm winds flowing from the Mercy Seat, 
 
 And full of heavenly air : 
 While music ever in thy praise should play, 
 O Flower of flowers, our Lady of the May ! 
 
 O Flower of flowers, our Lady of the May ! 
 
 Not only for ourselves we plead, God's Flower ! 
 Look on thy blinded children, who still stray, 
 Lost in this pleasant land, thy chosen Dower ! 
 Send us a perfect spring : 
 Let faith arise and sing, 
 
 ; And England from her long, cold winter wake. 
 Mother of Mercy ! turn upon her need 
 Thine eyes of mercy : be there spring indeed : 
 
 So shall thine Angels make 
 A starrier music, than our hearts can say, 
 O Flower of flowers, our Lady of the May ! 
 
 1895. 
 
 A DREAM. 
 
 To Edgar Jepson. 
 
 AH, you will not hear ! Alone 
 I must agonize, and keep 
 Mine own conscience all mine own : 
 Yet, to sleep the eternal sleep, 
 Knowing this thing to all unknown ! 
 
 I shall shudder in the shade 
 At a fainter shade astir 
 There, within the gray : some strayed 
 26 
 
Melancholy wanderer 
 Through the misty barricade. 
 
 Nought to him were shadowy bounds ; 
 Nought, his far off resting place, 
 Where the willowed water rounds 
 Each dim point with gentle grace, 
 Filled with windy, willow sounds. 
 
 He would lie there in his dream : 
 Parted lips, and wandering hands 
 Plucking pale blooms ; down the stream, 
 Far against the sad, gray lands, 
 The soft eyes would gaze and gleam. 
 
 Ah, so softly ! No more wild, 
 Than a flame of gracious fire 
 On the altar : like a child, 
 Would he play with light desire, 
 Born of fancy, sweet and mild. 
 
 All the willow land to him 
 But a place of echoes were : 
 Philomel's melodious hymn, 
 Flowing through the evening air ; 
 The wood doves' faint voices dim. 
 
 For dull Lethe, for the blind 
 Poppy of Oblivion, 
 Hush, and lull, and thrall his mind : 
 Deeper memories are undone ; 
 What he would, he cannot find. 
 
 Cannot find forthwith : but yet, 
 As the visions veer and fall, 
 Rapture now, and now regret : 
 He will feel it, though not all j 
 Half remember, half forget. 
 27 
 
Half remember, dreaming ghost, 
 Her, whose heart I stole to break : 
 Her, who should have loved him most : 
 Her, whose soul I laughed to make 
 Ugly, miserable, lost. 
 
 He remembers ! The lone eyes 
 Wake to fire : the smiling lips 
 Clench to iron, cold as ice : 
 Dropped its flowers, the thin hand grips, 
 Where no venging weapon lies. 
 
 This a dreamer in the haunt, 
 The still haunt, of willow rills ! 
 But a dreamer like to daunt 
 Death, upon the naked hills 
 Dight for battle, grim and gaunt ! 
 
 The gray precincts water-worn 
 Shiver at a sundering flame, 
 On a vehement whirlwind borne 
 Into the drear home of shame, 
 From the home of souls lovelorn. 
 
 He, love's melancholy saint 
 Cloistered by the innocent plains 
 Willow-bowered for true love's plaint ! 
 He, to dare the place of pains : 
 He, to bear the fiery taint ! 
 
 Fainter shade, said I ? But nay ! 
 Strong and strenuous with wrath, 
 Striding toward my dismal day, 
 He will front me on the path, 
 Where my tortured feet shall stray. 
 
 Then a thunder, then a storm, 
 Then a light of rousing Gods ! 
 28 
 
Justice in her haughtier form, 
 Vengeance with her living rods : 
 I, with stricken face deform. 
 
 There, supreme in Hell's thrilled hall, 
 He, the angelic challenger ! 
 Hark ! he speaks : Before you all 
 Come /, your petitioner : 
 
 Vengeance ! Hear me call : 
 
 Love and Death denounce this man ! 
 Silence in the courts of Hell, 
 Silence for a fearful span : 
 Such, as ere Gomorrha fell, 
 And the ruining thunder ran. 
 
 I can die. To quit the light, 
 Hide my misery in gloom, 
 Well indeed ! But in that night, 
 At his voice, to meet my doom ! 
 And Death's Angels, who may fight ? 
 
 1887. 
 
 IN HONOREM B. V. M. DE WINTON 
 MARTYRUMQUE WICCAMICORUJVL 
 To the Rev. Fr. Lean, O.C. 
 
 MARTYRES olim validi, 
 
 Fratresque vos Wiccamici ! 
 
 Coelicolae qui vivitis, 
 
 Orate pro Wiccamicis. 
 
 Per Fundatoris insciam 
 Oblivii memoriam : 
 Date preces pro fratribus, 
 Ne confundamur ocius. 
 29 
 
Saevior vobis erat mors : 
 At vitae immortalis sors 
 Vos interchoros posuit, 
 Quos Deus ipse reficit. 
 
 Deliciis fruimini : 
 Nunc igitur propitii 
 In valle laborantibus, 
 Fundite lumen clarius. 
 
 8uid valet furor Gentium ? 
 Dhortes Immortalium 
 Draconis vincent copias : 
 Nunquam labavit Veritas. 
 
 Et iuventutis memores 
 Dele&at vos secura spes : 
 Augebitur vis Fidei 
 Ad voluntatem Wiccami. 
 
 Guam dulce nomen consonat 
 Domus ! Et nostra superat 
 Domus terrestres caeteras : 
 O domus dulcis ! floreas. 
 
 Quae pariter amavimus : 
 Mons Catharinae pedibus 
 Vestris erat amabilis ; 
 Laps usque Ichini gracilis. 
 
 Vobisque cara claustra sunt, 
 Sacro quae cantu perstrepunt : 
 Et coluistis mortuos 
 Antiquitus Wiccamicos. 
 
 Vos autem non Wiccamica, 
 Sed Urbs coelorum mystica 
 Perpetuos ample&itur 
 Gives : et vox exoritur : 
 
 3 
 
Vox Angelorum carmine 
 Oui Sion stant in limine : 
 Vos circum adorantes stant, 
 Et triumphantes celebrant. 
 
 Quantus nam ignis vere vos 
 Fons testabatur aureos ! 
 Quanta nox mortis animas 
 Inveniebat lucidas ! 
 
 Per Crucifixi Sanguinem, 
 Per vitam Matris humilem : 
 Monstrate Matris gloriam, 
 Et Crucifixi regiam. 
 
 Maria ! nonne Mater es ? 
 Filios audi supplices : 
 Misericors in miseros, 
 Pacis ad vias trahe nos ! 
 
 Agimus tibi gratias, 
 Salus et Lux ! gratissimas : 
 Quae Domum tui nominis 
 Amore tuo protegis. 
 
 Antiquas super ianuas 
 Etiamnum veneranda stas : 
 Tuis tui vae ! nesciis 
 Arx et coelorum Porta sis. 
 
 1890. 
 
 OXFORD. 
 
 To Arthur Gallon. 
 
 OVER, the four long years ! And now there rings 
 One voice of freedom and regret : Farewell ! 
 Now old remembrance sorrows, and now sings : 
 But song from sorrow, now, I cannot tell. 
 
City of weathered cloister and worn court ; 
 Gray city of strong towers and clustering spires : 
 Where art's fresh loveliness would first resort ; 
 Where lingering art kindled her latest fires. 
 
 Where on all hands, wondrous with ancient grace, 
 Grace touched with age, rise works of goodliest men : 
 Next Wykeham's art obtain their splendid place 
 The zeal of Inigo, the strength of Wren. 
 
 Where at each coign of every antique street, 
 
 A memory hath taken root in stone : 
 
 There, Raleigh shone ; there, toiled Franciscan feet ; 
 
 There, Johnson flinched not, but endured, alone. 
 
 There, Shelley dreamed his white Platonic dreams ; 
 There, classic Landor throve on Roman thought ; 
 There, Addison pursued his quiet themes ; 
 There, smiled Erasmus, and there, Colet taught. 
 
 And there, O memory more sweet than all ! 
 
 Lived he, whose eyes keep yet our passing light ; 
 
 Whose crystal lips Athenian speech recall ; 
 
 Who wears Rome's purple with least pride, most right. 
 
 That is the Oxford, strong to charm us yet : 
 Eternal in her beauty and her past. 
 What, though her soul be vexed ? She can forget 
 Cares of an hour : only the great things last. 
 
 Only the gracious air, only the charm, 
 And ancient might of true humanities : 
 These, nor assault of man, nor time, can harm; 
 Not these, nor Oxford with her memories. 
 
 Together have we walked with willing feet 
 Gardens of plenteous trees, bowering soft lawn : 
 Hills, whither Arnold wandered ; and all sweet 
 June meadows, from the troubling world withdrawn : 
 32 
 
Chapels of cedarn fragrance, and rich gloom 
 Poured from empurpled panes on either hand : 
 Cool pavements, "carved with legends of the tomb ; 
 Grave haunts, where we might dream, and understand. 
 
 Over, the four long years ! And unknown powers 
 Call to us, going forth upon our way : 
 Ah ! turn we, and look back upon the towers, 
 That rose above our lives, and cheered the day. 
 
 Proud and serene, against the sky, they gleam : 
 Proud and secure, upon the earth, they stand : 
 Our city hath the air of a pure dream, 
 And hers indeed is an Hesperian land. 
 
 Think of her so ! the wonderful, the fair, 
 The immemorial, and the ever young : 
 The city, sweet with our forefathers' care ; 
 The city, where the Muses all have sung. 
 
 Ill times may be ; she hath no thought of time : 
 She reigns beside the waters yet in pride. 
 Rude voices cry : but in her ears the chime 
 Of full, sad bells brings back her old springtide. 
 
 Like to a queen in pride of place, she wears 
 The splendour of a crown in Radcliffe's dome. 
 Well fare she, well ! As perfect beauty fares ; 
 And those high places, that are beauty's home. 
 
 1890. 
 
 LONDON TOWN. 
 
 To Arthur Mackmurdo. 
 
 LET others chaunt a country praise, 
 Fair river walks and meadow ways j 
 Dearer to me my sounding days 
 In London Town : 
 
 33 D 
 
To me the tumult of the street 
 Is no less music, than the sweet 
 Surge of the wind among the wheat, 
 By dale or down. 
 
 Three names mine heart with rapture hails, 
 With homage: Ireland, Cornwall, Wales: 
 Lands of lone moor, and mountain gales, 
 
 And stormy coast : 
 Yet London's voice upon the air 
 Pleads at mine heart, and enters there; 
 Sometimes I wellnigh love and care 
 
 For London most. 
 
 Listen upon the ancient hills : 
 
 All silence! save the lark, who trills 
 
 Through sunlight, save the rippling rills: 
 
 There peace may be. 
 But listen to great London! loud, 
 As thunder from the purple cloud, 
 Comes the deep thunder of the crowd, 
 
 And heartens me. 
 
 O gray, O gloomy skies! What then? 
 Here is a marvellous world of men ; 
 More wonderful than Rome was, when 
 
 The world was Rome! 
 See the great stream of life flow by ! 
 Here thronging myriads laugh and sigh, 
 Here rise and fall, here live and die : 
 
 In this vast home. 
 
 In long array they march toward death, 
 Armies, with proud or piteous breath : 
 Forward! the spirit in them saith, 
 
 Spirit of life: 
 
 Here the triumphant trumpets blow; 
 Here mourning music sorrows lowj 
 34 
 
Victors and vanquished, still they go 
 Forward in strife. 
 
 Who will not heed so great a sight ? 
 Greater than marshalled stars of night, 
 That move to music and with light : 
 
 For these are men ! 
 These move to music of the soul ; 
 Passions, that madden or control : 
 These hunger for a distant goal, 
 
 Seen now and then. 
 
 Is mine too tragical a strain, 
 Chaunting a burden full of pain. 
 And labour, that seems all in vain ? 
 
 I sing but truth. 
 
 Still, many a merry pleasure yet, 
 To many a merry measure set, 
 Is ours, who need not to forget 
 
 Summer and youth. 
 
 Do London birds forget to sing? 
 Do London trees refuse the spring ? 
 Is London May no pleasant thing? 
 
 Let country fields, 
 To milking maid and shepherd boy, 
 Give flowers, and song, and bright employ : 
 Her children also can enjoy, 
 
 What London yields. 
 
 Gleaming with sunlight, each soft lawn 
 
 Lies fragrant beneath dew of dawn; 
 
 The spires and towers rise, far withdrawn, 
 
 Through golden mist : 
 At sunset, linger beside Thames: 
 See now, what radiant lights and flames ! 
 That ruby burns : that purple shames 
 
 The amethyst. 
 
 35 ' 
 
Winter was long, and dark, and cold: 
 Chill rains ! grim fogs, black fold on fold, 
 Round street, and square, and river rolled ! 
 
 Ah, let it be : 
 
 Winter is gone ! Soon comes July, 
 With wafts from hayfields by-and-by : 
 While in the dingiest courts you spy 
 
 Flowers fair to see. 
 
 Take heart of grace : and let each hour 
 Break gently into bloom and flower : 
 Winter and sorrow have no power 
 
 To blight all bloom. 
 One day, perchance, the sun will see 
 London's entire felicity : 
 And all her loyal children be 
 
 Clear of all gloom. 
 
 A dream ? Dreams often dreamed come true : 
 Our world would seem a world made new 
 To those, beneath the churchyard yew 
 
 Laid long ago! 
 
 When we beneath like shadows bide, 
 Fair London^ throned upon Thames' side, 
 May be our children's children's pride: 
 
 And we shall know. 
 
 1891. 
 
 CYHIRAETH. 
 
 To F. York Powell 
 SUNK and set our sun, that shone : 
 Now are light and glory gone 
 From glittering Llanarmon! 
 We heard the doom, the deathcry, wail 
 Between the mountains and the vale, 
 Through desolate Llanarmon. 
 36 
 
For a crown, Llanarmon bears 
 But a bristling crest of spears: 
 
 Fierce are thy joys, Llanarmon ! 
 And older than the Druid oak 
 His line, the leader of thy folk, 
 
 Llewellyn of Llanarmon ! 
 
 Valiant and divinely proud, 
 
 He : till death against him vowed 
 
 Malevolence, Llanarmon ! 
 Death, angered at a man so great, 
 Sent travelling from the Ghostly Gate 
 
 The lone deathcry, Llarnarmon ! 
 
 From the Ghostly Gate it came, 
 Keen as wind, and swift as flame : 
 
 Thou knowest it, Llanarmon ! 
 But wildest flame, and fiercest wind, 
 Less fearful are to strong mankind, 
 
 Than that strange fear, Llanarmon ! 
 
 High in heaven had there been 
 Horrors heard, and visions seen, 
 
 By whispering Llanarmon : 
 Armed hosts, at onset long and loud 
 Clashing within the sullen cloud, 
 
 Clanged over pale Llanarmon. 
 
 On the winds' waste passages, 
 Dim death's presage angel is 
 
 To eyes of man, Llanarmon ! 
 But when, since solemn earth began, 
 Pierced agony to ears of man, 
 
 Clearer than this, Llanarmon? 
 
 Not a spirit, that, of air, 
 Earth, or water : past compare, 
 To agonized Llanarmon 
 37 
 
Comes that immitigable cry; 
 The music sent, before they die, 
 The princes of Llanarmon ! 
 
 Through the vasty Druid trees 
 Murmuring to the mountain breeze 
 
 Bravely, above Llanarmon, 
 Even as it were the sea in Jurge, 
 Down swept the dolour and the dirge 
 
 At midnight on Llanarmon. 
 
 Ah, the waft of plangent breath, 
 Harbinger of ready death 
 
 To shuddering Llanarmon ! 
 A tide of sorrow strongly set 
 From the gray region of regret 
 
 Toward thee, forlorn Llanarmon ! 
 
 Strong men blaunched to hear that tone, 
 Lovers closelier clasped their own, 
 
 In tremulous Llanarmon : 
 Until within Llewellyn's halls 
 Rose, rang, around the trophied walls : 
 
 Woe for bereaved Llanarmon ! 
 
 On the wolfskins he had lain, 
 Prisoned long in burning pain : 
 
 What tears were thine, Llanarmon ! 
 Sorrow ! upon the thundering field 
 Not his, his soul in death to yield, 
 
 Fighting for thee, Llanarmon ! 
 
 Bitterness of wounding fire 
 
 To his heart drew surely nigher, 
 
 As death drew nigh Llanarmon : 
 Until, while wailed the herald cry, 
 Upright he sprang, and stood to die, 
 
 So : Lion of Llanarmon ! 
 
 38 
 
Lion soul and eagle face 
 
 Fought with death, a splendid space: 
 
 Oh, proud be thou, Llanarmon ! 
 Not man with man, but man with death 
 Wrestled: thine hoariest minstrel saith 
 
 No greater deed, Llanarmon ! 
 
 Amid lightning of blue swords 
 Noblier never died thy lords, 
 
 Than died this lord, Llanarmon! 
 Fell the high face, the great heart broke : 
 Within the Shadowy Isle he woke, 
 
 Thy paladin, Llanarmon ! 
 
 White and stern Llewellyn slept, 
 While his praising people kept 
 
 Vigil in sad Llanarmon: 
 The cry, that called this Man of men, 
 Hushed, leaving them but silence then, 
 
 Dark silence, in Llanarmon. 
 
 1896. 
 
 LAMB. 
 
 To Alfred Pollard. 
 
 SJINT CHARLES! for Thackeray called thee so: 
 Saint, at whose name our fond hearts glow: 
 See now, this age of tedious woe, 
 
 That snaps and snarls ! 
 Thine was a life of tragic shade ; 
 A life, of care and sorrow made : 
 But nought could make thine heart afraid, 
 
 Gentle Saint Charles ! 
 
 Encumbered dearly with old books, 
 Thou, by the pleasant chimney nooks, 
 39 
 
 . 
 
Didst laugh, with merry-meaning looks, 
 
 Thy griefs away: 
 We, bred on modern magazines, 
 Point out, how much our sadness means ; 
 And some new woe our wisdom gleans, 
 
 Day by dull day. 
 
 Lover of London! whilst thy feet 
 Haunted each old familiar street, 
 Thy brave heart found life's turmoil sweet, 
 
 Despite life's pain. 
 
 We fume and fret and, when we can, 
 Cry up some new and noisy plan, 
 Big with the Rights and Wrongs of Man : 
 
 And where's the gain ? 
 
 Gentle Saint Charles! I turn to thee, 
 Tender and true : thou teachest me 
 To take with joy, what joys there be, 
 
 And bear the rest. 
 Walking thy London day by day, 
 The thought of thee makes bright my way, 
 And in thy faith I fain would stay, 
 
 Doing my best. 
 
 Along the Mall^ along the Strand^ 
 Each turn I take, still thou dost stand, 
 A patron spirit, at mine hand : 
 
 So, should my choice, 
 Beside the dear book-laden stall, 
 On books not books perversely fall : 
 Nay! take the play^ the pastoral! 
 
 Pleads thy wise voice. 
 
 So, though the world be full of noise ; 
 And most new books, but foolish toys ; 
 I share with thee thine ancient joys, 
 Marvel I or hiarles: 
 40 
 
So, tired with rambling through the Town, 
 I taste the rich delights of Browne; 
 With Ella for the evening's crown, 
 Gentle Saint Charles! 
 
 1891. 
 
 SATANAS. 
 
 To Jorge Santayana. 
 
 ECCE ! Princeps infernorum, 
 Rex veneficus amorum 
 Vilium et mortiferorum, 
 
 Ecce ! regnat Lucifer : 
 Animis qui dominatur, 
 
 euibus coelum spoliatur; 
 ui malignus bona fatur, 
 Cor corrumpens suaviter. 
 
 Fructus profert; inest cinis : 
 Profert flores plenos spinis : 
 Vitae eius mors est finis : 
 
 Crux est eius requies. 
 Oualis illic apparebit 
 Cruciatus, et manebit! 
 Quantas ista quot habebit 
 
 Mors amaritudines ! 
 
 luventutis quam formosa 
 Floret inter rosas rosa ! 
 Venit autem vitiosa 
 
 Species infamiae : 
 Veniunt crudeles visus, 
 Voces simulati risus; 
 Et inutilis fit nisus 
 
 Flebilis laetitiae. 
 
 uanto vitium splendescit, 
 anto anima nigrescit; 
 
 4* 
 
Tanto tandem cor marcescit, 
 
 Per peccata dulcia. 
 Gaudens mundi Princeps mali 
 Utitur veneno tali, 
 Voluptate Avernali j 
 
 O mellita vitia! 
 
 Gaudet Princeps huius mundi 
 Videns animam confundi; 
 Cordis amat moribundi 
 
 Aspe&are proelium. 
 Vana tentat, vana quaerens, 
 Cor anhelum, frustra moerensj 
 Angit animae inhaerens 
 
 Flamma cor miserrimum. 
 
 Gaudet Re&or tenebrarum 
 Immolare cor amarum; 
 Satiare furiarum 
 
 Rex sorores avidas. 
 Vae! non stabtt in aeternum 
 Regnum^ ait Rex, infernum : 
 W, dum veniat Supermini^ 
 
 Dabo vobis viftimas. 
 
 1893. 
 
 TO MORFYDD DEAD. 
 
 i. 
 WOULD, to the glory of thine eyes might change, 
 
 In passionate strange surprise, 
 Lightning, that in darkness flies ! 
 
 Oh, fairer yet ! would, an unbending sheaf 
 
 Of steel my grief might end, 
 And to thine my freed soul send ! 
 42 
 
Would, I might meet swift death from flight of spears ! 
 
 I waste in tears the night, 
 Morfydd, O my lost delight ! 
 
 I would, that on the fiercest field of blood, 
 
 Morfydd ! I stood, no shield 
 Sheltering my breast unsteeled ! 
 
 I would, that swords of death rang round my way, 
 
 This weary day, and found 
 Home within the heart, thine crowned ! 
 
 I would, that my freed soul within the wind 
 
 Might fly, and find, and win 
 Thine, and joy of death begin ! 
 
 I would, that with eternal wings we went, 
 
 All sorrow spent, all things 
 Ended, save the song love sings ! 
 
 Sweet spears and swords, who send his due to death ! 
 
 My sad heart saith not you 
 Nay : ah, swift then, pierce it through ! 
 
 1895. 
 
 u. 
 
 MORFYDD at midnight 
 Met the Nameless Ones : 
 Now she wanders on the winds, 
 
 White and lone. 
 I would give the light 
 
 Of eternal suns, 
 To be with her on the winds, 
 No more lone ! 
 
 Oh, wild sea of air ! 
 Oh, night's vast sweet noon ! 
 We would wander through the night, 
 43 
 
Star and star. 
 Nay ! but she, most fair ! 
 Sun to me and moon : 
 I the vassal of her flight, 
 Far and far. 
 
 Morfydd at midnight 
 Met the Nameless Ones: 
 Now she wanders on the winds, 
 
 White and lone. 
 Take from me the light, 
 God! of all Thy suns: 
 Give me her, who on the winds 
 Wanders lone ! 
 
 1896. 
 
 THE DARKNESS. 
 
 To the Rev. Fr. Dover, S.J. 
 MASTER of spirits ! hear me : King of souls ! 
 I kneel before Thine altar, the long night, 
 Besieging Thee with penetrable prayers ; 
 And all I ask, light from the Face of God. 
 Thy darkness Thou hast given me enough, 
 The dark clouds of Thine angry majesty : 
 Now give me light ! I cannot always walk 
 Surely beneath the full and starless night. 
 Lighten me, fallen down, I know not where, 
 Save, to the shadows and the fear of death. 
 Thy Saints in light see light, and sing for joy : 
 Safe from the dark, safe from the dark and cold. 
 But from my dark comes only doubt of light : 
 Disloyalty, that trembles to despair. 
 Now bring me out of night, and with the sun 
 Clothe me, and crown me with Thy seven stars, 
 Thy spirits in the hollow of Thine hand. 
 Thou from the still throne of Thy tabernacle 
 Wilt come to me in glory, O Lord God ! 
 44 
 
Thou wilt, I doubt Thee not : I worship Thee 
 Before Thine holy altar, the long night. 
 Else have I nothing in the world, but death : 
 Thine hounding winds rush by me day and night, 
 Thy seas roar in mine ears : I have no rest, 
 No peace, but am afflicted constantly, 
 Driven from wilderness to wilderness. 
 And yet Thou hast a perfect house of light, 
 Above the four great winds, an house of peace: 
 Its beauty of the crystal and the dew, 
 Guard Angels and Archangels, in their hands 
 The blade of a sword shaken. Thither bring 
 Thy servant : when the black night falls on me, 
 With bitter voices tempting in the gloom, 
 Send out Thine armies, flaming ministers, 
 And shine upon the night : for what I would, 
 I cannot, save these help me. O Lord God ! 
 Now, when my prayers upon Thine altar lie, 
 When Thy dark anger is too hard for me : 
 Though vision of Thyself, through flying fire, 
 Have mercy, and give light, and stablish me ! 
 
 1889. 
 
 CHRISTMAS. 
 
 To the Rev. William Busby. 
 
 I. 
 
 SING Bethlehem ! Sing Bethlehem ! 
 You daughters of Jerusalem ! 
 Keep sorrow for Gethsemani, 
 And mourning for Mount Calvary ! 
 
 Why are your lids and lashes wet ? 
 Here is no darkling Olivet. 
 Sing Bethlehem ! Sing Bethlehem ! 
 You daughters of Jerusalem ! 
 45 
 
How should we sing of Bethlehem, 
 
 We, daughters of Jerusalem? 
 
 We are the people of the Jews : 
 
 Our balms would soothe Him not, hut bruise. 
 
 Ah, Calvary ! ah, Calvary ! 
 We wretched women cry to thee : 
 We, daughters of Jerusalem ; 
 And enemies of Bethlehem . 
 
 With faces cast upon the dust, 
 
 We weep those things, which do we must : 
 
 Our tears embitter Calvary, 
 
 And water thee, Gethsemani ! 
 
 Nay, Bethlehem ! Sing Bethlehem ! 
 Poor daughters of Jerusalem ! 
 You know not, what you do : but He 
 Will pardon you on Calvary. 
 
 1888. 
 
 n. 
 THE last week before Christmas, 
 
 Hoar lies the orchard grass 
 From pear tree unto apple tree, 
 
 Where feet well shod must pass : 
 By dripping trees a woodman's fire 
 
 Burns the last leaves, alas ! 
 And the blue smoke drifts through the air, 
 
 Above the branches bare. 
 
 The last week before Christmas, 
 
 The last before the snow : 
 Stand steaming cattle by the hedge, 
 
 With meek heads bending low : 
 The chattering rivulet flows fast, 
 
 While there is time to flow : 
 
And the blue smoke drifts through the air, 
 Above the branches bare. 
 
 The last week before Christmas, 
 
 Red berries few to find : 
 The brown fir cones upon the bough 
 
 Move to a gentle wind : 
 Down the gray sky go chilly gleams, 
 
 Bringing the sun to mind : 
 And the blue smoke drifts through the air, 
 
 Above the branches bare. 
 
 Oh ! last week before Christmas, 
 
 Second before New Year : 
 Heap heart of oak upon the hearth, 
 
 And keep you now good cheer : 
 With Christus natus for an health, 
 
 And Christi Mater dear : 
 Then blue's the sky, and bright's the air, 
 
 Above the blossoms fair ! 
 
 1888. 
 
 in. 
 
 Tres. HAIL to our brother Gabriel ! 
 Now we, thy brothers, Michael, 
 And Raphael, 
 And Uriel, 
 Hail thee, come home from Israel ! 
 
 Gabriel. I saw among the lilies dwell 
 
 Mary our Queen, who pleaseth well 
 The Spirit of our God. All hail^ 
 Mary our )ueen ! Sing, thou in mail, 
 Lord Michael ! Sing, Uriel ; thou, 
 Clothed with the sun upon thy brow ! 
 And sing thou Hail ! whose pilgrims now 
 Shall climb the steep ways out of Hell, 
 Joy of poor pilgrims, Raphael ! 
 47 
 
Michael. I, Captain of the Lord God's host, 
 Give glory to the Holy Ghost, 
 And give to Mary, loved of Him ! 
 
 Uriel. I, Chief of the white Cherubim, 
 
 Give thanks to Mary : and to Him, 
 That Holy Child, Who shall be born, 
 King Jesus Christ, on Christmas morn. 
 
 Raphael. I, Prince of burning Seraphim, 
 
 Give praise, give praise, to Mary Queen, 
 With whom the Grace of God hatn been. 
 
 Omnes. Now play through Heaven the Angel bell : 
 Make music of the Angel us ! 
 The King is come to Israel : 
 The Queen of Heaven is found for us. 
 
 1888. 
 
 IV. 
 
 CHRIST hath Christ's Mother 
 Dicamus ! Canamus ! 
 
 Borne, our dear Brother, 
 Canamus ! Dicamus ! 
 
 In the stall of Bethlehem. 
 
 Then leave we all Jerusalem, 
 
 To kiss the King of Bethlehem : 
 Cut vocibus gaudentibus 
 Dicamus / Canamus ! 
 Gloriam. 
 
 Come from the city ! 
 
 Dicamus ! Canamus ! 
 God hath had pity 
 
 Canamus f Dicamus ! 
 On His people Israel. 
 And pity will He have as well 
 
On Gentiles beyond Israel : 
 Nunc vocibus gaudentibus 
 Dicamus ! Canamus / 
 Gloriam. 
 
 Laud in the highest ! 
 
 Dicamus ! Canamus ! 
 Now, Death, thou diest : 
 
 Canamus ! Dicamus ! 
 Lo ! God goeth to His grave, 
 Us dead and dying men to save, 
 And bring the captives from the grave : 
 )uo vocibus gaudentibus 
 
 Dicamus ! Canamus ! 
 Gloriam. 
 
 Snows the land cover : 
 
 Dicamus ! Canamus ! 
 Lo ! comes our Lover : 
 
 Canamus ! Dicamus ! 
 Comes a glory, comes a light : 
 Gold on snow and in the height : 
 Glory from the Light of Light ! 
 Quin vocibus gaudentibus 
 Dicamus ! Canamus ! 
 Gloriam. 
 
 Praise to the Father ! 
 
 Dicamus ! Canamus ! 
 Now will He gather 
 
 Canamus I Dicamus ! 
 Us His helpless little ones 
 From endless Death's dominions : 
 Us, God the Father's little ones. 
 Cm vocibus gaudentibus^ 
 
 Dicamus ! Canamus / 
 Gloriam. 
 
 49 
 
Praise to Son. Jesus ! 
 
 Dicamus ! Canamus ! 
 Him, whose Cross frees us 
 
 Canamus ! Dicamus ! 
 From the cruel hand of sin. 
 Now first to Him our songs begin, 
 Since now our hearts have done with sin. 
 Sic vocibus gaudentibus 
 
 Dicamus ! Canamus ! 
 Gloriam. 
 
 Praise Mary Mother ! 
 
 Dicamus / Canamus J 
 Mary, none other, 
 
 Canamus ! Dicamus ! 
 Welcome might the Holy Ghost, 
 Because her soul was pure the most : 
 Now praise be to the Holy Ghost ! 
 Cut vocibus gaudentibus 
 
 Dicamus ! Canamus ! 
 Gloriam. 
 
 Praise, praise, and praises, 
 
 Dicamus / Canamus ! 
 Earth with Heaven raises 
 
 Canamus ! Dicamus ! 
 To the glorious Trinity ! 
 Sons of new morning, mingle we 
 With morning stars our melody : 
 Et vocibus gaudentibus 
 Dicamus ! Canamus ! 
 Gloriam. 
 
 1888. 
 
CAROLS. 
 To the Rev. Fr. Russell, S.J. 
 
 I. 
 
 FAIR snow and winter wind, 
 Be not unkind 
 To this your King ! 
 Fall soft, and murmur mild, 
 
 About the Child : 
 Lest His first hour be suffering. 
 
 See ! with large, gentle eyes, 
 
 Close where He lies, 
 
 Look ox and ass : 
 They bow their patient, meek 
 
 Heads to the weak 
 Lamb, Who to sacrifice must pass. 
 
 Soon shall come Cross and Crown 
 
 In Salem Town : 
 
 But now at least, 
 Rocked upon Mary's breast, 
 
 Let Jesu rest : 
 And all the earth keep Christmas Feast. 
 
 With Him your sorrows sleep. 
 
 No longer weep, 
 
 O peftora mortalia ! 
 Sing you the Angel Song, 
 
 Sing loud and long ! 
 Sing : In Excelsis Gloria ! 
 
 1895. 
 
 To the Rev. Fr. Dawson, O.M.I. 
 
 n. 
 
 SAY, what saw you, Man ? 
 And say, what heard ? 
 5' 
 
/ saw, while Angels sang, 
 Jesus the Word. 
 
 Saw you aught else, Man ? 
 
 Aught else heard you ? 
 / saw the Son of Man, 
 
 And the wind blew. 
 
 Saw you beside, Man ? 
 
 Or heard beside ? 
 I saw, while murderers mocked. 
 
 The Crucified. 
 
 Nay ! what is this, Man ? 
 
 And who is He ? 
 The Holy Child must die 
 
 For you and me. 
 
 Oh ! say, Brother ! Oh ! say, Brother ! 
 
 What then shall be ? 
 Home in His Sacred Heart 
 
 For you and me. 
 
 Oh ! what can we give, Brother ! 
 
 For such a thing ? 
 Body and sou/, Brother / 
 
 To Christ the King. 
 
 1896. 
 
 CHRISTMAS AND IRELAND. 
 
 To Miss Milligan. 
 
 THE golden stars give warmthless fire, 
 As weary Mary goes through night : 
 
 Her feet are torn by stone and briar ; 
 She hath no rest, no strength, no light : 
 52 
 
O Mary, weary in the snow, 
 
 Remember Ireland's woe ! 
 
 O Joseph, sad for Mary's sake ! 
 
 Look on our earthly Mother too : 
 Let not the heart of Ireland break 
 
 With agony, the ages through : 
 For Mary's love, love also thou 
 
 Ireland, and save her now ! 
 
 Harsh were the folk, and bitter stern, 
 At Bethlehem, that night of nights. 
 
 For you no cheering hearth shall burn : 
 We have no room here^ you no rights. 
 
 O Mary and Joseph ! hath not she, 
 Ireland, been even as ye ? 
 
 The ancient David's royal house 
 
 Was thine, Saint Joseph ! wherefore she, 
 Mary, thine Ever Virgin Spouse, 
 
 To thine own city went with thee. 
 Behold ! thy citizens disown 
 
 The heir of David's throne ! 
 
 Nay, more ! The Very King of kings 
 Was with you, coming to his own : 
 
 They thrust Him forth to lowliest things ; 
 The poor meek beasts of toil alone 
 
 Stood by, when came to piteous birth 
 The God of all the earth. 
 
 And she, our Mother Ireland, knows 
 
 Insult, and infamies of wrong: 
 Her innocent children clad with woes, 
 
 Her weakness trampled by the strong : 
 And still upon her Holy Land 
 
 Her pitiless foemen stand. 
 53 
 
From Manger unto Cross and Crown 
 Went Christ : and Mother Mary passed 
 
 Through Seven Sorrows, and sat down 
 Upon the Angel Throne at last. 
 
 Thence, Mary ! to thine own Child pray, 
 For Ireland's hope this day ! 
 
 She wanders amid winter still, 
 
 The dew of tears is on her face : 
 Her wounded heart takes yet its fill 
 
 Of desolation and disgrace. 
 God still is God ! And through God she 
 Foreknows her joy to be. 
 
 The snows shall perish at the spring, 
 
 The flowers pour fragrance round her feet : 
 Ah, Jesus ! Mary ! Joseph ! bring 
 
 This mercy from the Mercy Seat ! 
 Send it, sweet King of Glory, born 
 Humbly on Christmas Morn ! 
 
 1896. 
 
 MAGIC. 
 
 To John Myres. 
 
 I. 
 
 BECAUSE I work not, as logicians work, 
 Who but to ranked and marshalled reason yield : 
 But my feet hasten through a faery field, 
 Thither, where underneath the rainbow lurk 
 Spirits of youth, and life, and gold, concealed : 
 
 Because by leaps I scale the secret sky, 
 Upon the motion of a cunning star : 
 Because I hold the winds oracular, 
 And think on airy warnings, when men die : 
 Because I tread the ground, where shadows are : 
 54 
 
Therefore my name is grown a popular scorn, 
 And I a children's terror ! Only now, 
 For I am old ! O Mother Nature ! thou 
 Leavest me not : wherefore, as night turns morn, 
 A magian wisdom breaks beneath my brow. 
 
 These painful toilers of the bounded way, 
 Chaired within cloister halls : can they renew 
 Ashes to flame ? Can they of moonlit dew 
 Prepare the immortalizing draughts ? Can they 
 Give gold for refuse earth, or bring to view 
 
 Earth's deepest doings ? Let them have their school, 
 Their science, and their safety ! I am he, 
 Whom Nature fills with her philosophy, 
 And takes for kinsman. Let me be their fool, 
 And wise man in the winds' society. 
 
 1887. 
 
 ii. 
 
 THEY wrong with ignorance a royal choice, 
 Who cavil at my loneliness and labour : 
 For them, the luring wonder of a voice, 
 The viol's cry for them, the harp and tabour : 
 
 For me divine austerity, 
 
 And voices of philosophy. 
 
 Ah ! light imaginations, that discern 
 
 No passion in the citadel of passion : 
 
 Their fancies lie on flowers ; but my thoughts turn 
 
 To thoughts and things of an eternal fashion : 
 
 The majesty and dignity 
 
 Of everlasting verity. 
 
 Mine is the sultry sunset, when the skies 
 Tremble with strange, intolerable thunder : 
 And at the dead of an hushed night, these eyes 
 Draw down the soaring oracles winged with wonder: 
 55 
 
From the four winds they come to me, 
 The Angels of Eternity. 
 
 Men pity me ; poor men, who pity me ! 
 
 Poor, charitable, scornful souls of pity ! 
 
 I choose laborious loneliness : and ye 
 
 Lead Love in triumph through the dancing city : 
 
 While death and darkness girdle me, 
 
 I grope for immortality. 
 
 1887. 
 
 in. 
 
 POUR slowly out your holy balm of oil, 
 Within the grassy circle : let none spoil 
 Our favourable silence. Only I, 
 Winding wet vervain round mine eyes, will cry 
 Upon the powerful Lord of this our toil j 
 Until the first lark sing, the last star die. 
 
 Proud Lord of twilight, Lord of midnight, hear ! 
 . Thou hast forgone us ; and hast drowsed thine ear, 
 When haggard voices hail thee : thou hast turned 
 Blind eyes, dull nostrils, when our vows have burned 
 Herbs on the moonlit flame, in reverent fear : 
 Silence is all, our love of thee hath earned. 
 
 Master ! we call thee, calling on thy name ! 
 Thy savoury laurel crackles : the blue flame 
 Gleams, leaps, devours apace the dewy leaves. 
 Vain ! for nor breast of labouring midnight heaves, 
 Nor chilled stars fall : all things remain the same, 
 Save this new pang, that stings, and burns, and cleaves. 
 
 Despising us, thou knowest not ! We stand, 
 Bared for thine adoration, hand in hand : 
 Steely our eyes, our hearts to all but thee 
 Iron : as waves of the unresting sea, 
 56 
 
The wind of thy least Word is our command: 
 And our ambition hails thy sovereignty. 
 
 Come, Sisters ! for the King of night is dead : 
 
 Come ! for the frailest star of stars hath sped : 
 
 And though we waited for the waking sun, 
 
 Our King would wake not. Come ! our world is done : 
 
 For all the witchery of the world is fled, 
 
 And lost all wanton wisdom long since won. 
 
 1888. 
 
 FRIENDS, 
 i. 
 
 GUARDIAN Angel ! Patron Saints ! 
 You, who have cared for me : 
 
 You, who have borne with all my plaints 
 So patiently ! 
 
 1 ask but one thing now : I pray, 
 
 God grant through you, each friend 
 Be mine within Eternal Day, 
 World without end. 
 
 1894. 
 
 n. 
 
 POOR powerless Sorrow ! Helpless Death ! 
 Think they to worst me in the end ? 
 Come when they will, my Faith still saith : 
 I face them with a single friend. 
 
 Were I alone, I could not fight 
 The imperious Powers : I should but fear, 
 And tremble in the lonely night, 
 With never a friend of all friends near. 
 57 
 
But in the eyes of every friend, 
 Voice, or the holding of his hand, 
 I learn, how love can never end : 
 Oh, Heart of God ! I understand. 
 
 1894. 
 
 in. 
 
 THE haunting hopes, the perfect dreams, 
 The visionary joys, that fill 
 Mine heart with sudden gracious gleams : 
 Through friendship they grow clearer still. 
 
 Each friend possesses, each betrays, 
 Some secret of the eternal things : 
 Each one has walked celestial ways, 
 And held celestial communings. 
 
 The smiles upon their lips are bright 
 With beauty from the Face of God : 
 Their eyes keep something of that Light, 
 Which knows nor pause, nor period. 
 
 1894. 
 
 IV. 
 
 O PATRON Saints of all my friends ! 
 O Guardian Angels of them all ! 
 With them begins, with them still ends, 
 My prayer's most passionate call. 
 
 You know my voice : you know their names, 
 That wing so its least selfish tone 
 Across your white celestial flames, 
 And up to the White Throne. 
 
 Heaven were not Heaven, and they not there ; 
 Heaven were no Heaven, my friends away : 
 O Saints and Angels ! hear the prayer, 
 I pray you every day. 
 
INCENSE. 
 
 To Miss Alice Brown. 
 ALL the annulling clouds, that lie 
 Far in wait for years to come. 
 Shall not force me to forget 
 All the witcheries of home, 
 While in the world there linger yet 
 Heliotrope and mignonette : 
 In their scent home cannot die. 
 
 When the delicate dewdrops gleamed 
 Tremulous on the early blooms ; 
 The full sweetness of the dawn, 
 Gathered during twilight glooms, 
 Rose above the fields and lawn, 
 Ravishing me with fragrance, drawn 
 From each flower, that there had dreamed. 
 
 Then was innocent glory shed 
 
 All about the garden ground : 
 
 Gods of Helicon well had paced 
 
 By the laurels, and around 
 
 The bright lawn j nor deemed disgraced 
 
 Their high Godhead, nor misplaced 
 
 Their descent, since thither led. 
 
 By a maze of gossamer dew 
 Measured, lay the pasture leas : 
 Ruddy gray the sunlight glanced 
 Through the rippling poplar trees, 
 On the airy webs, where chanced 
 Dainty faery feet had danced 
 Without noise, the soft night through. 
 
 That was morn indeed ! And yet, 
 Gone the wondrous witchery ; 
 Gone the charm, the enchauntment gone ; 
 Still to aging memory 
 59 
 
Come the scents, the lights, that shone, 
 That were sweet : dreams lie upon 
 Heliotrope and mignonette. 
 
 Stronger than remembered looks, 
 Nearer than old written words, 
 Cling the loved old fragrances ; 
 At the matin time of birds, 
 Giving birth to memories : 
 Not one fancy perishes, 
 Born before we woke to books. 
 
 All will come again : once more 
 We shall fling our arms upon 
 Morning's wind, and ravish yet 
 All its load of incense, won 
 From rich wilding mignonette, 
 Clustered heliotrope, and wet 
 Meadows, O fair years of yore ! 
 
 1887. 
 
 II. 
 
 THEY do the will of beauty and regret, 
 Odours and travelling faery fragrances : 
 The breath of things, I never can forget, 
 The haunting spirit of old memories. 
 Gray grows the visible world ; fair cadences 
 Break into death : sweet are the field flowers yet. 
 
 Softly at evening, hard upon twilight, 
 
 Old earth breathes balmy air on hushing winds, 
 
 And takes with ravishment the face of night. 
 
 Pensive and solitary old age finds 
 
 Calm in the vesperal, mild air, that minds 
 
 His dwindling hour, of childhood's far delight. 
 
 A breath, a thought, a dream ! Ah, what a choir 
 Of long stilled voices : and of long closed eyes, 
 60 
 
What a light ! So came, so mine heart's desire 
 Came through the pinewood, where the sunlight dies 
 To-night. Since now these fragrant memories 
 Live, lives not also she, their soul of fire ? 
 
 1887. 
 
 TO PASSIONS. 
 
 To Henry Davray. 
 i. 
 
 THAT hate, and that, and that again, 
 Easy and simple are to bear : 
 My hatred of myself is pain 
 Beyond my tolerable share. 
 
 Comfort and joy, I have not claimed : 
 
 I ask no vast felicity. 
 
 But of myself to live ashamed 
 
 Is ever present agony. 
 
 O haunting thoughts, awhile away ! 
 
 brooding memories, go sleep ! 
 Give me one hour of every day : 
 Yours be the rest to vex and keep. 
 
 1894. 
 
 ii. 
 
 DARKER than death, fiercer than fire, 
 Hatefuller than the heart of Hell : 
 
 1 know thee, O mine own desire ! 
 I know not mine own self so well. 
 
 Passion, imperious, insolent, 
 Thou that destroyest me ! oh, slay 
 Me now, or leave me to repent : 
 I weary of thy lingering way. 
 
 1894. 
 61 
 
III. 
 
 THOU fool ! For if thou have thy way with me, 
 Thou wilt be still the same : but victor, I 
 Should make some fair perfection out of thee, 
 And reach the starry Heaven of Heavens thereby. 
 
 But thou preferrest the dark joy of Hell, 
 Triumphant over me drawn down to it ? 
 Thou fool ! My lost soul ever more would tell 
 Thy folly, and the anguish of the Pit. 
 
 1893. 
 
 HUGO. 
 
 To Fernand Ortmans. 
 I. 
 
 SILENT, who wast so long a voice of fire divine : 
 Down the world's mighty winds, a chaunt oracular ! 
 Vanished, who wast a light and splendour crystalline : 
 Highest in Heaven, a star beside the Morning Star ! 
 We, glad in grief, salute that glory, which is thine 
 Among the Thrones of Death, where Death's Undying 
 are ! 
 
 May 22. 
 
 n. 
 
 CROWNED for thy Throne of Death, this thy last lower 
 
 night, 
 Master ! thou sleepest well : and we, who love thee, 
 
 yearn 
 
 Beyond the walls of flame, that circle all our days, 
 On wings of music charioted, and song's delight, 
 To where the Seven Lamps with endless ardour burn 
 Before the Sapphire Throne, Spirits of perfect praise. 
 
 Victor and loving Lord, who, seeing this poor world 
 Wasted and worn with wrongs, wouldest not war, but 
 peace, 
 
 62 
 
And little children's laughter, and the law of love ! 
 Now thou art winds, and waves, and terrible thunders 
 
 hurled 
 From out night's battling clouds : and when storm 
 
 voices cease, 
 Thou art the calm, whereunder gentler waters move. 
 
 Ah, music from thy lips, light from thy lightning eyes, 
 Death from thine holy scorn : for these thy gifts of 
 
 gold, 
 What thanks, what lauds, what faith, what hearts made 
 
 whole through fire ? 
 
 Our silence and our tears thou takest : vainly tries 
 The passion of our pain by song to pierce the cold 
 Gulphs of the Shadow of Death, winged by our love's 
 
 desire. 
 
 May 31. 
 
 in. 
 
 SWEPT through night, ah Master ! alone and royal ; 
 Soared past deeps of night to the heights of morning : 
 What high rapture rang from thy lips, anointed 
 Son of the sunrise ? 
 
 What divinest passion of morning music 
 Rises round those Fields, where the feet of singers 
 Go through golden flowers of eternal springtide, 
 Master ! to meet thee ? 
 
 Here love's multitudinous praise of weeping 
 Hails thee passing home to the heart of earth : nay ! 
 Not in earth, but thou at the heart of Heaven, 
 Victor ! abidest. 
 
 There the eyes of ^Eschylus glow thee welcome : 
 Virgil hails thee : ah, for thy consecration, 
 Shakespeare bids thee sit by his side : and Dante, 
 Dante salutes thee ! 
 
 June 2: 1885. 
 63 
 
CROMWELL. 
 
 To E. K. Chambers. 
 Now, on his last of ways, 
 
 The great September star, 
 That crowned him on the days 
 Of Worcester and Dunbar, 
 Shines through the menacing night afar. 
 
 This day, his England knows 
 Freedom and fear in one ; 
 
 She holds her breath, while goes 
 Her mighty mastering son : 
 His sceptre-sword its work hath done. 
 
 O crowning mercy, Death ! 
 Peace to the stormy heart, 
 
 Peace to the passionate breath, 
 And awful eyes : their part 
 Is done, for thou their viclor art ! 
 
 Yet, is it peace with him ? 
 
 Answer, O Drogheda's dead ! 
 O ghosts, beside the dim 
 
 Waters and shadows dread ! 
 
 What of his coming shall be said ? 
 
 Answer, O fatal King ! 
 
 Whose sad, prophetic eyes 
 Foresaw his glory bring 
 
 Thy death ! He also lies 
 
 Dead : hath he peace, O King of sighs ? 
 
 His soul's most secret thought, 
 Eternal Light declares : 
 
 He, who in darkness wrought, 
 To very Truth now bares 
 All hidden hopes, all deep despairs. 
 64 
 
Maintains he in Death's land 
 
 The quarrel of the Lord, 
 As when from his live hand 
 
 Leaped lightnings of the sword ? 
 
 Is Come, good servant ! his reward ? 
 
 Hath the word come, Well done / 
 Or the pure word of doom, 
 
 Sending him from the sun 
 To walk in bitter gloom, 
 With the lost angels of the tomb ? 
 
 Prince of the iron rod 
 
 And war's imperious mail, 
 Did he indeed for God 
 
 Fight ever, and prevail, 
 
 Bidding the Lord of hosts All Hall? 
 
 Or was it ardent lust 
 Of majesty and might, 
 
 That stung and fired and thrust 
 His soul into the fight : 
 Mystic desire and fierce delight ? 
 
 Nay, peace for ever more ! 
 
 O martyred souls ! He comes, 
 
 Your conquered conqueror : 
 
 No tramplings now, nor drums, 
 
 Are his, who wrought your martyrdoms. 
 
 Tragic, triumphant form, 
 He comes to your dim ways, 
 
 Comes upon wings of storm : 
 
 Greet him, with pardoning praise, 
 With marvelling awe, with equal gaze ! 
 
 
KINGS OF MEN, 
 i. 
 
 RENAN AND TENNYSON. 
 
 FROM out two golden mouths, the marvellous breath, 
 France ! may not charm thee more ; nor, England ! 
 
 thee: 
 
 Only between two silences of death 
 Sounds the vast voice of the unquiet sea : 
 While moving on the waters God is heard, 
 Eternal Spirit with Eternal Word. 
 
 September; 1892. 
 
 II. 
 
 RENAN AND NEWMAN. 
 
 IN wild October, fifty years ago, 
 Renan left Saint-Sulpice, a Catholic 
 No more, no more the child of Holy Rome : 
 Upon the third day after that day, lo ! 
 Knelt Newman before Father Dominic, 
 And entered in unto the Holy Home. 
 O mystery of calling ! Who shall say ? 
 Did after joy, with Angel Hosts, outweigh 
 Woe for the darkness of the earlier day ? 
 
 Ottober : 1895. 
 
 SONGS, 
 i. 
 
 Now in golden glory goes 
 Autumn toward the time of snows : 
 Ere white winter come indeed, 
 Speed the hours, with music speed. 
 
 Heed not winter's mournful breath, 
 Sighing at the thought of death : 
 Make but music, dearly sad ; 
 Make but music, gravely glad. 
 66 
 
Music is a king of kings, 
 Mightiest of immortal things : 
 Music is a lord of lords, 
 Ruling all with royal chords. 
 
 Though the woodland ways be chill, 
 Though the woodland choirs be still : 
 Music moves the starry choir, 
 Music sets the soul on fire. 
 
 ii. 
 
 COUNTRY singers, leave not mute 
 Music of the voice and lute : 
 Country singers, come and sing ; 
 Voice with viol rivalling. 
 
 Chaunt to Pales, chaunt to Pan, 
 Gods of country maid and man : 
 They have blessed the shepherd's fold, 
 Filled the fields with waves of gold. 
 
 On the lawns, fair lovers all ! 
 Dance, till Hesper homeward call ; 
 Lapped in dreamland, you will keep 
 Safely your delightful sleep. 
 
 But the red sun lingers yet : 
 While you sing, he will not set. 
 He is lord of light and song : 
 Hail him, and both joys prolong. 
 
 1893. 
 
 NINETY-EIGHT. 
 
 To R. Barry O'Brien. 
 
 Who fears to speak of Ninety-Eight ? 
 He, who despairs of Ireland still : 
 Whose paltry soul finds nothing great 
 In honest failure : he, whose will, 
 
Feeble and faint in days of gloom, 
 Takes old defeat for final doom. 
 
 Who fears to speak of Ninety-Eight? 
 The man, who fears to speak of death : 
 Who clings and clasps the knees of fate, 
 And whimpers with his latest breath : 
 Who hugs his comfort to his heart, 
 And dares not play a Christian part. 
 
 Who fears to speak of Ninety-Eight? 
 The renegade, who sells his trust : 
 Whose love has rottened into hate, 
 Whose hopes have withered into dust : 
 He, who denies, and deems it mad, 
 The faith, his nobler boyhood had. 
 
 Who fears to speak of Ninety-Eight? 
 The enemy of Ireland fears ! 
 For Ireland undegenerate 
 Keeps yet the spirit of old years : 
 He sees, in visions of the night, 
 A nation arming for the right. 
 
 Who fears to speak of Ninety-Eight ? 
 Not he, who hates a poisonous peace : 
 For, while the days of triumph wait, 
 And till the days of sorrow cease, 
 He, with the Lord of Hosts his friend, 
 Will fight for Ireland to the end. 
 
 Let sword cross sword, or thought meet thought : 
 
 One fire of battle thrills them both. 
 
 Deliverance only can be wrought 
 
 By warfare without stay or sloth : 
 
 And by your prayers at Heaven's high gate, 
 
 True hearts, that beat in Ninety-Eight ! 
 
 68 
 
COMRADES. 
 
 To Marmaduke Langdale, 
 AT least, it was a life of swords, 
 
 Our life ! nor lived in vain : 
 We fought the fight with mighty lords, 
 
 Nor dastards have we slain. 
 
 We stirred at morn, and through bright air 
 
 Swept to the trysting place : 
 Winds of the mountains in our hair, 
 
 And sunrise on each face. 
 
 No need to spur ! our horses knew 
 
 The joy, to which we went : 
 Over the brightening lands they flew 
 
 Forward, and were content. 
 
 On each man's lips, an happy smile ; 
 
 In each man's eyes, delight : 
 So, fired with foretaste, mile on mile, 
 
 We thundered to the fight. 
 i 
 Let death come now, and from the sun 
 
 Hide me away : what then ? 
 My days have seen more prowess done, 
 
 Than years of other men. 
 
 Oh, warriors of the rugged heights, 
 
 We, where the eagles nest : 
 They, courtly soldiers, gentle knights, 
 
 By kings and dames caressed. 
 
 Not theirs, the passion of the sword, 
 
 The fire of living blades ! 
 Like men, they fought: and found reward 
 
 In dance and feast, like maids. 
 
 
We, on the mountain lawns encamped,' 
 
 Close under the great stars, 
 Turned, when the horses hard by stamped, 
 
 And dreamed again, of wars : 
 
 Or, if one woke, he saw the gleam 
 
 Of moonlight, on each face, 
 Touch its tumultuary dream 
 
 With moments of mild grace. 
 
 We hated no man ; but we fought 
 
 With all men : the fierce wind 
 Lashes the wide earth without thought ; 
 
 Our tempest scourged mankind. 
 
 They cursed us, living without laws ! 
 
 They, in their pride of peace : 
 Who bared no blade, but in just cause ; 
 
 Nor grieved, that war should cease. 
 
 O spirit of the wild hill-side ! 
 
 O spirit of the steel ! 
 We answered nothing, when they cried, 
 
 But challenged with a peal. 
 
 And, when the battle blood had poured 
 
 To slake our souls' desire : 
 Oh, brave to hear, how torrents roared 
 
 Beside the pinewood fire ! 
 
 My brothers, whom in warrior wise 
 The death of deaths hath stilled ! 
 Ah, you would understand these eyes, 
 Although with strange tears filled ! 
 
 1889. 
 
THE FAITH. 
 
 To Miss Blanche Pagan. 
 
 MOURNFUL Inisfail ! 
 
 Wind and sea 
 
 Sigh and wail, 
 Sigh and wail, for thee ! 
 
 By the willows we, 
 
 Inisfail ! 
 
 Weep for thee, 
 Mother of the Gael ! 
 
 Lonely Inisfail ! 
 
 Ah, to see 
 
 Worn and pale, 
 Faint and wounded, thee ! 
 
 How can our hearts be 
 
 Strong and hale ? 
 
 Thine in thee 
 Cries, O Inisfail ! 
 
 Cries, in bitter bale, 
 
 Venge Thou me ! 
 
 Inisfail ! 
 God is hearkening thee. 
 
 When the storm-winds flee, 
 
 Gone the gale : 
 
 Peace shall thee 
 Heal, O Inisfail ! 
 
 Then by hill and vale, 
 
 Lough and sea, 
 
 Inisfail ! 
 
 Joy shall sing of thee 
 7' 
 
 
Glory, and what glee. 
 
 Then shall hail 
 
 Thee, ah ! thee, 
 Mournful Inisfail ! 
 
 1894. 
 
 SURSUM CORDA. 
 
 To Francis Thompson. 
 LIFT up your hearts ! We lift 
 
 Them up 
 
 To God, and to God's gift, 
 The Passion Cup. 
 
 Lift up your hearts ! Ah, so 
 
 We will : 
 Through storm of fire or snow, 
 
 We lift them still. 
 
 Lift up your hearts / your hearts ! 
 
 Ah, yes ! 
 For then a glory parts 
 
 Our cloudiness. 
 
 Lift up your hearts ! Good sooth, 
 
 We must: 
 Shall they, the arks of truth, 
 
 Lie filled with dust ? 
 
 Lift up your hearts ! O Christ, 
 
 Thine Heart ! 
 Broken, sweet Sacrificed ! 
 
 By us Thou art. 
 
 Lift up your hearts ! oh, high ! 
 
 We make 
 Wide Wounds to enter by 
 
 In His, we brake. 
 
Lift up your hearts ! Nay, see ! 
 
 They are 
 Lifted to His, where He 
 
 Is Sun and Star. 
 
 Lift up your hearts ! But He 
 
 Bows His. 
 Deeps of our infamy : 
 
 There that Heart is ! 
 
 1896. 
 
 . A MEMORY. 
 
 To Ernest Radford. 
 
 FIVE miles and more of common land, 
 Where yellowing elm trees, either hand, 
 Rise among cottages of thatched 
 Thick roofs, with massy stonecrop patched ; 
 Old-fashioned blossoms droop before 
 The lattice windows and low door: 
 Whilst all around there will not cease 
 Quaint clamour of the flapping geese j 
 Gray wings, white breasts, a storm of feathers, 
 Delighting in the worst of weathers. 
 The plashy roadway winds along ; 
 And the wind wails in gusty song 
 Down from the heather hills' far blue 
 Mists and white clouds, and wanders through 
 All the sad common : yellowing elms 
 Moan, as the quick gust overwhelms 
 Their wintry fellowship of boughs. 
 One yellow, curved, vast waggon ploughs 
 Homeward through ancient ruts, with creak 
 And groan of the great wheels, that speak 
 Their slow and cumbrous travelling. 
 And winds, and elms, and wheels, all sing 
 The burden of the wintering ; 
 73 
 
 \\ 
 
Of dead leaves rotting, field mists rising ; 
 Melancholy signs of snow surprising 
 Earth with dreary wonder j rivers, 
 Where the steely water shivers ; 
 Hedges bare of berries red ; 
 A dead world ! all nature dead. 
 A few drops wake the dull road-pools ; 
 A drizzling rain, that chills, not cools, 
 The tired and smoking team ; while gray 
 Dolorous clouds make faster way 
 Over pale skies, with ragged rims. 
 Their heavy trailing clogs and dims, 
 What waterish ray of light yets swims 
 Out from the lamentable sky. 
 Earth decays, Heavens are weeping : I 
 Tramp the long common, glad to be 
 Still summer-hearted, sorrow-free. 
 
 1887. 
 
 IN A WORKHOUSE. 
 
 To Hartley Withers. 
 
 OLD hopes I saw there : and perchance I saw 
 Other old passions in their trembling age, 
 Withered, and desolate, but not yet dead : 
 And I had rather seen an house of death, 
 Than those live men, unmanned, wasted, forlorn, 
 Looking toward death out of their empty lives. 
 They could not with the sad comfort of thought 
 Fill up the miserable day j nor muse 
 Upon the shadowy nature of the world, 
 And on that meditation stay themselves. 
 Nor wisdom of bright dreaming came there back 
 To these dulled minds, that never had the time, 
 The hard day's labour done, to do with dreams. 
 Nought theirs, but sullen waiting for no end : 
 Nought, but surrender to necessity. 
 74 
 
No solemn faith, nor no impassioned trust, 
 Mastered their wills : here were no pagan souls, 
 Grandly enduring dooms, mighty to bear 
 Stern visitation of majestic fates, 
 Proudly alone and strong : these had no wills, 
 These were none else, than worn and haggard things, 
 Nor men, nor brutes, nor shades : and yet alive. 
 Bruised victims of the trampling years, hurt souls, 
 They fell before the march of their own kind : 
 Now, scarred memorials of laborious war, 
 Tragic and monumental live these men. 
 
 1889. 
 
 PAX CHRISTI. 
 
 To the memory of the 
 Very Rev. Father Lockhart, O.C. 
 
 NIGHT has her Stars, and Day his Sun : they pass, 
 Stars of the Night ! it fades, Sun of the Day ! 
 Soft rose leaves lie upon the beaten grass, 
 Till the wind whirl them, with itself, away. 
 
 Eyes have their fill of light : in every voice 
 Lives its own music : but the dear light pales, 
 The golden music perishes. What choice, 
 What choice is ours, but tears ? For the world fails. 
 
 O Sun and Stars ! O glory of the rose ! 
 
 O eyes of light, voices of music ! I 
 
 Have mourned, because all beauty fails, and goes 
 
 Quickly away : and the whole world must die. 
 
 Yet, Sun and Stars ! Yet, glory of the rose ! 
 Yet, eyes of light, voices of music ! I 
 Know, that from mortal to immortal goes 
 Beauty : in triumph can the whole world die. 
 
 S. Man's Day: 1891. 
 75 
 
WINCHESTER CLOSE. 
 
 To the Rev. H. C. Dickens. 
 
 HOLY have been the wanderings here : and here 
 
 The beauty hath been shown, of holiness. 
 
 Nine hundred years ago, Frithstan the Saint 
 
 Put off his mitre, in a rough cowl hiding 
 
 The snows of age and care, to go at eve 
 
 Among the quiet graves with orison. 
 
 The sun fell, and the gentle winds made stir. 
 
 By graves, ah ! by how many graves, he went, 
 
 Old in war's day : then said he : Requiem 
 
 JEternam dona eis^ Domine ! 
 
 Eternal rest, eternal rest, O Lord ! 
 
 Give Thou these dead. The heart of earth, the hearts 
 
 Of poor dead, lapped in earth, heard : slowly grew 
 
 A murmur, and a gathering thunder; slowly 
 
 Beneath his feet grew voices of the dead. 
 
 And faint, each voice : but sounding as one sea, 
 
 Together cried the ghostly multitude, 
 
 Cried hungrily to that great prayer : Amen ! 
 
 Immeasurably surged the Amen : till sank 
 
 Softly away the voices of the dead, 
 
 Softly : they slept in the cold earth once more 
 
 The stilly sleep, glad to have cried that cry. 
 
 Frithstan's white face thrilled upward to his God. 
 
 1890. 
 
 A STRANGER. 
 
 To Will Rotbenstim. 
 
 HER face was like sad things : was like the lights 
 Of a great city, seen from far off fields, 
 Or seen from sea : sad things, as are the fires 
 Lit in a land of furnaces by night : 
 Sad things, as are the reaches of a stream 
 Flowing beneath a golden moon alone. 
 76 
 
And her clear voice, full of remembrances, 
 
 Came like faint music down the distant air. 
 
 As though she had a spirit of dead joy 
 
 About her, looked the sorrow of her ways : 
 
 If light there be, the dark hills are to climb 
 
 First : and if calm, far over the long sea. 
 
 Fallen from all the world apart she seemed, 
 
 Into a silence and a memory. 
 
 What had the thin hands done, that now they strained 
 
 Together in such passion ? And those eyes, 
 
 What saw they long ago, that now they dreamed 
 
 Along the busy streets, blind but to dreams ? 
 
 Her white lips mocked the world, and all therein : 
 
 She had known more than this ; she wanted not 
 
 This, who had known the past so great a thing. 
 
 Moving about our ways, herself she moved 
 
 In things done, years remembered, places gone. 
 
 Lonely, amid the living crowds, as dead, 
 
 She walked with wonderful and sad regard : 
 
 With us, her passing image : but herself 
 
 Far over the dark hills and the long sea. 
 
 1889. 
 
 DE PROFUNDIS. 
 
 To Miss Louise Imogen Guiney. 
 WOULD, that with you I were imparadised, 
 
 White Angels around Christ ! 
 That, by the borders of the eternal sea 
 
 Singing, I too might be : 
 Where dewy green the palm trees on the strand, 
 
 Your gentle shelter, stand : 
 Where reigns the Victor Victim, and His Eyes 
 
 Control eternities ! 
 Immortally your music flows in sweet 
 
 Stream round the Wounded Feet ; 
 77 
 
And rises to the Wounded Hands ; and then 
 
 Springs to the Home of Men, 
 The Wounded Heart : and there in flooding praise 
 
 Circles, and sings, and stays. 
 My broken music wanders in the night, 
 
 Faints, and finds no delight : 
 White Angels ! take of it one piteous tone, 
 
 And mix it with your own ! 
 Then, as He feels your chaunting flow less clear, 
 
 He will but say : / hear 
 The sorrow of My child on earth ! and send 
 
 Some fair, celestial friend, 
 One of yourselves, to help me : and you will, 
 
 Choirs of the Holy Hill, 
 Help me, who walk in darkness, far away 
 
 From your enduring day : 
 Who have the wilderness for home, till morn 
 
 Break, and my day be born ; 
 And on the Mount of Myrrh burn golden white 
 
 Light from the Light of Light. 
 
 1897. 
 
 BEFORE THE CLOISTER. 
 
 To the Hon. Mrs. Hennlker. 
 SORROW, O sister Sorrow, O mine own ! 
 
 Whither away hast flown ? 
 Without thee, fiery is the flowery earth, 
 
 A flaming dance of mirth, 
 A marvel of wild music : I grow frail 
 
 Amid the perfumed gale, 
 The rushing of desires to meet delights. 
 
 Sweet Queen of holy nights. 
 Lady of gray, wise hours ! come back to me : 
 
 Voice of the sighing sea, 
 Voice of the ancient wind, infinite voice ! 
 
 Thine austere chaunts rejoice 
 
Mine heart, thine anthems cool me : I grow strong, 
 
 Drinking thy bitter song, 
 Rich with true tears and medicinal dews, 
 
 O thou Uranian Muse ! 
 Come, vestal Lady ! in my vain heart light 
 
 Thy flame, divinely white ! 
 Come, Lady of the Lilies ! blaunch to snow 
 
 My soul through sacred woe ! 
 Come thou, through whom I hold in memory 
 
 Moonlit Gethsemani : 
 Come, make a vesper silence round my ways, 
 
 And mortify my days : 
 O Sorrow ! come, through whom alone I keep 
 
 Safe from the fatal sleep : 
 Through whom I count the world a barren loss, 
 
 And beautiful the Cross : 
 Come, Sorrow ! lest in surging joy I drown, 
 
 To lose both Cross and Crown. 
 
 1896. 
 
 TO THE DEAD OF '98. 
 
 To the Rev. Father Headley, O.P. 
 i. 
 
 GOD rest you, rest you, rest you, Ireland's dead ! 
 
 Peace be upon you shed, 
 Peace from the Mercy of the Crucified, 
 
 You, who for Ireland died ! 
 Soft fall on you the dews and gentle airs 
 
 Of interceding prayers, 
 From lowly cabins of our ancient land, 
 
 Yours yet, O Sacred Band ! 
 God rest you, rest you : for the fight you fought 
 
 Was His ; the end you sought, 
 His ; from His altar fires you took your flame, 
 
 Hailing His Holy Name. 
 79 
 
 
 
Triumphantly you gave yourselves to death : 
 
 And your last breath 
 Was one last sigh for Ireland, sigh to Him, 
 
 As the loved land grew dim. 
 
 II. 
 
 And still, blessed and martyr souls ! you pray 
 
 In the same faith this day : 
 From forth your dwelling beyond sun and star, 
 
 Where only spirits are, 
 Your prayers in a perpetual flight arise, 
 
 To fold before God's Eyes 
 Their tireless wings, and wait the Holy Word 
 
 That one day shall be heard. 
 Not unto US) they plead, Thy goodness gave 
 
 Our mother to unslave ; 
 To us Thou gavest death for love of her : 
 
 Ah^ what death lovelier ? 
 But to our children's children give to see 
 
 The perfeft viftory ! 
 Thy dead beseech Thee : to Thy living give 
 
 In liberty to live ! 
 
 1897. 
 
 VINUM DAEMONUM. 
 
 To Stephen Phillips. 
 
 THE crystal flame, the ruby flame, 
 Alluring, dancing, revelling ! 
 See them : and ask me not, whence came 
 This cup I bring. 
 
 But only watch the wild wine glow, 
 But only taste its fragrance : then, 
 Drink the wild drink I bring, and so 
 Reign among men. 
 80 
 
Only one sting, and then but joy : 
 One pang of fire, and thou art free. 
 Then, what thou wilt, thou canst destroy : 
 Save only me ! 
 
 Triumph in tumult of thy lust : 
 Wanton in passion of thy will : 
 Cry Peace ! to conscience, and it must 
 At last be still. 
 
 I am the Prince of this World : I 
 Command the flames, command the fires. 
 Mine are the draughts, that satisfy 
 This World's desires. 
 
 Thy longing leans across the brink : 
 Ah, the brave thirst within thine eyes ! 
 For there is that within this drink, 
 Which never dies. 
 
 1893. 
 
 AN IDEAL. 
 
 To Standisb CfGrady. 
 
 WHITE clouds embrace the dewy field, 
 Storm's lingering mist and breath : 
 
 And hottest Heavens to hot earth yield 
 Drops from the fire of death. 
 
 Come ! sigh the shrouding airs of earth : 
 
 Be with the burning night : 
 Learn, what her heart of flame is worthy 
 
 And eyes of glowing light. 
 
 I come not. Off, odorous airs ! 
 Rose-scented winds, away ! 
 
 81 G 
 
Let passion garnish her wild lairs, 
 Hold her fierce holiday : 
 
 I will not feel her dreamy toils 
 
 Glide over heart and eyes : 
 My thoughts shall never be her spoils, 
 
 Nor grow sad memories. 
 
 Mine be all proud and lonely scorn, 
 
 Keeping the crystal law 
 And pure air of the eternal morn : 
 
 And passion, but of awe. 
 
 1888. 
 
 HEDDON'S MOUTH. 
 
 To the Viscount Doneraile. 
 
 HAPPY all, who timely know 
 The bright gorge, that lies below 
 Trentishoe and Martinhoe. 
 Down the vale swift Parracombe 
 Brawls beneath soft alder gloom, 
 Toward a sea of sunlit sails, 
 Flashing far away to Wales : 
 Wales, a faery land afar, 
 Where sweet Celtic voices are ; 
 Wales, where music rules the land. 
 Yet upon this hither strand 
 Burns a brilliant sun at noon, 
 Beams a gentle midnight moon : 
 Life upon each mighty slope 
 Fights at noon, with fire of hope ; 
 Under the moon's dewy sky 
 Lives on dreaming memory. 
 And the embracing sea, 
 Sweet Earth ! still brings peace to me, 
 In thy solitariness. 
 
 82 
 
From the ends of thee there come, 
 Over every ocean, home, 
 Thoughts of each man's loneliness ; 
 On the waves, down the strange wind. 
 Not one lone thought, but can find 
 Echo in some distant vale, 
 Where the deep gorge holds the gale : 
 Where the universal sun 
 Reigns, and moves the quiet moon : 
 Where one dreamer's hope hath won 
 Dreams at night of fair things done 
 In the spirit of strong noon. 
 
 1888. 
 
 KNIGHT OF THE NORTH. 
 
 To Edgar Prestage. 
 
 Is yonder sunlight sun indeed, 
 
 At turn of the green glade ? 
 Or glitters there an armoured steed 
 
 In covert, and a blade ? 
 I care not, save to make more speed : 
 
 I cannot be afraid : 
 
 Knight of the North ! who no man fears, 
 Riding with a plump of spears. 
 
 Above me, heartening winds at play : 
 
 Beneath me, the good ground : 
 There, lordly eagles go their way, 
 
 To mountain pastures bound : 
 While stars yet fade upon the day, 
 
 I ride the wild land round : 
 Knight of the North ! who no man fears, 
 Though the air be bright with spears. 
 
 Rare in my nostrils, the full earth 
 Pours perfume of the wood : 
 
 83 
 
Over the hills, nigh mad with mirth, 
 Sweep storms to fire my blood : 
 
 Oh ! right true Northern is my birth, 
 Where but to breathe is good : 
 
 Knight of the North ! who no man fears, 
 
 Little needing, save stout spears. 
 
 But when the Chauntry, dark and cold, 
 
 Shall hide me among dust : 
 When lowly priests unmoved behold 
 
 Mine armour dim with rust : 
 Oh ! then, with foray as of old, 
 
 To feed a living lust ! 
 Not to be one, whom no man fears, 
 Dead ! and dull, his flashing spears. 
 
 1890. 
 
 DEAD, 
 
 ALL in the wild West country, 
 Hard by the Severn Sea : 
 
 The blowing, lonely country, 
 A land of lands for thee : 
 
 Where the high purple headlands 
 Command the sea: 
 
 Oh, there in that vast valley, 
 Full within sight of Wales : 
 
 Deep in that mighty valley, 
 Among the great sea gales : 
 
 Whose voice across the waters 
 Travels from Wales ? 
 
 Blow back from the West country, 
 Back to the heart of Wales : 
 
 Back to that ancient country, 
 Across the sea, fierce gales ! 
 
Love and farewell eternal : 
 Far into Wales. 
 
 For thee the fair West country, 
 
 Headland and vale for thee : 
 No more the dearer country, 
 
 Wales beyond Severn Sea : 
 One lies in Merioneth, 
 
 Long lost to thee. 
 
 1889. 
 
 VESPERS. 
 
 SOLEMN, dark hills bastion pale, 
 Solemn reaches of calm lake : 
 
 And night is nearing. 
 Stilly-souled you speak not, steering 
 Our light vessel toward the vale, 
 
 Where the ripples break. 
 
 See ! the vesper light : the star 
 Softest-fired of stars. Heaven fills : 
 
 Soon all the starry 
 Lights will flood all visionary 
 Haunted valley glooms, that are 
 
 High among the hills. 
 
 How the last cries fall away 
 From the far and resting fields, 
 
 And linger faintly 
 
 Through the woodland glades : how saintly 
 Shows the death of this fair day ; 
 
 With what sad grace yields ! 
 
 Only down the shoreland wails 
 A lone plover : down the mere 
 Her way is winging 
 85 
 
 
A white owl. Else were there clinging 
 Perfect silence round our sails, 
 As you sit and steer. 
 
 1888. 
 
 IESU COR. 
 To the Rev. Father Browne^ S.J. 
 
 QUID, Cor lesu vulneratum ! 
 Peccatorem me amasti ? 
 lesu mei Cor amatum, 
 Cur pro me Te vulnerasti ? 
 Quare mihi Te indigno 
 rrodidisti Te in ligno ? 
 
 Angelorum Te in coelis 
 Collaudabant san&ae voces : 
 Trucibus Tu volens telis 
 Innocenti Tibi noces : 
 O quam miris illecebris 
 Me vocasti e tenebris ! 
 
 Tuas meos in amores 
 Tu agonias mutasti : 
 Et purpureos in flores 
 Tua vulnera formasti : 
 Sanguinisque Tui fontes 
 Animas perfundunt sontes. 
 
 lesu coronatum spinis 
 Cor ! peccati mei fiat 
 Et doloris Tui finis : 
 Meum cor Te solum sciat. 
 Hominis Tu Cor et Dei : 
 Cor Tu Salvatoris mei. 
 
 86 
 
A DEATH. 
 
 To Reginald Brinton. 
 
 THE palms, the desert, the enchaunted East, 
 Full of fire, burning with an ancient heat : 
 Those were my dreams of old ; now dreams have 
 
 ceased, 
 
 The heart of that old world I hear not beat. 
 The joy, the calmness, of my soul lie there : 
 And death hath hallowed all, and made it clear. 
 
 We are alone, the loving dead and I : 
 
 In a still loneliness and peace profound, 
 
 Beside forgetful waters, the dead lie j 
 
 By solemn laws to one calm habit bound. 
 
 And through the sunlight, and the enthralling heat, 
 
 I too am there : and find the silence sweet. 
 
 Cities and great wastes of the ancient East ! 
 I dwell with you, where you have buried him. 
 Splendid, the way of death : your spears released 
 His soul ; his eyes saw England, and fell dim. 
 Now, under the vast silence, and the palm, 
 I trust him to your loneliness and calm. 
 
 Praise to the dead ! Love to the dead ! devotion 
 Be to the true and unforgetting dead ! 
 Their measureless and stilly sleep, no motion 
 Stirs, but the strewing of each comer's bed. 
 Give lilies ! pour the balm ! Now all is over : 
 Death will the rest provide for his new lover. 
 
 1889. 
 
GRACE. 
 
 To William Sharp. 
 
 THE moorland, the wild moorland knows ! 
 Under these dragging clouds, beneath 
 These beaten pines, the secret grows 
 
 To light within our souls. 
 Hark ! throughout Merioneth rolls 
 
 Low thunder down the heath. 
 
 Where the vexed life of London drives 
 
 Her alien multitudes along : 
 
 Will moorland glory brace our lives, 
 
 And make the dark hours clear ? 
 Yes ! for the lights on hill and mere, 
 
 Our lit souls will prolong. 
 
 Silence, in the most weary stress 
 Of dinning street or brilliant room : 
 Pure memory, amid merciless 
 
 Cares, and encumbering wants : 
 Silence and memory ! can the haunts 
 
 Of London dusk their bloom ? 
 
 Then were life springless winter, wan 
 With heavy airs and all decay. 
 But paradisal yet is man, 
 
 And natural life his charm. 
 Powerless are worldlier powers to harm, 
 
 Who love the simpler way. 
 
 1888. 
 
 AT ETON. 
 
 To Charles Goodhart. 
 
 To have but just that youth once more, 
 How gladly would I give away 
 88 
 
All, the long years may hold in store ! 
 How gladly, for that early day, 
 Give all, I have ! except, may be, 
 That day's eternal memory. 
 
 The boys, on whom I look, and sigh 
 To be no more, no more, as they ; 
 Might laugh to learn, that such as I, 
 Scarce older than themselves, can say 
 Such wistful things, that best beseem, 
 Surely, an old man's hopeless dream ! 
 
 Old men would understand : they know, 
 What mighty change, one hour must make ; 
 When to the open world boys go, 
 And come not back, but turn and take 
 Their several ways to joy or ruth : 
 But never a way leads back to youth ! 
 
 Years hence, your willing feet may find 
 These Fields beside the royal stream : 
 And mine will haunt, if fate prove kind, 
 My Winton Meads^ and walk in dream : 
 But never, as in days of old ; 
 The days of youth ! the age of gold ! 
 
 1889. 
 
 THE SILENT. 
 
 To Ralph Shirley. 
 SING to me, sing to me, 
 Voices of all my dead ! 
 From under earth and sea 
 Send music up, and shed 
 Melody and memory 
 Around my dying head. 
 89 
 
Once let me hear, ere death, 
 Your voices, O my friends ! 
 Else will your welcoming breath 
 Make no true heart's amends 
 For my lone life beneath 
 Sad skies : once, ere life ends, 
 
 Let Death refine mine ears 
 To catch your thin, far airs : 
 Breathe from your shadowy spheres 
 One sigh, to soothe my cares ; 
 One thought, ere death appears, 
 Ere my worn spirit shares 
 
 Your fellowship of gloom. 
 To warn me of your black, 
 Chill pathway of the tomb, 
 Speak from that bitter track : 
 To mind me of their bloom, 
 From days of old come back ! 
 
 1888. 
 
 THE GLOOM. 
 
 To Henry Hlnkson. 
 
 Is the dark growing gray, 
 With the thought of the morn ? 
 Does the redness of day 
 Wait the word to be born ? 
 Has the sun in his splendour his wings on his way ? 
 
 Inisfail in the night, 
 With her eyes of desire, 
 Is athirst for the light, 
 For the fountain of fire : 
 
 And the stars of her doom seem to fade from her sight. 
 90 
 
But the winds have a sigh, 
 The wise winds ! They are old : 
 They have swept the dark sky, 
 And the stars they have told, 
 Star by star, through the ages : the stars shall not die ! 
 
 They shall live : and the wrongs 
 Of their working shall live : 
 And a sadness of songs 
 Is the best, they shall give. 
 Inisfail down the night a fair sorrow prolongs. 
 
 1894. 
 
 RIGHT AND MIGHT. 
 
 To Dr. Mark Ryan. 
 
 SAD is the cry of the wind on the wastes of the sea : 
 Sadder the sigh of our hearts, Eire ! for thee. 
 Swift and fierce the lance of the lightning flies ; 
 More swift, more fierce, our wrath, till thine anguish 
 dies. 
 
 Who shall stay the surge of the tireless tide ? 
 He, who shall stay our march, and none else beside. 
 Who shall still the skies, when the thunders roar ? 
 Only he, who shall still our storm of war. 
 
 Heart of our hearts, Eire ! thou hast the right : 
 Heart of our hearts ! it is thou shalt have the might. 
 Nay ! since thine is the right, this day art thou 
 Mightier far than the foe, that wrongs thee now. 
 
 Be it this year, or be it a thousand hence, 
 They shall vanish, who do thee violence. 
 God from His Heavens can bid the sun withdraw : 
 But not His infinite justice ! not His Law ! 
 
 1896. 
 
 9* 
 
THE SLEEP OF WILL. 
 
 STEAL sleep over enchaunted eyes, 
 
 And sleep over charmed ears : 
 Sealed be the wellsprings of all tears, 
 
 Hushed be all sighs. 
 
 Through ringers, long, and thin, and white, 
 
 Over your face shall creep 
 Spells of unfathomable sleep, 
 
 A perfect night. 
 
 Oh, to the chambers of your brain, 
 
 The chambers of your soul, 
 Those hands will call, and still control, 
 
 Sleep, soft as rain. 
 
 Were but to me that soul of thine 
 
 So vassal, evermore : 
 Your will were mightier than before, 
 
 Made one with mine. 
 
 1888. 
 
 NIHILISM. 
 
 To Samuel Smith. 
 
 AMONG immortal things not made with hands ; 
 Among immortal things, dead hands have made : 
 Under the Heavens, upon the Earth, there stands 
 Man's life, my life : of life I am afraid. 
 
 Where silent things, and unimpassioned things, 
 Where things of nought, and things decaying, are : 
 I shall be calm soon, with the calm, death brings. 
 The skies are gray there, without any star. 
 
 Only the rest ! the rest ! Only the gloom, 
 Soft and long gloom ! The pausing from all thought ! 
 92 
 
My life, I cannot taste : the eternal tomb 
 
 Brings me the peace, which life has never brought. 
 
 For all the things I do, and do not well ; 
 All the forced drawings of a mortal breath : 
 Are as the hollow music of a bell, 
 That times the slow approach of perfect death. 
 
 1888. 
 
 THE RED MOON. 
 
 To T. H. McLachlan. 
 
 THRONED upon golden fires, and queen of night, 
 
 Bueen of enamoured night ! whose mortal heart 
 raws thine, Immortal ? Not on Latmus height 
 Thou burnest : thence no shepherds now depart 
 Homeward at sundown under the flushed pines, 
 All, save one solitary left for thee : 
 For whom hast thou enriched thy lily light 
 With redness of dark roses ? Still thou art 
 That victress, in whose deity combines 
 With swift love, swifter scorn : so thou art free. 
 
 Throned upon crystal air, thou wilt return 
 
 With solemn light upon the morrow's dew : 
 
 No more thine heart, an heart of snow, will burn j 
 
 Nor thou thy passionate employ renew. 
 
 Nay ! thou among the stars thy tranquil way 
 
 Wilt take, with steps of silence and of calm : 
 
 No Latmus among mountains wilt discern, 
 
 No sad Endymion from the shepherd crew : 
 
 And, slowly passing onward to the day, 
 
 Thou wilt seem one, whom vestal thoughts embalm. 
 
 So thou art free. So art thou hard to love : 
 Whether thou flamest red from out the deep, 
 93 
 
 \ 
 
Or dost in virginal procession move, 
 Blessing the lands with universal sleep. 
 Yet, splendour of the night ! be thy lone will 
 Done thee, so thou preserve thy fair estate ! 
 Proud power of calm ! whose majesties reprove 
 The souls that wanton, and the hearts that weep. 
 We hail thee, gracious or disdainful, still : , 
 And this thy full uprising celebrate. 
 
 COUNSEL. 
 
 To Edward Warren. 
 
 MILKY pearls of India 
 
 For the braiding of her hair : 
 
 Spice from swart Arabia 
 
 For the fragrance of her air : 
 Coil the pure pearls, wake the sweet spells, 
 
 Let lutes and hollow shells 
 Flatter her, fair, if morn be fair. 
 
 Stay, no more ! Bring not to her 
 
 Golden lore of poetry : 
 
 Not on those dark eyes confer 
 
 Glories of antiquity. 
 What wouldest thou ? She loves too much, 
 
 To feel the solemn touch 
 Of Plato's thought, that masters thee. 
 
 She hath drunken wizard dew, 
 Where the secret faeries dance : 
 She hath watched the sylvan crew, 
 When the forests take the glance 
 Of the white moon : and she is thine. 
 
 Could Plato's eyes divine 
 A soul in her wild countenance ? 
 
 1887. 
 94 
 
VICTORY. 
 
 To George Moore. 
 
 DOWN the white steps, into the night, she came ; 
 Wearing white roses, lit by the full moon : 
 And white upon the shadowy lawn she stood, 
 Waiting and watching for the dawn's first flame, 
 Over the dark and visionary wood. 
 Down the white steps, into the night, she came ; 
 Wearing white roses, lit by the full moon. 
 
 Night died away : and over the deep wood 
 
 Widened a rosy cloud, a chilly flame : 
 
 The shadowy lawn grew cold, and clear, and white. 
 
 Then down she drew against her eyes her hood, 
 
 To hide away the inexorable light. 
 
 Night died away : and over the deep wood 
 
 Widened a rosy cloud, a chilly flame. 
 
 Then back she turned, and up the white steps came, 
 
 And looked into a room of burning lights. 
 
 Still slept her loveless husband his brute sleep, 
 
 Beside the comfortless and ashen flame : 
 
 Her lover waited, where the wood was deep. 
 
 She turned not back : but from the white steps came, 
 
 And went into the room of burning lights. 
 
 1888. 
 
 EVENING IN WALES. 
 
 To Hubert Cornish. 
 
 LAUGHING at our cold despair, 
 Spring is come : laud we her name ! 
 Out into this gentler air, 
 Musical with breath that came 
 Over seas and islands, where 
 Suns have fragrance in their flame : 
 95 
 
 X 
 
Come with me, and let soft wind 
 Soothe the chambers of your mind. 
 
 Starrier anemones, 
 Than rich southern woods enfold ; 
 Heavenlier coloured primroses, 
 Than fair southern maids behold ; 
 Hushed by Alun's cadences, 
 Kinglier marsh marigold : 
 Seeing these, be proud to praise 
 Wales with all her flowered ways. 
 
 With no grace of Cyclad peaks, 
 Gleaming crowns for seas of light ; 
 Moel Fammau darkling seeks 
 Converse with the coming night : 
 Purple shadowed, how she breaks 
 The red splendours, out of sight 
 Fading, until dewy morn 
 Bid them with new fire be born ! 
 
 1886. 
 
 TIMON. 
 
 To Ronald Burrows. 
 
 PROSPER but the wintry cold, 
 I shall hail a wealth of woe. 
 Race the rivers, then stand still : 
 Ice be, what was torrent flow : 
 Forest ways turn iron mould : 
 Grow the windy weather chill 
 More and more, and snows enfold 
 House and field and garden. So 
 Winter comes : and such my will. 
 
 Has my heart grown overbold, 
 That its bitterness must show 
 
Open choice of ill for ill ? 
 Yet when old wrongs to and fro 
 Pace my heart, and sting and scold ; 
 Some way must their wrath distil 
 Some relief; their tale be told : 
 That the empty air may know, 
 The fierce winds, and sullen hill. 
 
 I was young, and now am old : 
 Yet, as to the dark I go, 
 Livelier springs my want to kill 
 Kindness, as the sickles mow 
 Good red corn : as through the wold 
 Sweep the dreary winds, and spill, 
 Where young lovers lately strolled, 
 Yellow leaves j and joy to blow, 
 Where they whispered, harsh and shrill. 
 
 1887. 
 
 UPON READING CERTAIN POEMS. 
 I COME, a lost wind from the shores 
 Of wondering dull misery : 
 With muttered echoes, heartsick plaints, 
 And sullen sorrows, filling me. 
 But all this flowery world abhors 
 Me, wretched wind and heavy cloud : 
 Beneath me, as beneath a shroud, 
 The spirit of summer faints. 
 
 The golden angel of delight 
 Gleams past me, and I shrink away : 
 A dimness on the dawn am I, 
 A mist upon the merry day. 
 Here should be none but Muses bright, 
 Whose airs go delicately sweet : 
 With swallow wings, and faery feet, 
 Eager to dance or fly. 
 
 97 H 
 
I will drift back to Weary land, 
 To wondering dull misery : 
 No champaign rich, nor rosy lawn, 
 Shall wither by the fault of me. 
 Where no one takes loved hand in hand, 
 But with his shadow crawls alone : 
 They miss the comfort of my moan, 
 My melancholy long-drawn. 
 
 1887. 
 
 GUARDIAN ANGELS. 
 
 To Alfred Ferrand. 
 
 SAFELY, across the ocean track, 
 
 O Angel of my friend ! 
 Bear him, and swiftly bear him back : 
 
 My loss, his exile, end. 
 With white wings, mighty and unseen, 
 Be Guardian of him still, as thou hast been. 
 
 Make kind to him the Afric sun, 
 
 The Afric stars and moon : 
 Then, when our Mayflower has begun 
 
 To prophesy of June ; 
 Give us himself, lest summer be 
 Sorrow for lack of him : ah, promise me ! 
 
 Thee, O his Angel ! mine implores 
 
 In tenderness to me : 
 Far flashing toward those southern shores, 
 
 Mine Angel pleads with thee, 
 Saying : My charge Is friend to thine : 
 Guard thou htm well, or I have fears for mine. 
 
DOMINICA IN PALMIS. 
 
 To Aubrey Beardsley. 
 
 PASSIO cantatur Christi : 
 lesu ! qui nos redemisti, 
 Victor mortuus in cruce : 
 Fac nos solum contemplari 
 Te, qui solus es amari 
 Dignus, victor stans in luce. 
 
 Israel quern laudant psalmis 
 Regem celebrantes pal mis, 
 Morti dabunt mox ludaei : 
 Tantum vitae largitorem 
 Teneamus nos amorem 
 Nostrum, ne maioris rei. 
 
 Per Calvariae tremendam 
 Passionem, semper flendam 
 Cum Maria desolata : 
 Pastor bone ! Victor vere ! 
 Triumphantem da videre 
 Te, cum Matre coronata. 
 
 1893- 
 
 UNION. 
 WERT thou forthwith to die : 
 
 Were I 
 
 To linger toward a solitary death, 
 With ever mournful breath : 
 What life were that of mine, 
 Forlorn of thine? 
 
 Were I to leave thee now : 
 
 Wert thou 
 
 To keep, the maiden mate of loneliness, 
 Long vigils of distress 
 99 
 
Yet happier life were thine, 
 Released from mine. 
 
 We will not therefore part, 
 
 Dear heart ! 
 
 Thy spiritual fire shall quicken me, 
 And fit me all for thee : 
 That thy soul may be mine, 
 And my soul thine. 
 
 1887. 
 
 WESTWARD. 
 
 To Roger Fry. 
 
 WHITE Land within the West, 
 
 Upon the breast 
 
 Of some divine and windless sea : 
 One of thy musing ghosts make me, 
 
 Glad and at rest. 
 
 White leaves of poplar there 
 
 Move to an air, 
 
 Gracious, and musical, and kind : 
 Under those leaves, let me too find 
 
 The cure of care. 
 
 But chiefly for their sake, 
 
 Whom thou didst take ; 
 Lost to me in thine heart, White Land ! 
 Soon bid me sleep, soon hand in hand 
 
 With them to wake. 
 
COLLINS. 
 
 To C. W. Holgate. 
 
 THROUGH glades and glooms ! Oh, fair ! Oh, sad ! 
 The paths of song, that led through these 
 Thy feet, that once were free and glad 
 To wander beneath Winton trees ! 
 Now in soft shades of sleep they tread 
 By ways and waters of the dead. 
 
 There tender Otway walks with thee, 
 And Browne, not strange among the dead : 
 By solemn sounding waters ye, 
 By willow vallies, gently led, 
 Think on old memories of her, 
 Courtly and cloistral Winchester. 
 
 So memory's mingled measure flows, 
 In shadowy dream and twilight trance : 
 Past death, to dawn of manhood, goes 
 I Thy spirit's unforgetting glance ; 
 ! Through glades and glooms ! And hails at last 
 1 The lovely scenes long past : long past. 
 
 1888. 
 
 TE MARTYRUM CANDIDATUS. 
 
 To the Very Rev. John Canon O'Hanlon. 
 
 AH, see the fair chivalry come, the companions of 
 
 Christ ! 
 White Horsemen, who ride on white horses, the 
 
 Knights of God ! 
 
 They, for their Lord and their Lover who sacrificed 
 All, save the sweetness of treading, where He first 
 
 trod! 
 
 101 
 
These through the darkness of death, the dominion of 
 
 night, 
 
 Swept, and they woke in white places at morning tide : 
 They saw with their eyes, and sang for joy of the 
 
 sight, 
 They saw with their eyes the Eyes of the Crucified. 
 
 Now, whithersoever He goeth, with Him they go : 
 White Horsemen, who ride on white horses, oh fair 
 
 to see ! 
 
 They ride, where the Rivers of Paradise flash and flow, 
 White Horsemen, with Christ their Captain : for ever 
 
 He! 
 
 , 1895- 
 
 IN A COPY OF MR. GOSSE'S IN 
 RUSSET AND SILVER. 
 
 VALETE, fas est, flores ! vale, ver ! 
 Venit severiore Musa vi : 
 Post rosas appropinquans frugifer 
 Autumnus donis benedicit mi. 
 
 Dat cor tranquillum, suam pacem dat ; 
 Dat lyrae pleniora psallere : 
 Adiutor mihi Deus ipse stat 
 Musagetes benigno carmine. 
 
 8uid mi cum lacrimis ? sic spiritus 
 ivinior dele&at animam : 
 Sic surgit vita de mortalibus 
 Gloriis ad coelestem gforiam. 
 
 1894. 
 
CORNWALL. 
 
 To ViRor Collier. 
 
 O HAUNTED moorlands, haunted heights, 
 Beloved by haunted wind and sea ! 
 Your dreams have been my long delights, 
 Your voices have rung clear to me. 
 
 O land of ghostly loveliness ! 
 
 At thy gray Crosses kneeling, I 
 
 Fear nought of death : my strong joys press 
 
 Far beyond death, and long to die : 
 
 To die, and after fire to live 
 Evermore white and perfected. 
 Mine the vast faith, that thou canst give : 
 Thou, and thine immemorial dead. 
 
 1894. 
 
 HAWKER OF MORWENSTOW. 
 
 To Mrs. Dalton. 
 
 STRONG Shepherd of thy sheep, pasturers of the sea ; 
 Far on the Western marge, thy passionate Cornish 
 
 land! 
 Oh, that from out thy Paradise thou could'st thine 
 
 hand 
 
 Reach forth to mine, and I might tell my love to thee ! 
 For one the faith, and one the joy, of thee and me, 
 Catholic faith and Celtic joy : I understand 
 Somewhat, I too, the Messengers from Sion strand j 
 The voices and the visions of the Mystery. 
 
 Ah, not the Chaunt alone was thine : thine too the 
 
 Quest ! 
 
 And at the last the Sangraal of the Paschal Christ 
 103 
 
Flashed down its fair red Glory to those dying eyes : 
 They closed in death, and opened on the Vi dim's 
 
 Breast. 
 
 Now, while they look for ever on the Sacrificed, 
 Remember, how thine ancient race in twilight lies ! 
 
 1895. 
 
 MOTHER ANN. 
 
 To George Ear ton. 
 
 WHITE were the ardours of thy soul, O wan Ann 
 
 Lee ! 
 
 Thou spirit of fine fire for every storm to shake ! 
 They shook indeed the quivering flame, yet could not 
 
 make 
 
 Its passionate light expire, but only make it flee : 
 Over the vast, the murmuring, the embittered sea, 
 Driven, it gleamed : no agonies availed to break 
 That burning heart, so hot for heavenly passion's sake ; 
 The heart, that beat, and burned, and agonized, in thee ! 
 
 Thou knewest not : yet thine was altar flame astray ; 
 Poor exiled, wandering star, that might have stayed and 
 
 stood 
 
 Hard by the Holy Host, close to the Holy Rood, 
 Illumining the great one Truth, one Lite, one Way ! 
 O piteous pilgrim pure amid night's sisterhood : 
 For thee doth Mother Mary, Star of Morning, pray ! 
 
 1896. 
 
 MUNSTER: A.D. 1534. 
 
 To R. Asbe King. 
 
 WE are the golden men, who shall the people save : 
 For only ours are visions, perfect and divine ; 
 104 
 
And we alone have drunken of the last, best wine ; 
 And very Truth our souls hath flooded, wave on wave. 
 Come, wretched death's inheritors, who dread the 
 
 grave ! 
 
 Come ! for upon our brows is set the starry sign 
 Of prophet, priest, and king : star of the lion line: 
 Leave Abana, leave Pharpar, and in Jordan lave ! 
 
 It thundered, and we heard : it lightened, and we saw : 
 Our hands have torn in twain the Tables of the Law : 
 Sons of the Spirit, we know nothing now of sin. 
 Come ! from the Tree of Eden take the mystic fruit : 
 Come ! pluck up God's own knowledge by the abysmal 
 
 root : 
 
 Come ! you, who would the Reign of Paradise begin. 
 
 1896. 
 
 DOCTOR MAJOR. 
 
 To Dr. Birkbeck Hill. 
 WHY, no, Sir! If a barren rascal cries, 
 
 That he is most in love with pleasing woe, 
 
 'Tis plain, Sir ! what to think of him : We know 
 The dog lies ; and the dog, too, knows he lies. 
 Sir ! if he's happy, he will dry his eyes, 
 
 And stroll at Vauxball for an hour or so : 
 
 If he's unhappy, it were best he go 
 Hang himself straight, nor pester us with sighs. 
 
 Enough, Sir ! Let us have no more of it : 
 Your friend is little better than a Whig. 
 
 But you and I, Sir, who are men of wit, 
 Laugh at the follies of a canting prig. 
 Let those who will, Sir ! to such whims submit : 
 
 No, Sir ! we'll to the Mitre : Frank ! my wig. 
 
 1891. 
 
 105 
 
SUOS MANES. 
 
 To Charles-Marie Gamier. 
 
 WHAT have you seen, eyes of strange fire ! What have 
 
 you seen, 
 
 Far off, how far away ! long since, so long ago ! 
 To fill you with this jewel flame, this frozen glow : 
 Haunted and hard, still eyes, malignant and serene ? 
 In what wild place of fear, what Pan's wood, have you 
 
 been, 
 
 That struck your lustrous rays into a burning snow ? 
 What agonies were yours ? What never equalled woe ? 
 Eyes of strange fire, strange eyes of fire ! on what 
 
 dread scene ? 
 
 Smitten and purged, you saw the red deeps of your sin : 
 You saw there death in life ; you will see life in death. 
 The sunlight shrank away, the moon came wan and 
 
 thin, 
 Among the summer trees the sweet winds held their 
 
 breath. 
 
 Now those celestial lights, which you can never win, 
 Haunt you, and pierce, and blind. The Will of God 
 
 so saith. 
 
 1890. 
 
 MASTERY. 
 
 IF thou wouldst be a master, learn the way : 
 Little thou knowest of that sacred joy, 
 Which haunts the deep of night, and fills the day, 
 And makes a warrior of a dreaming boy. 
 
 To love the austerity of sea and stars : 
 To love the multitudes of mighty towns : 
 To love the hardness of thy prison bars : 
 This must thou know, or lose the eternal crowns. 
 1 06 
 
Bear to be last, though the world's fools were first ; 
 Endure the wealth and wage, thy service brings : 
 Wages enough, heart's hunger and soul's thirst, 
 And blessedness beyond the pride of kings. 
 
 Knowest thou this ? And holds thy purpose still ? 
 Praise thou thy God, O servant of His Will ! 
 
 1891. 
 
 FLOS FLORUM. 
 
 To Mrs. Hinkson. 
 
 Lily, O Lily of the Vallies ! 
 
 Lily, O Lily of Calvary Hill! 
 
 White with the glory of all graces, 
 
 Earth with the breath of thy pure soul fill : 
 
 Lily, O Lily of the Vallies! 
 
 Lily, O Lily of Calvary Hill! 
 
 Rose, O Rose of Gethsemani Garden ! 
 Rose of the Paradise : Mystical Rose ! 
 From thickets of the thornless Eden, 
 Load with rich odour each wind that blows : 
 Rose, O Rose of Gethsemani Garden ! 
 Rose of the Paradise : Mystical Rose ! 
 
 1894. 
 
 CULVER CLIFF. 
 
 To Bruce Richmond. 
 
 THE one sail on the wild gray sea ! 
 Far down, the rough and churning surge 
 Leaps up the cliff, and freshens me 
 With flying spray upon the verge ; 
 The bastion verge, whereon I stand, 
 107 
 
To see one solitary sail 
 Full blown upon a shrieking gale j 
 To watch the unconvoyed vessel urge 
 Her voyage to an unknown land. 
 
 Thou one sail on the wild gray sea ! 
 Far out strange thunder broods, and all 
 The restless ocean plucks at thee : 
 Fierce winds would have thy mast to fall, 
 The swooping winds, that work their will. 
 Fare thee well, little sail ! Meseems, 
 Thou wilt pass prospering through my dreams, 
 This night : though purple heavens appal, 
 Though winds and waters fight their fill. 
 
 1887. 
 
 PROPHETA GENTIUM. 
 
 To Arthur Christopher Benson. 
 
 PROPHET VIRGIL ! thou, 
 White, and sweet, and stern : 
 Dante's Master ! now 
 Tell us : may we learn 
 More than he, whose brow 
 
 Bare that dread brand, set there, thou knowest how ! 
 Tremendous to discern ? 
 
 Nothing more ! And yet, 
 This thing more know we : 
 That thy throne is set 
 High, where high Saints be. 
 Thy song soaring met 
 David's, Isaiah's : how should God forget, 
 O thou His prophet ! thee ? 
 
 1896. 
 1 08 
 
CHILD OF WAR. 
 
 To H. R. Beddoes. 
 
 HER ivory face, quivering but trembling not, 
 Upheld against a sky of angry storm ; 
 She stands upon her savage chariot, 
 Fronting the field of Death, a silent form. 
 The eagles' daughter, this day she forgot 
 Pity and peace for the first time, and went 
 To watch the waves of war break, and be spent. 
 
 Homeward, with shadows passing on her face, 
 Strange lights with strange tears battling in her eyes ; 
 She goes the triumph way of her old race, 
 Watching the eagles gather in the skies. 
 Tasted hath she this day death's busy place : 
 And in her heart called up to equal fight, 
 Daughter of eagles, loathing and delight. 
 
 1887. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 To Austin Ferrand. 
 
 I GAVE you more than love : many times more : 
 I gave mine honour into your fair keeping. 
 You lost mine honour : wherefore now restore 
 The love, I gave ; not dead, but cold and sleeping. 
 You loveless, I dishonoured, go our ways : 
 Dead is the past : dead must be all my days. 
 
 Death and the shadows tarry not : fulfil 
 
 Your years with folly and love's imitation. 
 
 You had mine all : mine only now, to kill 
 
 All trembling memories of mine adoration. 
 
 That done, to lie me down, and die, and dream, 
 
 What once, I thought you were : what still, you seem. 
 
 1887. 
 109 
 
LATE LOVE. 
 WHEN I had thought to make an home with sorrow, 
 
 A gentle, melancholy dwelling ; 
 
 And there to linger life with telling 
 Over old fancies of some fair to-morrow : 
 
 Sudden, there broke about my way 
 
 Laughter, and flowers, and break of day. 
 
 Sing, Guardian Angel ! One is come, who takes me 
 Home to the land of loving voices : 
 And there my risen heart rejoices 
 
 To tell each sorrow over, that forsakes me ; 
 And all the unimagined songs, 
 That a child's carolling voice prolongs. 
 
 1887. 
 
 OLD SILVER. 
 
 BEHOLD, what thrones of the Most High 
 Are here within the common mart ! 
 
 True God hath entered 
 
 These crystal-centred, 
 Silvern stars : Men ! come and buy, 
 
 If you have the heart ! 
 
 Melt down the royal throne, break up 
 The sancluary of Deity ! 
 
 Is then God's glory 
 
 So transitory, 
 Mortal men ? Christ ! is Thy Cup 
 
 But a memory ? 
 
 1887. 
 
WINDERMERE. 
 
 To Edward Marsh. 
 SAILS on the trembling lake, 
 White sails ! far out at sea 
 Your glistering road should be : 
 Spaces of snow, to break 
 The pearly, pure sea line. 
 
 Sails on the inland bay, 
 Red sails ! your road should be 
 Rounding some cape at sea : 
 Russet wings, on your way 
 Brightening the gray sea waves. 
 
 JULY. 
 
 To More Adey. 
 
 SUMMER lightning, and rich rain : 
 Roses perfume the hot air. 
 All the breathless night is faint, 
 All the flowery night is fair. 
 Philomel her joy or plaint 
 Sings, and sings, and sings again. 
 
 What comes now ? The earth awaits 
 What fierce wonder from those skies ? 
 Thunder, trampling through the night ? 
 Morning, with illustrious eyes ? 
 Morning, from the springs of light : 
 Thunder, round Heaven's opening gates. 
 
 1889. 
 
AD PATRONUM. 
 
 NONDUM clamantis in deserto vox, 
 Nondum Baptista tu, loannule ! 
 Nondum stelligera te vestit nox : 
 Et ecce ! lesulinus visit te. 
 
 Per dulcem istam pueritiam, 
 Ora, patrone mi ! ora pro me: 
 Ut tecum in aeternum videam 
 Natum pro nobis, mi loannule ! 
 
 1896. 
 
 LOVE'S WAYS. 
 
 You were not cruel always ! Nay, 
 When I said Come ! one year ago : 
 Could you have lingered by the way ? 
 Did not the very wind seem slow ? 
 
 Then, had you tarried, I had known 
 Nor love's delight, nor lost love's pain : 
 Then, always had I lived alone. 
 Now, you need never come again. 
 
 1887. 
 
 CHANCES. 
 
 To Miss dlthea Gyles. 
 
 To some, it is all easy : Day and Night 
 
 Fight on the side of some, 
 
 With dreams, and the accomplishment of dreams : 
 Warfaring as they will, they overcome. 
 
 To me all hours oppose the unequal fight : 
 Night, with dreams : Day makes war, 
 
 With wakening of despair ; with hope, that gleams 
 In vain, upon the cloudy hills, too far. 
 
 1887. 
 
 112 
 
SEASONS. 
 
 To Arthur Symons. 
 SEE the radiance, hear the trump of summer ! 
 
 From your hot grass worship 
 The red roses, thirsty through the thunder, 
 
 For a cooling rain ! 
 
 See the wan land, hear the cry of winter ! 
 
 From your cold walks wonder 
 At white snowfields, desolate through the sadness, 
 
 For the sun again ! 
 
 1888. 
 
 CHALKHILL. 
 From his Latin epitaph in the Cloisters of Winchester 
 
 College. 
 
 HERE lies John Chalkhill : years two score, 
 A Fellow here, and then, no more ! 
 Long life, of chaste and sober mood, 
 Of silence and of solitude; 
 Of plenteous alms, of plenteous prayer> 
 Of sanctity and inward care : 
 So lived the Church's early fold, 
 So saintly anchorites of old. 
 A little child, he did begin 
 The Heaven of Heavens by storm to win : 
 At eighty years he entered in. 
 
 1887. 
 
 WINCHESTER. 
 
 To Campbell Dodgson. 
 
 AT thought of thee, the old words come : 
 
 The old Eia ! quid silemus ? 
 Then, Duke Domum resonemus ! 
 
 113 i 
 
For thou art our true Home. 
 
 Praises of thee, 
 
 From such as we, 
 Thy children, well beseem us. 
 
 Great, among many great and free ; 
 
 Of many fair, the fairest : 
 England's reward of praise thou sharest, 
 With sisters worthy thee : 
 But first-born thou, 
 Who stateliest now 
 The crown of ages wearest. 
 
 Thou hast the winning of all hearts : 
 All the whole wide world over, 
 In every son thou hast a lover, 
 Won by thy loving arts : 
 Good men and true, 
 All the world through, 
 Who loved thee, far graves cover. 
 
 Though weariness, full hard to bear, 
 Should fill me many a morrow : 
 Mine yet, old joys of thee to borrow, 
 And thoughts of days, that were. 
 To know me thine, 
 And know thee mine, 
 Could comfort many a sorrow. 
 
 Our thought of thee is as the thought 
 Of dawn, when nights are bitter : 
 The shadowy world begins to glitter ; 
 And lo ! the sun hath brought 
 Bright flames to birth ; 
 While dewy earth 
 Thrills at the birds' clear twitter. 
 114 
 
Our joy in thee is as the joy 
 
 Of bells, when airs are stilly : 
 Through pastures lone, down moorlands hilly, 
 They ply their grave employ : 
 Peace lulls the day, 
 Rest soothes the way ; 
 Hearts glow, that late were chilly. 
 
 A place of friends ! a place of books ! 
 
 A place of good things olden ! 
 With these delights, the years were golden ; 
 And life wore sunny looks. 
 They fled at last : 
 But to that past 
 Am I in all beholden. 
 
 A place of friends indeed ! And age 
 
 Such friendship only mellows : 
 And, as our autumn slowly yellows, 
 Defies the wintry rage. 
 Good luck befall 
 You, one and all, 
 The best of all good fellows ! 
 
 Soft twilights of enchaunted June, 
 
 Gray Courts, green Meads, embracing ! 
 Side by side wandered we, slow pacing, 
 Till silvered rise of moon : 
 By Oxford towers 
 Come scarce such hours, 
 Her Quads and Gardens gracing. 
 
 O Cloister Time, beyond compare, 
 
 On Hills, down Meads, down River / 
 When summer magic could deliver 
 The soul from every care ! 
 That was to live : 
 And thanks we give 
 To Winchester, the giver. 
 
Days of May blossom and June heat, 
 
 When all the ways were fragrant ! 
 How good it was to play the vagrant, 
 Over the country sweet ! 
 
 The long hours through, 
 In skies, how blue ! 
 The mighty sun stood flagrant. 
 
 And ah, those hours of glorious life, 
 
 On Playing Fields of Eton ! 
 No better field for foes to meet on, 
 Foes in a friendly strife. 
 A right fair place, 
 With right good grace, 
 To be beaten, or to beat on. 
 
 When Term dies down to Domum Day, 
 
 And last farewells draw nearer : 
 Fairer grows Winchester , and dearer, 
 To those, who must away. 
 Gather then round ! 
 Send the old sound 
 To the heart of every hearer ! 
 
 Calm glide the streams through Water Meads ; 
 
 Calmly stand Hills above them. 
 Hark to the song of those, who love them ! 
 How the old music pleads ! 
 Come, what may come : 
 No sweeter Home 
 To deeper love shall move them. 
 
 But limes are rich in flower, and bees 
 Make hum, and August follows : 
 Away we go, like Daullan swallows, 
 Far from our towers and trees. 
 Past the way flies, 
 Where College lies, 
 Alone in her ancient hollows. 
 116 
 
Back too, like birds from overseas, 
 
 Birds of a common feather, 
 Gladly we flock again together, 
 Back to our towers and trees. 
 College in sight ! 
 Hills! gently bright 
 In the golden autumn weather. 
 
 And then, each heartening winter day : 
 
 When patriot zeal arouses, 
 In College, Commoners, and Houses, 
 The spirit of the fray ! 
 Time to begin ! 
 Ah, what glad din 
 Beneath the wintry boughs is ! 
 
 Only nine years, but nine ago ; 
 
 Could dearer rank befall me ? 
 With joy I won the right to call me 
 A College Junior : so 
 
 All those good things, 
 Tom W^arton sings, 
 Were waiting to enthrall me. 
 
 How fair the ancient city shone, 
 
 That best of red Septembers ! 
 How well my haunted heart remembers 
 That evening, nine years gone ! 
 O faces bright 
 With ruddy light ! 
 O dreams beside the embers ! 
 
 Proud pleasure, beneath JFykekam's roof, 
 
 That first of six years' slumbers ! 
 What dreams, more dear than poets' numbers, 
 Clung round those walls age-proof! 
 Such dreams as those, 
 No grown man knows : 
 No care, nor want, encumbers. 
 117 
 
Before us, years that charmed full well : 
 
 Five centuries behind us. 
 So past with future strove to bind us, 
 Each with its mighty spell. 
 O fond debate ! 
 No cruel fate, 
 To either, false shall find us. 
 
 Then, with the rising of the sun, 
 
 From dreams, to day-dreams woken : 
 We sang lam Lucis : happy token 
 For our new life begun : 
 Heirs of old race, 
 In that fair place : 
 One fellowship unbroken. 
 
 O pleasant, tranquil time secure ! 
 
 O comfortable season ! 
 For faith in youth is nature's reason, 
 Though youth may not endure. 
 Use, while you may, 
 The summer day : 
 Distrust at dawn is treason. 
 
 Far off, the battling world was loud, 
 
 The cries of war resounded : 
 In peace our Paradise abounded, 
 Far from the madding crowd. 
 Our happier dream, 
 No angry gleam, 
 Nor turbulent noise, confounded. 
 
 Youth is to love the air of noon, 
 In virginal clear May time : 
 The joyous light and heat of haytime, 
 The full red harvest moon : 
 To make earth's field 
 Those first flowers yield, 
 Which far outlive life's playtime. 
 118 
 
O men of sterner stuff! You blame 
 
 Light leisure's poor musician ? 
 Your youth was restless with ambition ? 
 Your summer was all flame ? 
 You on your past 
 May look at last, 
 Wistful with vain contrition. 
 
 Know you not, Manners Makytb Man ? 
 
 O toil and task laborious ! 
 Yet issue forth at last victorious, 
 Men of a simple plan : 
 But vexing haste, 
 And leisure's .waste, 
 Prove graceless and inglorious. 
 
 Peace be with you ! and let me muse : 
 
 Let mind and senses wander 
 Back to the perfect Home, far yonder ! 
 The fragrant summer dews 
 Are falling there ! 
 Me no such air 
 Charms, while I sit and ponder. 
 
 Campbell ! do you remember still, 
 
 How, nine years gone, we breasted 
 A storm of storms, where pine trees crested 
 The ridge of snowy hill ? 
 Cold winds and strong 
 Drove us along : 
 And wildly well we jested ! 
 
 And how, through all the country side, 
 We talked, much like our betters, 
 Of right and wrong, in arts and letters, 
 Wanderers far and wide ? 
 Then thought was free ; 
 So young were we, 
 With years, that feel no fetters. 
 119 
 
Would, I still wore the long black gown, 
 
 In cloistral habit vested : 
 Would, that all thoughts and cares I rested, 
 Dreaming on Twyford Down : 
 Glad but to mark, 
 How the clear lark, 
 Singing, the sunlight breasted ! 
 
 On Hills to lie, some endless hour, 
 
 Watching the stream wind slowly- 
 Through verdant Water Meads, past holy 
 Saint CrosSy the grayheads' bower : 
 While lone Downs brood 
 In quietude, 
 And gentle melancholy. 
 
 Here walked, by each fair_ river path, 
 
 Good Brothers of the Angle : 
 Whose sweet thoughts knew to disentangle 
 Peace from the days of wrath : 
 Here Walton went, 
 Here Ckalkhill spent 
 Calm hours, untaught to wrangle. 
 
 Arid many an haunt I think on now, 
 
 Where first I learned to savour 
 True verse, that won the old world's favour ; 
 Read on some lonely brow, 
 That overlooks 
 Old village nooks, 
 With names of homely flavour. 
 
 Chilcomb or Compton : loved far more, 
 
 Than those famed Hinkseys double : 
 Though none hath taken the sweet trouble, 
 To sing their simple store 
 Of pastoral joys : 
 Their wildest noise, 
 Birds whirring from the stubble. 
 120 
 
Still dwell they, where of old they dwelt, 
 
 The Muses and the Graces : 
 We, in their olden, holy places, 
 We too their influence felt : 
 We too have been 
 Their friends, and seen 
 The sunlight on their faces. 
 
 Here was their court : each Muse and Grace 
 
 Found votaries full willing : 
 One prompted to the Splendid Shilling^ 
 And one inspired the Chace : 
 And one found here 
 A bard austere ; 
 His Night with grave Thoughts filling. 
 
 Here, beneath Winton trees, first breathed 
 
 A faery lyre enchaunted : 
 Ah, Col/ins ! at what cost was granted 
 To thee the laurel, wreathed 
 With faery flowers, 
 At moonlit hours 
 Plucked in wild woodlands haunted ! 
 
 Still round the Cloisters, airs of Death 
 Wander, and touch the dreamer : 
 Music of Death, tired man's redeemer ! 
 Rest thee, lie down ! it saith. 
 Who rested here, 
 Death's lover were : 
 Death's friend, not Death's blasphemer. 
 
 Thy Browne, who saw the ages pass 
 
 In funeral procession ; 
 
 Whose eyes explored Death's vast possession 
 Was it thy holy grass, 
 And Chauntry dim, 
 First called on him 
 To make his soul's Confession ? 
 
 121 
 
Here first, perchance, thoughts filled his breast, 
 
 Memorial, monumental : 
 The ancient mysteries oriental ; 
 Faiths of the whiter West : 
 Dark pagan nights ; 
 Fair Christian rites, 
 The Dirge and Masses Trent a I. 
 
 Eton's great Provost, Wotton, came, 
 Enriched with courtly glory ; 
 And, calling back his youth's old story, 
 He found thee still the same : 
 All things were so, 
 Se puero : 
 He alone, changed and hoary. 
 
 For five last months retired, he gave 
 
 His soul to contemplation ; 
 His memory to meditation ; 
 Then all, unto the grave : 
 To Eton's trust, 
 His reverend dust : 
 Share we his veneration. 
 
 When Death comes nigh, and thoughts grow sad, 
 
 And all the skies look dreary : 
 When other places all are weary, 
 Save thee, the ever glad : 
 Sweet will it be 
 To visit thee, 
 With an Homeward Heus Rogere ! 
 
 Timely would shine our Morning Star : 
 
 No need, with voices fretful, 
 To call that herald light forgetful : 
 Phospbore / quid iubar ? 
 And Hesperus 
 Would bring to us, 
 Calm twilight, unregretful. 
 
 122 
 
There would we roam, and haply quote 
 
 Some old, well-proven poet : 
 Plain truth, as Horace loves to show it, 
 Or VirgiYs holier note : 
 Round us, the noise 
 Of just such boys. 
 As we were : could they know it ! 
 
 Ah ! fast and dark they lengthen out, 
 
 The shadows on the dial : 
 Winter and age brook no denial, 
 Nor leave us long in doubt. 
 
 Through their bleak hours, 
 What withered flowers 
 Put memory on her trial ! 
 
 Whose face flashed there ? What voice was that, 
 
 Voice, that comes back and lingers ? 
 Whose hand touched mine with flying fingers ? 
 Whose laugh is this, whereat 
 Down the dim track 
 Old joys come back, 
 And songs of long-lost singers ? 
 
 Up Hills our years would find the climb, 
 
 That grassy climb, grown steeper : 
 We'd rest in Trench ; and Trench was deeper, 
 We'd fancy, in our time : 
 Then, passing Maze, 
 To turn and gaze, 
 Tranced, like a dreaming sleeper ! 
 
 The mountainous Cathedral gray ; 
 
 College, so fairly towered ; 
 And Wolvesey ruins ivy-bo wered ; 
 And West Gate, far away : 
 Silent and still, 
 To gaze our fill, 
 By memory overpowered ! 
 123 
 
O Venta ! Caer Gwent / great and glad 
 
 Wast thou, ere Saxon yeoman, 
 Ere nobler Normandy's mailed bowman, 
 Saw thee : Apollo had 
 His temple bright 
 Of song and light, 
 Here, when the world was Roman. 
 
 And wert thou Camelot? Wert thou 
 
 That shrine of all things knightly ? 
 Through the dark shrouding mists, how brightly 
 Those glories flash forth now ! 
 High chivalry, 
 Fair courtesy, 
 Enriching Winton rightly. 
 
 Surely the magic of the Celt, 
 
 White City! doth not fail thee : 
 Whatever change and chance assail thee, 
 Still is that spirit felt : 
 That ancient grace 
 Still haunts thy face ; 
 And long may it avail thee. 
 
 Where reigned Apollo, Wykebam trod, 
 
 Child of a Saxon peasant : 
 Surely, Apollo still was present, 
 
 The old world's goodliest god : 
 Light's king, and song's, 
 His reign prolongs, 
 Throned in a place so pleasant. 
 
 On this trenched hill, new come from sea, 
 
 The robber Danes have clustered ; 
 On yonder hill, have Roundheads mustered, 
 Oliver's Battery: 
 
 Oh ! blade, and ball, 
 And crossbow, all 
 Down Itchen vale have blustered ! 
 124 
 
But dearest far of all to us, 
 
 Our College ! we confess thee : 
 Scarce can our simple love address thee ; 
 Silent, we greet thee thus* 
 While far above, 
 With perfect love, 
 Thy vanished children bless thee. 
 
 Sweet Home, whose excellent delight 
 
 Grows with the growing ages : 
 Nor sons untrue, nor martial rages, 
 Have spoiled thee to our sight : 
 Nurtured by thee, 
 Time yet shall see 
 Thy singers and thy sages. 
 
 A royal spirit lives in thee, 
 
 So loftily descended : 
 Through five great centuries attended, 
 By true posterity : 
 
 Sons on each hand, 
 Safe thou dost stand, 
 So plenteously befriended. 
 
 With thee my verse begins : thy name 
 
 My verse with music closes. 
 If sounds, like odours of old roses, 
 Recall, whence first they came ; 
 My verse, may be, 
 To thoughts of thee 
 Some hearts of thine disposes. 
 
 But vain all song : what need of me, 
 To sing thee and to praise thee ? 
 No chaunted thanksgiving pourtrays thee, 
 Limen amabile ! 
 
 Enough, to own 
 One praise alone : 
 
 His, whose right hand could raise thee. 
 125 
 
Only, how hard to stay your flow, 
 
 Old memories of pleasure ! 
 O years of everlasting treasure ! 
 O life of light and glow ! 
 Youth was in flower : 
 Hope was in power ; 
 Hope, without pause or measure. 
 
 Ah, fare you well ! ah, fare you well ! 
 
 Dear years of youth and laughter ! 
 Who knows, what time may bring hereafter ? 
 Whose tongue can fate foretell ? 
 Nay ! let that pass : 
 Fill up the glass, 
 With Auld Lang Syne to the rafter ! 
 
 And, Omnibus Wiccamicis ! 
 
 To honour one another, 
 Becomes the children of one mother ; 
 A mother, such as this ! 
 Honour, and health, 
 And righteous wealth, 
 To brother and to brother ! 
 
 Ah, truest, sweetest, commonplace ! 
 True lovers nought can sever : 
 Our love to thee, then, faulters never, 
 Dear mother of our race ! 
 Wykehamists^ we 
 Cry, Hail to tbee ! 
 With a love, that lasts for ever. 
 
 Wykeham ! to whom our joys are due, 
 
 Shall we not fall before thee ? 
 Love thee, and thank thee, and adore thee, 
 With passionate praises true ? 
 What she too owes 
 To thee, well knows 
 The motherland, that bore thee ! 
 126 
 
Year after year, to honour thee, 
 
 Thy Wykehamists will gather : 
 Not strangers, young and old ; nay, rather 
 One loving family : 
 
 Thy name, a bond 
 All ties beyond : 
 Our Founder and our Father ! 
 
 Before thine altar tomb we fall, 
 
 The silence growing vaster : 
 Our Founder , Father , gracious Master ! 
 Thine always, one and all : 
 Thine ! and as days 
 Grow, so thy praise 
 But firmer grows and faster. 
 
 Winchester ! Home, to whom our hearts, 
 
 Full of glad memories, take us : 
 Let all else fail, thou wilt forsake us 
 Never : and though time parts 
 Us from thy side, 
 We still abide 
 The lovers, thou didst make us. 
 
 Lovers : for we have known thee well, 
 
 And love thee, since we know thee. 
 But how with heart and soul to show thee 
 Our love, we cannot tell. 
 Ah ! may we be 
 But worthy thee : 
 Or evermore forgo thee. 
 
 Now once more let the old words come, 
 
 The old Ela ! quid silemus ? 
 Now, Dulce Domum resonemus ! 
 
 For love of thee, Sweet Home ! 
 Vivas et stes ! 
 Te indies 
 Amantius amemus. 
 
 1889. 
 127 
 
e^ finem dum facer e cupio, nullum mthi modum 
 statuo. Et quis enim modus adsit amori f )uia vos 
 amo^ Wiccammlcl^ de vobis multum ac saepe cogitare^ et 
 vobis bene esse cupere debeo. . . . 
 
 Richard Wtllcs : 1573. 
 
POEMS 
 
 By the same Author^ uniform with this Edition. 
 PRICE 5*. NET. 
 
 " FULL of delicate fancy, and display much lyrical grace and felicity." 
 Times. 
 
 " An air of solidity, combined with something also of severity, is the 
 first impression one receives from these pages. Not only is the number 
 of pieces which the book contains far greater than is now the fashion to 
 publish at one time, but the poems themselves are more massive than 
 most lyrics are ; they aim at dignity, and attain it. This is, we believe, 
 the first book of verse that Mr. Johnson has published by himself j and 
 one would say, on a first reading, that, for a first book, it was remarkably 
 mature. And so it is in its accomplishment, its reserve of strength, its 
 unfaltering style. ... If we are not content with the obvious merit of 
 such work as this, if we are exacting of entire success, it is because Mr. 
 Johnson's verse is so high above the average that it challenges the test of 
 a high standard. Mr. Johnson's future interests us even more than his 
 work hitherto j for, whatever form his writing takes, it will be the 
 expression of a rich mind and a rare talent." Saturday Review. 
 
 " These poems, if I mistake not, have been . . . looked forward to 
 with great interest by a good many people . . . nor do I think that 
 the book will be a disappointment to any. . . . The Dark Angel, a 
 poem of quite extraordinary power. . . . But if we are bidden to choose 
 the most perfect and enjoyable verses in the book, I would unhesitatingly 
 vote for Sertorius. Mr. Johnson has done real poetic justice to that 
 strangely attractive figure, to his romantic resolve, and the curious legend 
 that clings round his memory . . . the vision is Mr. Johnson's own, 
 and it is surely a noble one. . . . There is, perhaps, equal, or even 
 superior, power in two other and longer poems, Giuynedd and A Cornish 
 Night. . . . Beyond doubt, Mr. Johnson is a careful craftsman of his 
 verses ; unless I am mistaken, there is hardly a weak rhyme or a prosy 
 cadence though there are some few fantastic ones j this is to serve the 
 Muse loyally." Academy. 
 
 " Compared with most of the verse which passes at the present day for 
 poetry, such work as Mr. Johnson's demands due recognition, as work 
 done in the true spirit of art by a serious and skilful artist." Athenaeum. 
 
 " Mr. Lionel Johnson's poems have the advantage of a two-fold 
 inspiration. Many of these austere strains could not have been written, 
 if he had not been steeped in the most golden poetry of the Greeks, while, 
 on the other hand, side by side with his mellifluous chaunting, there 
 comes another note, wild, sweet, and unsophisticated the very bird-note 
 of Celtic poetry. And then again one comes on a song ripe and affluent, 
 as of one who has spoiled the very goldenest harvests of song of cultivated 
 129 K 
 
ages. Such is Summer Storm or In England. In a poem like 
 Sanfia SUvarum there is stateliness which is as the rolling of organ 
 music. Mr. Johnson's poetry is concerned with lofty things, and is 
 never less than passionately sincere. It is sane, high-minded, and full of 
 felicities." Illustrated London News. 
 
 " In his poems Mr. Lionel Johnson is likely to suffer at the hands of 
 most readers, because he is known to them as critic first and a poet 
 afterwards. They will turn to him for certain ascertained qualities, and 
 will not fail to find them the academic note, the accent of the inveterate 
 bookman, the classic predilection, and the rest. And if we have any 
 complaint to make of Mr. Johnson, it is that he has, of malice prepense 
 apparently, played too much into the hands of his prejudging critics. For 
 it is when he is most impulsive and original, and least reminiscent and 
 theoretic, that he is most convincing. . . . Winchester and Oxford 
 account for much that is telling and excellent in these poems, and for 
 something, too, no doubt, of any excess they may have of academic 
 qualities. But here Mr. Johnson's range by no means ends. One 
 interesting feature about his work, which remains to be traced, is that, 
 with all his classic sympathies, he has been led on so far in other and 
 Celtic fields. Some of the most distinctive numbers in his book are 
 those treating of Wales and Ireland. ... Of a part with his love for 
 Ireland, we may consider perhaps the strong Catholic sentiment running 
 through his book j for Mr. Johnson is another in that remarkable band 
 of poets, who have served a Roman Church and an English Muse." 
 Bookman. 
 
 11 Whatever may be the imperfections of Mr. Lionel Johnson's verses, 
 he has at least one of the instincts, which true poetry demands. He is 
 not content merely to avoid all that is base, unseemly, and tainted with 
 corruption, but he deliberately seeks and chooses high thoughts and lofty 
 ideals as his place of abiding. He has caught something of Arnold's 
 spirit, without Arnold's scepticism. ... A critic must be either blind 
 or prejudiced, who fails to recognize the merits of the volume." Literary 
 World. 
 
 " In the course of the year, Mr. Lionel Johnson gave us a first book of 
 poems, stately and austere in form, rich as with ritual and tapestry. . . . 
 To elements in our time it should needs be a balm ; to others, a rebuke. 
 . . . Altogether this was one of the ripest of first books. No lover of 
 poetry who reads it will willingly lose sight of Mr. Lionel Johnson." 
 Weekly Sun. 
 
 " His volume is like an old garden, every flower awakening reminis- 
 cences of unforgotten, half forgotten, and perhaps quite forgotten poets, 
 the whole invested with an antique dignity, and steeped in the sentiment 
 of antiquity. The passion for the past has seldom, if ever, in our day 
 found so devout an expression." Star. 
 
 "As literary and emotional compositions, his poems are distinctly 
 interesting. His sentiment is a curious mixture of the very modern and 
 the mediaeval. . . . The Catholic and the Celtic strains are the 
 strongest." Sketch. 
 
 I 3 
 
"... Thoughtful, distinctive, and sometimes even lofty poems .... 
 a rich and thoughtful volume, with an unusual deal of serious work, nobly 
 moulded and fashioned throughout. . . . His volume is very unlike 
 most contemporary poetry. Its loftiness, its aloofness, its sincere and, 
 once in a while, ecstatic Catholicism, its solemn march and manner and 
 pageantry, are in fine relief against the triviality, little worldliness, 
 imitation of all manner of perishable things, noisy decadence worst of 
 all, that are the weariness of so much latter-day pipings and musings. 
 
 Mr. Johnson's muse is sane, sincere, exalted A gracious and 
 
 heartening volume." Sun. 
 
 "Mr. Johnson is a * builder' of the lofty rhyme, rather than a singer. 
 His work is mainly Latin in its inspiration, and his masters would seem 
 to have been those old English poets most under the influence of Latin 
 models. . . . The most obvious characteristics of Mr. Johnson's verse 
 are dignity and distinction : but beneath these one feels vibrating a 
 passionate poetic impulse, and a grave fascinating music passes from end 
 to end of his volume." Realm. 
 
 ff Mr. Johnson has given us an example of a strangely exquisite art : a 
 book of sheer poetry, which is neither nasty, nor silly, nor sentimental j 
 and for this he has our earnest thanks and praise." Senate. 
 
 " Mr. Lionel Johnson's poems stand higher by a long degree than any 
 that the season has yet given us. More will be heard of them, there is 
 no doubt, in seasons that are yet distant. They are cast in a bold and 
 lofty, if occasionally a severe mould ; they are both sane and exalted, 
 while redolent of penetrative thought and of great religious issues. The 
 solemn march, the stately pageantry of some, the classic, cloistral, 
 cathedral air and academic glimpses of others, the sincere spirituality, the 
 occasional reverie and wistfulness, the night-poems, and nature-poems 
 that bespeak the Celt, all tend to give the volume an arresting, a remark- 
 able, and sometimes a distinguished air." New Irish Re-view. 
 
 " He is at once stately and passionate, austere and free. His passion 
 has a sane mood : his fire is white heat. . . . There is in him the delight 
 of the student, but also the open-air joy of a man 'stepping westward' with 
 staff and scrip into the gates of the sunset. . . . There are a good many 
 exquisite examples of the Celtic inspiration in these pages, and the lines 
 dedicated to Mr. John O'Leary are as fine an example as any. The 
 book is full of such battle strains. . . . I do not quote To Morfydd 
 which seems to me the most rapt utterance of the Celtic muse in this 
 book. ... In quite another mood, I give a last extract from this lofty 
 and beautiful book. Such crashing symphonies as Sanfla Sil-varum 
 could be written by only one other poet of our time, Mr. Francis Thomp- 
 son. . . . Mr. Johnson's muse is concerned only with the highest things. 
 Her flight is as of a winged thing, that goes * higher still and higher,* 
 and has few flutterings near earth. If this poetry errs at all, it is on the 
 side of its height and loftiness yet none could call it cold." Irish 
 Daily Independent. 
 
 ft What distinguishes this verse from the bulk of the minor verse of the 
 day is its high sincerity of thought. And sincerity of thought, when the 
 
writer is an artist, as Mr. Johnson is, brings in its train dignity and dis- 
 tinction, which are in almost every line of this volume. Were Mr. 
 Johnson less of an artist, his. sincerity of thought might have resulted in 
 a flat and starched seriousness abhorred of poetry. But here there is the 
 beauty of word and phrase, as well as the earnestness and truth of con- 
 ception." United Ireland. 
 
 ft The reader, taking up each new book of verses as it comes from the 
 press, is apt to cry with a sigh of weariness, was it worth while to print 
 this ? is it worth while to read it ? In Mr. Johnson's case, we can em- 
 phatically answer, yes." Boston Commonwealth, U.S.A. 
 
 " There is at all times a refinement and quietude of expression, which 
 is admirable." Contemporary Review, U.S.A. 
 
 " These melodies are now serene, now spirited and resolute as a^ trumpet 
 call, again strangely low and sweet, and again devout, austere, and 
 solemn. The songs are songs, and the poems of meditation possess 
 scholarly thought and enviable repose." Philadelphia Ledger, U.S. A. 
 
 " His grasp of rhyme and his ear for cadence are unerring, and no 
 simplest stanza but sings itself like music, as a poem should." Literary 
 World, U.S.A. 
 
 "Even Max Nordau will seek in vain for evidences of ' degeneration ' 
 in Mr. Johnson's poetry." Ave Maria, U.S.A. 
 
 " To the ancient foundation of Winchester is dedicated a first book of 
 poems, austerely bound in blue paper, which is not unworthy of the 
 school, which trained Otway and Collins. Mr. Lionel Johnson sings in 
 time and tune, and withal there is meaning in the song. Critic, U.S.A. 
 
 " Ses ' Poems ' tantot magnifiques et solennels, sans elaboration, tantot 
 pensifs et melancholiques, murmure aerien de la tristesse des choses, ou 
 la pensee toujours s'enferme en le rhythme attendu, sans affectation ni 
 recherche, ontune purete de lignes, une forme impeccable et classique. . . . 
 Sans autre commentaire, nous affirmons la tres grande valeur du livre de 
 M. Lionel Johnson." Mercure de France. 
 
 " On ne peut reprocher a M. Lionel Johnson la somptuosite exageree 
 et 1'expression temeraire qui gate trop souvent M. Francis Thompson. 
 Au contraire, une remarquable maturite, une puissance bien dirigee et un 
 peu trop maintenue, un style sans hesitations characterisent ses ' Poems.' 
 . . . M. Lionel Johnson ne chante ni les poignantes joies, ni les dechi- 
 rantes douleurs, ni les passions, ni 1'amour ; et il a pourtant son enthou- 
 siasme a lui j sa foi deliberee et singulierement ardente en la grandeur du 
 catholicisme j son admiration pour les traditions antiques et 1'ideal toujours 
 changeant a travers contrees et epoques ; son profond et religieux attache- 
 ment aux choses celtiques et a Tlrlande." UErmitage. 
 
 LONDON: ELKIN MATHEWS, VIGO STREET, W. 
 
 CHISWICK PRESS ; C. WHITTINGHAM AND CO., TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE. 
 
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