'! 1 POEMS THE POCKET EDITION OF THE WORKS OF GEORGE MEREDITH Published by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS THE ORDEAL OF RICHARD FEVEREL. DIANA OF THE CROSS-WAYS. SANDRA BELLOM. VITTORIA. RHODA FLEMING. THE EGOIST. THE ADVENTURES OF HARRY RICHMOND. BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. EVAN HARRINGTON. ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS. THE SHAVING OF SHAGPAT. THE TRAGIC COMEDIANS. LORD ORMONT AND HIS AMINTA. THE AMAZING MARRIAGE. SHORT STORIES. POEMS. In 1 6 Volumes. Each Volume Sold Separately. Limp Leather, $1.25 net. Cloth, $1.00 POEMS BY GEORGE MEREDITH NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1907 COPYRIGHT 1897, 1898, BY GEORGE MEREDITH Soob Al CONTENTS • Page Modern Love 3 The Sage Enamoured and the Honest Lady 53 Love is Winged 69 Ask, is Love Divine 70 Joy is Fleet 71 The Lesson of Grief 72 The Woods of Westermain 73 A Ballad of Past Meridian 89 The Day of the Daughter of Hades 90 The Lark Ascending Ill Phoebus with Admetus 116 Melajipus 121 Love in the Valley 127 The Three Singers to Young Blood 136 The Orchard and the Heath 140 Earth and Man 143 A Ballad of Fair Ladies in Revolt 152 Juggling Jerry 168 The Old Chartist 173 Martin's Puzzle 179 Marian 183 SONNETS Lucifer in Starlight 185 The Star Sirius 186 Sense and Spirit 187 Earth's Secret 188 Vl CONTENTS Page 'I'm. Siikii <>i S 1 1 v k i ~ i ■ i LBB 189", 190 Iniiksvi ELaRMONI l'.H Grace and Love 192 Appreciation 193 Tin. DlB( hi im i>r Wisdom 194 I'm: Si \te of Age 195 Progress 196 Im World's Advancb 197 A Certain Peopli 198 The Garden of Epicurus 199 A Later Alexandrian 200 As Orson oj the Muse 201 The Point «>f Taste 202 (ami lis Saltat 203,204 To J. M 205 To a Friend Lost 206 My Theme 207, 208 Time and Sentiment 209 BALLADS AND POEMS OF TRAGIC LIFE The Two Masks 211 Archduchess Anne 212 The Song of Theodoltnda 230 A Preaching from a Spanish Ballad 237 The Young Princess 242 King Barald's Trance 254 W ii i m ii i; OP Sympathy 258 Voi \'. Reynard 259 Manfred 260 Hernani 261 The Nuptials of Attila 262 Anburin's Harp 282 Men \m. Man 289 The Last Contention 291 CONTEXTS Vll Page Periander 294 Solon 301 Bellerophon 304 Phaethon 307 A READING OF EARTH Seed-Time 315 Hard Weather 318 The South-Wester 322 The Thrush in February 327 The Appeasement of Demeter 334 Earth and a Wedded Woman 340 Mother to Babe 343 Woodland Peace 344 The Question Whither 345 Outer and Inner 347 Nature and Life • 349 Dirge in Woods 350 A Faith on Trial 351 Change in Recurrence 372 Hymn to Colour 374 Meditation under Stars 379 Woodman and Echo 382 The Wisdom of Eld 384 Earth's Preference 385 Society 386 Winter Heavens 387 Wind on the Lyre 388 The Youthful Quest 389 The Empty Purse 390 Jump-to-Glory Jane 414 ODES To the Comic Spirit 427 Youth in Memory 440 Via CoN ll N IN- VERSES Paob Penetration and Trust 44'J Nn.iu i:i;n love VI It chanced his lips did meet her forehead cool. She had no blush, but slanted down her eye. Shamed nature, then, confesses love can die : And most she punishes the tender fool Who will believe what honours her the most! Dead ! is it dead ? She has a pulse, and flow Of tears, the price of blood-drops, as I know, For whom the midnight sobs around Love's ghost, Since then I heard her, and so will sob on. The love is here; it has but changed its aim. bitter barren woman ! what 's the name ? The name, the name, the new name thou hast won ? Behold me striking the world's coward stroke ! That will I not do, though the sting is dire. — Beneath the surface this, while by the fire They sat, she laughing at a quiet joke. MODERN LOVE 9 VII She issues radiant from her dressing-room, Like one prepared to scale an upper sphere : — By stirring up a lower, much I fear ! How deftly that oiled barber lays his bloom ! That long-shanked dapper Cupid with frisked curls, Can make known women torturingly fair ; The gold-eyed serpent dwelling in rich hair, Awakes beneath his magic whisks and twirls. His art can take the eyes from out my head, Until I see with eyes of other men ; While deeper knowledge crouches in its den, And sends a spark up : — is it true we are wed ? Yea ! filthiness of body is most vile, But faithlessness of heart I do hold worse. The former, it were not so great a curse To read on the steel-mirror of her smile. 10 MODEBN LOVB VIII Yet it was plain she struggled, and that salt 01 righteous feeling made her pitiful. Poor twisting worm, so queenly beautiful 1 Where came the cleft between us ? whose the fault ? My tears are on thee, that have rarely dropped As balm for any bitter wound of mine: ]\Iy breast will open for thee at a sign! But, no: we are two reed-pipes, coarsely stopped: The God once filled them with his mellow breath ; And they were music till he flung them down, Used! used! Hear now the discord-loving clown Puff his gross spirit in them, worse than death! I do not know myself without thee more : In this unholy battle I grow base: If the same soul be under the same face, Speak, and a taste of that old time restore ! MODERN LOVE 11 IX He felt the wild beast in him betweenwhiles So masterfully rude, that he would grieve To see the helpless delicate thing receive His guardianship through certain dark defiles. Had he not teeth to rend, and hunger too ? But still he spared ber. Once : ' Have you no fear ? ' He said : 't was dusk ; she in his grasp ; none near. She laughed : ' No, surely ; am I not with you ? ' And uttering that soft starry ' you,' she leaned Her gentle body near him, looking up ; And from her eyes, as from a poison-cup, He drank until the flittering eyelids screened. Devilish malignant witch ! and oh, young beam Of heaven's circle-glory ! Here thy shape To squeeze like an intoxicating grape — I might, and yet thou goest safe, supreme. 12 MODEBH LOVE But where began the change ; and what 's my crime ? The wretch condemned, who has not been arraigned, Chafes at his sentence. Shall I, unsustained, Drag on Love's nerveless body thro' all time ? I must have slept, since now I wake. Prepare, You lovers, to know Love a thing of moods : Not like hard life, of laws. In Love's deep woods, I dreamt of loyal Life : — the offence is there ! Love's jealous woods about the sun are curled; At least, the sun far brighter there did beam. — My crime is, that the puppet of a dream, I plotted to be worthy of the world. Oh, had I with my darling helped to mince The facts of life, you still had seen me go With hindward feather and with forward toe, Her much-adored delightful Fairy Prince ! MODERN LOVE 13 Out in the yellow meadows, where the bee Hums by us with the honey of the Spring, And showers of sweet notes from the larks on wing, Are dropping like a noon-dew, wander we. Or is it now ? or was it then ? for now, As then, the larks from running rings pour showers : The golden foot of May is on the flowers, And friendly shadows dance upon her brow. What 's this, when Nature swears there is no change To challenge eyesight ? Now, as then, the grace Of heaven seems holding earth in its embrace. Nor eyes, nor heart, has she to feel it strange ? Look, woman, in the West. There wilt thou see An amber cradle near the sun's decline : Within it, featured even in death divine, Is lying a dead infant, slain by thee. 14 MODEKN LUVE XII N( >t solely that the Future she destroys, Ami the fair life which in the distance lies For all men, beckoning out from dim rich skies: Nor that the passing hour's supporting joys Have lost the keen-edged flavour, which begat Distinction in old times, and still should breed Sweet Memory, and Hope, — earth's modest seed, And heaven's high-prompting: not that the world is flat Since that soft-luring creature I embraced, Among the children of Illusion went : Methinks with all this loss I were content, If the mad Past, on which my foot is based, "Were firm, or might be blotted : but the whole Of life is mixed : the mocking Past will stay: And if I drink oblivion of a day, So shorten I the stature of my soul. MODERN LOVE 15 XIII * I play for Seasons ; not Eternities ! ' Says Nature, laughing on her way. ' So must All those whose stake is nothing more than dust ! ' And lo, she wins, and of her harmonies She is full sure ! Upon her dying rose, She drops a look of fondness, and goes by, Scarce any retrospection in her eye ; For she the laws of growth most deeply knows, Whose hands bear, here, a seed-bag — there, an urn. Pledged she herself to aught, 't would mark her end ! This lesson of our only visible friend, Can we not teach our foolish hearts to learn ? Yes! yes ! — but, oh, our human rose is fair Surpassingly ! Lose calmly Love's great bliss, When the renewed for ever of a kiss Whirls life within the shower of loosened hair ! 10 MODERN LOVI XIV What soul would bargain for a cure that brings Contempt the nobler agony to kill ? Rather let me bear on the bitter ill, And strike this rusty bosom with new stings ! It seems there is another veering fit, Since on a gold-haired lady's eyeballs pure, I looked with little prospect of a cure, The while her mouth's red bow loosed shafts of wit Just heaven! can it be true that jealousy Has decked the woman thus ? and does her head Swim somewhat for possessions forfeited ? Madam, you teach me many things that be. I open an old book, and there I find, That ' Women still may love whom they deceive.' Such love I prize not, madam : by your leave, The game you play at is not to my mind. MODERN LOVE 17 XV I think she sleeps : it must be sleep, when low Hangs that abandoned arm toward the floor ; The face turned with it. Now make fast the door. Sleep on : it is your husband, not your foe. The Poet's black stage-lion of wronged love, Frights not our modern dames : — well if he did ! Now will I pour new light upon that lid, Full-sloping like the breasts beneath. < Sweet dove, Your sleep is pure. Nay, pardon : I disturb. I do not ? good ! ' Her waking infant-stare Grows woman to the burden my hands bear : Her own handwriting to me when no curb Was left on Passion's tongue. She trembles through; A woman's tremble — the whole instrument : — I show another letter lately sent. The words are very like : the name is new. lb -mudi;.l;.n love XVI In our old shipwrecked days there was an hour, When in the firelight steadily aglow, Joined slackly, we beheld the red chasm grow Among the clicking coals. Our library-bower That eve was left to us : and hushed we sat As lovers to whom Time is whispering. From sudden-opened doors we heard them sing : The nodding elders mixed good wine with chat. Well knew we that Life's greatest treasure lay With us, and of it was our talk. 'Ah, yes! Love dies! ' I said : I never thought it less. She yearned to me that sentence to unsay. Then when the fire domed blackening, I found Her cheek was salt against my kiss, and swift Up the sharp scale of sobs her breast did lift : — Now am I haunted by that taste ! that sound 1 MODEIiN LOVE 19 XVII At dinner, she is hostess, I am host. Went the feast ever cheerfuller ? She keeps The Topic over intellectual deeps In buoyancy afloat. They see no ghost. With sparkling surface-eyes we ply the ball : It is in truth a most contagious game : Hiding the Skeleton, shall be its name. Such play as this, the devils might appal ! But here 's the greater wonder ; iu that we Enamoured of an acting nought can tire, Each other, like true hypocrites, admire ; Warm-lighted looks, Love's ephemerioe, Shoot gaily o'er the dishes and the wine. We waken envy of our happy lot. Fast, sweet, and golden, shows the marriage-knot. Dear guests, you now have seen Love's corpse-light shine. 20 MODEKN LOVE XVIII Here Jack and Tom are paired with Moll and Meg. Curved open to the river-reach is seen A country merry-making on the green. Fair space for signal shakings of the leg. That little screwy fiddler from his booth, Whence flows one nut-brown stream, commands the joints Of all who caper here at various points. I have known rustic revels in my youth : The May-fly pleasures of a mind at ease. An early goddess was a county lass : A charmed Amphion-oak she tripped the grass. What life was that I lived ? The life of these ? Heaven keep them happy ! Nature they seem near. They must, I think, be wiser than I am ; They have the secret of the bull and lamb. 'T is true that when we trace its source, 't is beer. MODERN LOVE 21 XIX No state is enviable. To the luck alone Of some few favoured men I would put claim. I bleed, but her who wounds I will not blame. Have I not felt her heart as 't were my own Beat thro' me ? could I hurt her ? heaven and hell ! But I could hurt her cruelly ! Can I let My Love's old time-piece to another set, Swear it can't stop, and must for ever swell ? Sure, that 's one way Love drifts into the mart Where goat-legged buyers throng. I see not plain : My meaning is, it must not be again. Great God ! the maddest gambler throws his heart. If any state be enviable on earth, T is yon born idiot's, who, as days go by, Still rubs his hands before him, like a fly, . In a queer sort of meditative mirth. 22 MODERN LOVE XX I am not of those miserable males Who sniff at vice, and, daring not to snap, Do therefore hope for heaven. I take the hap Of all my deeds. The wind that fills my sails, Propels ; but 1 am helmsman. Am I wrecked, I know the devil has sufficient weight To bear : I lay it not on him, or fate. Besides, he 's damned. That man 1 do suspect A coward, who would burden the poor deuce With what ensues from his own slipperiness. I have just found a wanton-scented tress In an old desk, dusty for lack of use. Of days and nights it is demonstrative, That, like some aged star, gleam luridly. If for those times I must ask charity, Have I not any charity to give ? MODERN LOVE 23 XXI We three are on the cedar-shadowed lawn ; My friend being third. He who at love once laughed, Is in the weak rib by a fatal shaft Struck through, and tells his passion's bashful dawn And radiant culmination, glorious crown, When < this ' she said : went ' thus ' : most wondrous she. Our eyes grow white, encountering : that we are three, Forgetful ; then together we look down. But he demands our blessing ; is convinced That words of wedded lovers must bring good. We question; if we dare! or if we should! And pat him, with light laugh. We have not winced. Next, she has fallen. Fainting points the sign To happy things in wedlock. When she wakes, She looks the star that thro' the cedar shakes : Her lost moist hand clings mortally to mine. 24 mui>i;un LOVE XXII vVhat may the woman labour to confess ? There is about her mouth a nervous twitch. 'T is something to be told, or hidden : — which ? I get a glimpse of hell in this mild guess. She has desires of touch, as if to feel That all the household things are things she knew. She stops before the glass. What sight in view ? A face that seems the latest to reveal ! For she turns from it hastily, and tossed Irresolute, steals shadow-like to where I stand ; and wavering pale before me there, Her tears fall still as oak-leaves after frost. She will not speak. I will not ask. We are League-sundered by the silent gulf between. You burly lovers on the village green, Yours is a lower, and a happier star! MODERN LOVE 25 XXIII 'T is Christmas weather, and a country house Receives us : rooms are full : we can but get An attic-crib. Such lovers will not fret At that, it is half-said. The great carouse ' Knocks hard upon the miduight's hollow door, But when I knock at hers, I see the pit. Why did I come here in that dullard fit ? I enter, and lie couched upon the floor. Passing, I caught the coverlet's quick beat : — Come, Shame, burn to my soul ! and Pride, and Pain^ Foul demons that have tortured me, enchain ! Out in the freezing darkness the lambs bleat. The small bird stiffens in the low starlight. I know not how, but shuddering as I slept, I dreamed a banished angel to me crept : My feet were nourished on her breasts all night. •JG MODERN LOVE XXIV The misery is greater, as I live! To know her flesh so pure, so keen her sense, That she does penance now for no offence, Save against Love. The less can I forgive! The less can I forgive, though I adore That cruel lovely pallor which surrounds Her footsteps ; and the low vibrating sounds That come on me, as from a magic shore. Low are they, but most subtle to find out The shrinking soul. Madam, 't is understood When women play upon their womanhood; It means, a Season gone. And yet I doubt But I am duped. That nun-like look waylays My fancy. Oh ! I do but wait a sign ! Pluck out the eyes of pride ! thy mouth to mine ! Isever ! though I die thirsting. Go thy ways ! MODERN LOVE 27 XXV You like not that French novel ? Tell me why. You think it quite unnatural. Let us see. The actors are, it seems, the usual three : Husband, and wife, and lover. She — but fie ! In England we '11 not hear of it. Edmond, The lover, her devout chagrin doth share ; Blanc-mange and absinthe are his penitent fare, Till his pale aspect makes her over-fond : So, to preclude fresh sin, he tries rosbif. Meantime the husband is no more abused : Auguste forgives her ere the tear is used. Then hangeth all on one tremendous If : — If she will choose between them. She does choose ; And takes her husband, like a proper wife. Unnatural ? My dear, these things are life : And life, some think, is worthy of the Muse. l!S MODERN LOVE XXVI Love ere he bleeds, an eagle in high skies, Has earth beneath his wings : from reddened eve He views the rosy dawn. In vain they weave The fatal web below while far he flies. But when the arrow strikes him, there 's a change. He moves but in the track of his spent pain, Whose red drops are the links of a harsh chain, Binding him to the ground, with narrow range. A subtle serpent then has Love become. I had the eagle in my bosom erst : Henceforward with the serpent I am cursed. I can interpret where the mouth is dumb. Speak, and I see the side-lie of a truth. Perchance my heart may pardon you this deed : But be no coward : — you that made Love bleed, You must bear all the venom of his tooth ! MODEEN LOVE 29 XXVII Distraction is the panacea, Sir ! I hear my oracle of Medicine say. Doctor ! that same specific yesterday I tried, and the result will not deter A second trial. Is the devil's line Of golden hair, or raven black, composed ? And does a cheek, like any sea-shell rosed, Or clear as widowed sky, seem most divine ? No matter, so I taste forgetfulness. And if the devil snare me, body and mind, Here gratefully I score : — he seemed kind, "When not a soul would comfort my distress ! sweet new world, in which I rise new made ! Lady, once I gave love : now I take ! Lady, I must be flattered. Shouldst thou wake The passion of a demon, be not afraid. 80 MODERN LOVB XXVIII I must be flattered. The imperious Desire speaks out. Lady, I am content To play with you the game of Sentiment, And with you enter on paths perilous; But if across your beauty I throw light, To make it threefold, it must be all mine. First secret ; then avowed. For I must shine Envied, — I, lessened in my proper sight ! lie watchful of your beauty, Lady dear ! How much hangs on that lamp you cannot tell. Most earnestly I pray you, tend it well : And men shall see me as a burning sphere ; And men shall mark you eyeing me, and groan To be the God of such a grand sunflower ! I feel the promptings of Satanic power, While you do homage unto me alone. MODEKN LOVE 21 XXIX Am I failing ? For no longer can I cast A glory round about this head of gold. Glory she wears, but springing from the mould ; Not like the consecration of the Past ! Is my soul beggared ? Something more than earth I cry for still : I cannot be at peace In having Love upon a mortal lease. I cannot take the woman at her worth! Where is the ancient wealth wherewith I clothed Our human nakedness, and could endow With spiritual splendour a white brow That else had grinned at me the fact I loathed ? A kiss is but a kiss now ! and no wave Of a great flood that whirls me to the sea. But, as you will ! we '11 sit contentedly, And eat our pot of honey on the grave. 82 MODERN LOVE XXX What are we first ? First, animals ; and next Intelligences at a leap ; on whom Pale lies the distant shadow of the tomb, And all that draweth on the tomb for text. Into which state comes Love, the crowning sun*. Beneath whose light the shadow loses form. We are the lords of life, and life is warm. Intelligence and instinct now are one. But nature says : ' My children most they seem When they least know me : therefore I decree Thut they shall suffer.' Swift doth young Love flee, And we stand wakened, shivering from our dream. Then if we study Nature we are wise. Thus do the few who live but with the day : The scientific animals are they. — Lady, this is my sonnet to your eyes. MODERN LOVE 33 j XXXI This golden head has wit in it. I live Again, and a far higher life, near her. Some women like a young philosopher Perchance because he is diminutive. For woman's manly god must not exceed Proportions of the natural nursing size. Great poets and great sages draw no prize With women : but the little lap-dog breed, Who can be hugged, or on a mantel-piece Perched up for adoration, these obtain Her homage. And of this we men are vain ? Of this ! 'T is ordered for the world's increase'. Small flattery ! Yet she has that rare gift To beauty, Common Sense. I am approved. It is not half so nice as being loved, And yet I do prefer it. What 's my drift ? 34 M<>I>KKN LOVE XXXII Full faith I have she holds that rarest gift To beauty, Common Sense. To see her lie With her fair visage an inverted sky Bloom-covered, while the underlidfl uplift, Would almost wreck the faith ; but when her mouth (Can it kiss sweetly ? sweetly !) would address The inner me that thirsts for her no less, And has so long been languishing in drouth, I feel that I am matched; that I am man! One restless corner of my heart or head, That holds a dying something never dead, Still frets, though Nature giveth all she can. It means, that woman is not, I opine, Her sex's antidote. Who seeks the asp For serpent's bites ? 'T would calm me could I clasp Shrieking Bacchantes with their souls of wine I MODEKN LOVE 35 XXXIII * In Paris, at the Louvre, there have I seen The sumptuously-feathered augel pierce Prone Lucifer, descending. Looked he fierce, Showing the fight a fair one ? Too serene ! The young Pharsalians did not disarray Less willingly their locks of floating silk : That suckling mouth of his, upon the milk Of heaven might still be feasting through the fray. Oh, Raphael ! when men the Fiend do fight, They conquer not upon such easy terms. Half serpent in the struggle grow these worms. And does he grow half human, all is right.' This to my Lady in a distant spot, Upon the theme : While mind is mastering clay, Gross clay invades it. If the spy you play, My wife, read this ! Strange love talk, is it not? uG MODERN LOVE XXXIV Madam would speak with ine. So, now it comes: The Deluge or else Fire ! She 's well ; she thanks .M v husbandship. Our chain on silence clanks. Time leers between, above his twiddling thumbs. Am I quite well ? Most excellent in health! The journals, too, I diligently peruse. Vesuvius is expected to give news: Niagara is no noisier. By stealth Our eyes dart scrutinizing snakes. She 's glad I 'm happy, says her quivering under-lip. * And are not you? ' ' How can I be ? ' ' Take ship ! For happiness is somewhere to be had.' 'Nowhere for me ! ' Her voice is barely heard. I am not melted, and make no pretence. With commonplace I freeze her, tongue and sense. Niagara or Vesuvius is deferred. MODERN LOVE 37 XXXV It is no vulgar nature I have wived. Secretive, sensitive, she takes a wound Deep to her soul, as if the sense had swooned, And not a thought of vengeance had survived. No confidences has she : but relief Must come to one whose suffering is acute. have a care of natures that are mute ! They punish you in acts : their steps are brief. What is she doing ? What does she demand From Providence or me ? She is not one Long to endure this torpidly, and shun The drugs that crowd about a woman's hand. At Forfeits during snow we played, and I Must kiss her. ' Well performed ! ' I said : then she ' 'T is hardly worth the money, you agree ? ' Save her ? What for ? To act this wedded lie ! 38 MODERN LOVE XXXVI My Lady unto Madam makes her bow. The charm of women is, that even while You 're probed by them for tears, you yet may smile, Nay, laugh outright, as I have done just now. The interview was gracious : they anoint (To me aside) each other with fine praise: Discriminating compliments they raise, That hit with wondrous aim on the weak point: My Lady's nose of Nature might complain. It is not fashioned aptly to express Her character of large-browed steadfastuess. But Madam says: Thereof she may be vain! Now, Madam's faulty feature is a glazed And inaccessible eye, that has soft fires, Wide gates, at love-time only. This admires My Lady. At the two I stand amazed. MODERN LOVE 3 9 XXXVII Along the garden terrace, under which A purple valley (lighted at its edge By smoky torch-flame on the long cloud-ledge Whereunder dropped the chariot), glimmers rich, A quiet company we pace, and wait The dinner-bell in prae-digestive calm. So sweet up violet banks the Southern balm Breathes round, we care not if the bell be late : Though here and there grey seniors question Time In irritable coughings. With slow foot The low rosed moon, the face of Music mute, Begins among her silent bars to climb. As in and out, in silvery dusk, we thread, I hear the laugh of Madam, and discern My Lady's heel before me at each turn. Our tragedy, is it alive or dead? 40 modi;i;.n LOVE XXXVIII Give to imagination some pure light In human form to fix it, or you shame The devils with that hideous human game: — Imagination urging appetite! Thus fallen ha v.' earth's greatest Gogmagogs, "Who dazzle us, whom we can not revere : Imagination is the charioteer That, in default of better, drives the hogs. So, therefore, my dear Lady, let me love I My soul is arrowy to the light in you. You know me that I never can renew The bond that woman broke : what would you have ? 'T is Love, or Vileness ! not a choice between, Save petrifaction ! What does Pity here ? She killed a thing, and now it's dead, 't is dear. Oh, when you counsel me, think what you mean ! MODERN LOVE . 41 XXXIX She yields : my Lady in her noblest mood Has yielded : she, my golden-crowned rose ! The bride of every sense ! more sweet than those Who breathe the violet breath of maidenhood. visage of still music in the sky ! Soft moon ! I feel thy song, my fairest friend ! True harmony within can apprehend Dumb harmony without. And hark ! 't is nigh ! Belief has struck the note of sound : a gleam Of living silver shows me where she shook Her long white fingers down the shadowy brook, Tb>t sings her song, half waking, half in dream. What two come here to mar this heavenly tune ? A man is one : the woman bears my name, And honour. Their hands touch ! Am I still tame ? God, what a dancing spectre seems the moon ! 12 MODERN LOVE XL I bade my Lady think what she might mean. Know I my meaning, I ? Can I love one, And yet lif jealous of another ? None Commits such folly. Terrible Love, I ween, Has might, even dead, half sighing to upheave The lightless .seas of selfishness amain: Seas that in a man's heart have no rain To fall and still them. Peace can I achieve, By turning to this fountain-source of woe, This woman, who 's to Love as fire to wood ? She breathed the violet breath of maidenhood Against my kisses once ! but I say, No ! The thing is mocked at! Helplessly afloat, I know not what I do, whereto I strive, The dread that my old love may be alive, Has seized my nursling new love by the throat. MODERN LOVE 43 XLI How many a thing which we cast to the ground, When others pick it up becomes a gern ! We grasp at all the wealth it is to them ; And by reflected light its worth is found. Yet for us still 't is nothing ! and that zeal Of false appreciation quickly fades. This truth is little known to human shades, How rare from their own instinct 'tis to feel J They waste the soul with spurious desire, That is not the ripe flame upon the bough. We two have taken up a lifeless vow To rob a living passion : dust for fire ! Madam is grave, and eyes the clock that tells Approaching midnight. We have struck despair Into two hearts. O, look we like a pair Who for fresh nuptials joyfully yield all else ? 44 MODERN LOVB XLII I am to follow her. There is much grace In woman when thus bent on martyrdom. They think that dignity of soul may come, Perchance, with dignity of body. Base! But I was taken by that air of cold And statuesque sedateness, when she said ' 1 'in going ' ; lit a taper, bowed her head, And went, as with the stride of Pallas bold. Fleshly indifference horrible! The hands Of Time now signal : O, she 's safe from me! Within those secret walls what do I see? Where first she set the taper down she stands : Not Pallas : Hebe shamed! Thoughts black as death, Like a stirred pool in sunshine break. Her wrists I catch : she faltering, as she half resists, ' Y>u love . . . ? love . . . ? love . . . ? ' all on an indrawn breath. MODERN LOVE 40 XLIII Mark where the pressing wind shoots javelin-like, Its skeleton shadow on the broad-backed wave ! Here is a fitting spot to dig Love's grave ; Here where the ponderous breakers plunge and strike, And dart their hissing tongues high up the sand : In hearing of the ocean, and in sight Of those ribbed wind-streaks running into white. If I the death of Love had deeply planned, I never could have made it half so sure, As by the unblest kisses which upbraid The full-waked seuse ; or failing that, degrade ! 'T is morning : but no morning can restore What we have forfeited. I see no sin : The wrong is mixed. In tragic life, God wot, No villain need be ! Passions spin the plot: We are betrayed by what is false within- 40 MODEBB LOVE XLIV They say, that Pity in Love's service dwells, A porter at the rosy temple's gate. 1 missed him going : but it is my fate To come upon him now beside his wells ; "Whereby I know that I Love's temple leave, And that the purple doors have closed behind. Poor soul ! if in those early days unkind, Thy power to sting had been but power to grieve, We now might with an equal spirit meet, And not be matched like innocence and vice. She for the Temple's worship has paid price, And takes the coin of Pity as a cheat. She sees through simulation to the bone : "What's best in her impels her to the worst : Never, she cries, shall Pity soothe Love's thirst, Or foul hypocrisy for truth atone 1 MODERN LOVE 47 XLV It is the season of the sweet wild rose, My Lady's emblem in the heart of me ! So golden-crowned shines she gloriously, And with that softest dream of blood she glows : Mild as an evening heaven round Hesper bright ! I pluck the flower, and smell it, and revive The time when in her eyes I stood alive. I seem to look upon it out of Night. Here 's Madam, stepping hastily. Her whims Bid her demand the flower, which I let drop. As I proceed, I feel her sharply stop, And crush it under heel with trembling limbs. She joins me in a cat-like way, and talks Of company, and even condescends To utter laughing scandal of old friends. These are the summer days, and these our walks. 48 MOl'KKN LOVE XL VI At last we parley : we so strangely dumb In such a close communion ! It befell About the sounding of the Matin-bell, And lo ! her place was vacant, and the hum Of loneliness was round me. Then I rose, And my disordered brain did guide my foot To that old wood where our first love-salute Was interchanged : the source of many throes ! There did I see her, not alone. I moved Toward her, and made proffer of my arm. She took it simply, with no rude alarm ; And that disturbing shadow passed reproved. I felt the pained speech coming, and declared My firm belief in her, ere she could speak. A ghastly morning came into her cheek, While with a widening soul on me she stared. MODERN LOVE 49 XLVII We saw the swallows gathering in the sky, And in the osier-isle we heard them noise. "We had not to look back on summer joys, Or forward to a summer of bright dye : But in the largeness of the evening earth Our spirits grew as we went side by side. The hour became her husband and my bride. Love that had robbed us so, thus blessed our dearth ! The pilgrims of the year waxed very loud In multitudinous chatterings, as the flood Full brown came from the West, and like pale blood Expanded to the upper crimson cloud. Love that had robbed us of immortal things, This little moment mercifully gave, Where I have seen across the twilight wave The swan sail with her young beneath her wings. 60 MODEB2S LOVE XLVIII Their sense is with their senses all mixed in, Destroyed by subtleties these women are ! More brain, Lord, more brain ! or we shall mar Utterly this fair garden we might win. Behold ! I looked for peace, and thought it near. Our inmost hearts had opened, each to each. We drank the pure daylight of honest speech. Alas ! that was the fatal draught, I fear. For when of my lost Lady came the word, This woman, this agony of flesh ! Jealous devotion bade her break the mesh, That I might seek that other like a bird. I do adore the nobleness ! despise The act ! She has gone forth, I know not where. Will the hard world my sentience of her share? I feel the truth ; so let the world surmise. MODERN LOVE 51 XLIX He found her by the ocean's moaning verge, Nor any wicked change in her discerned ; And she believed his old love had returned, Which was her exultation, and her scourge. She took his hand, and walked with him, and seemed The wife he sought, though shadow-like and dry. She had one terror, lest her heart should sigh, And tell her loudly she no longer dreamed. She dared not say, 'This is my breast : look in.' But there 's a strength to help the desperate weak. That night he learned how silence best can speak The awful things when Pity pleads for Sin. About the middle of the night her call "Was heard, and he came wondering to the bed. 'Now kiss me, dear ! it may be, now ! ' she said. Lethe had passed those lips, and he knew all. o- MODERN LOVE Thus piteously Love closed what lie begat: The, union of this ever-diverse pair! These two were rapid falcons in a snare, Condemned to do the flitting of the bat. Lovers beneath the singing sky of May, They wandered once; clear as the dew on flowers; But they fed not on the advancing hours: Their hearts held cravings for the buried day. Then each applied to each that fatal knife, Deep questioning, which probes to endless dole. Ah, what a dusty answer gets the soul When hot for certainties in this our life ! — In tragic hints here see what evermore Moves dark as yonder midnight ocean's force, Thundering like ramping hosts of warrior horse, To throw that faint thin line upon the shore ! G^ .*** THE SAGE ENAMOUKED AND THE HONEST LADY One fairest of the ripe unwedded left Her shadow on the Sage's path ; he found, By common signs, that she had done a theft. He could have made the sovereign heights resound With questions of the wherefore of her state : He on far other but an hour before Intent. And was it man, or was it mate, That she disdained ? or was there haply more ? About her mouth a placid humour slipped The dimple, as you see smooth lakes at eve Spread melting rings where late a swallow dipped. The surface was attentive to receive, The secret underneath enfolded fast. She had the step of the unconquered, brave, Not arrogant ; and if the vessel's mast Waved liberty, no challenge did it wave. Her eyes were the sweet world desired of souls, With something of a wavering line unspelt. They held the look whose tenderness condoles Eor what the sister in the look has dealt 54 nil. SAGE ENAM01 RED A NO THE HONE81 LADY Of fatal beyond healing; and her tunes A woman's honeyed amorous outvied, As when in a dropped viol tin- wood-throb moans Among the sobbing strings, that plain and chide Like infants for themselves, Less deep to thrill Than those rich mother-notes for them breathed round. Those voices are not magic of the will To strike love's wound, but of love's wound give sound, Conveying it; the yearnings, pains and dreams. They waft to the moist tropics after storm, When out of passion spent thick incense steams, And jewel-belted clouds the w r reck transform. "Was never hand on brush or lyre to paint Her gracious manners, where the nuptial ring Of melody clasped motion in restraint: The reed-blade with the breeze thereof may sing. With such endowments armed was she and decked To make her spoken thoughts eclipse her kind; Surpassing many a giant intellect, The marvel of that cradled infant mind. It clenched the tiny fist, it curled the toe ; Cherubic laughed, enticed, dispensed, absorbed; And promised in fair feminine to grow A Sage's match and mate, more heavenly orbed. Across his path the spouseless Lady cast Her shadow, and the man that thing became. His youth uprising called his age the Past. This was the strong grey head of laurelled name, THE SAGE ENAMOURED ANT) THE HONEST LADY 55 And in his bosom an inverted Sage Mistook for light of morn the light which sank. But who while veins run blood shall know the page Succeeding ere we turn upon our blank ? Comes Beauty with her tale of moon and cloud, Her silvered rims of mystery pointing in To hollows of the half-veiled unavowed, Where beats her secret life, grey heads will spin Quick as the young, and spell those hieroglyphs Of phosphorescent dusk devoutly bent ; They drink a cup to whirl on dizzier cliffs For their shamed fall, which asks, why was she sent ! Why, and of whom, and whence ; and tell they truth, The legends of her mission to beguile ? Hard likeness to the toilful apes of youth, He bore at times, and tempted the sly smile ; And not on her soft lips was it descried. She stepped her way benevolently grave : Nor sign that Beauty fed her worm of pride, By tossing victim to the courtier knave, Let peep, nor of the naughty pride gave sign. Rather 't was humbleness in being pursued, As pilgrim to the temple of a shrine. Had he not wits to pierce the mask he wooed ? All wisdom's armoury this man could wield j And if the cynic in the Sage it pleased, Traverse her woman's curtain and poor shield, For new example of a world diseased ; Showing her shrineless, not a temple, bare ; A curtain ripped to tatters by the blast. Oti THE BAGS ENAMOURED AND THE HONEST LAM Yet she most surely to this man stood fair: He worshipped like the young enthusiast, Named simpleton or poet. Did he read Right through, and with the voice she held reserved Amid her vacant ruins jointly plead ? Compassion for the man thus noble nerved The pity for herself she felt in him, To wreak a deed of sacrifice, and save ; At least, be worthy. That our soul may swim, We sink our heart down bubbling under wave. It bubbles till it drops among the wrecks. But, ah ! confession of a woman's breast:' She eminent, she honoured of her sex ! Truth speaks, and takes the spots of the confessed, To veil them. None of women, save their vile, Plays traitor to an army in the field. The cries most vindicating most defile. How shall a cause to Nature be appealed, When, under pressure of their common foe, Her sisters shun the Mother and disown, On pain of his intolerable crow Above the fiction, built for him, o'erthrown ? Irrational he is, irrational Must they be, though not Keason's light shall wane In them with ever Nature at close call, Behind the fiction torturing to sustain ; Who hear her in the milk, and sometimes make A tongueless answer, shivered on a sigh : Whereat men dread their lofty structure's quake Once more, and in their hosts for tocsin ply THE SAGE ENAMOURED AND THE HONEST LADY 57 The crazy roar of peril, leonine For injured majesty. That sigh of dames Is rare and soon suppressed. Not they combine To shake the structure sheltering them, which tames Their lustier if not wilder : fixed are they, In elegancy scarce denoting ease ; And do they breathe, it is not to betray The martyr in the caryatides. Yet here and there along the graceful row Is one who fetches breath from deeps, who deems, Moved by a desperate craving, their old foe May yield a trustier friend than woman seems, And aid to bear the sculptured floral weight Massed upon heads not utterly of stone : May stamp endurance by expounding fate. She turned to him, and, This you seek is gone ; Look in, she said, as pants the furnace, brief, Frost-white. She gave his hearing sight to view The silent chamber of a brown curled leaf : Thing that had throbbed ere shot black lightning through, No further sign of heart could he discern : The picture of her speech was winter sky ; A headless figure folding a cleft urn, "Where tears once at the overflow were dry. m So spake she her first utterance on the rack. It softened torment, in the funeral hues Eound wan Eomance at ebb, but drove her back To listen to herself, herself accuse 58 THE BAGE ENAMOURED AM» THE BONE8T LADY Harshly as Love's imperial cause allowed. She meant to grovel, and her Lover praised So high o'er the condemnatory crowd, That she perforce a fellow phoenix blazed. The picture was of hand fast joined to hand, Both pushed from angry skies, their grasp more pledged Under the threatened flash of a bright brand At aria's length up, for severing action edged. Why, then Love's Court of Honour contemplate; And two drowned shorecasts, who, for the life esteemed Above their lost, invoke an advocate In passion's purity, thereby redeemed. Redeemed, uplifted, glimmering on a throne, The woman stricken by an arrow falls. His advocate she can be, not her own, If, Traitress to thy sex ! oue sister calls. Have we such scenes of drapery's mournfulness On Beauty's revelations, witched we plant, Over the fair shape humbled to confess, An angel's buckler, with loud choric chant. rv No knightly sword to serve, nor harp of bard, The lady's hand in her physician's knew. She had not hoped for them as her award, When zig-zag on the tongue electric flew Her charge of counter-motives, none impure : But muteness whipped her skin. She could have said, THE SAGE ENAMOURED AND THE HONEST LADY 59 Her free confession was to work his cure, Show proofs for why she could not love or wed. Were they not shown ? His muteness shook in thrall Her body on the verge of that black pit Sheer from the treacherous confessional, Demanding further, while perusing it. Slave is the open mouth beneath the closed. She sank ; she snatched at colours ; they were peel Of fruit past savour, in derision rosed. For the dark downward then her soul did reel. A press of hideous impulse urged to speak : A novel dread of man enchained her dumb. She felt the silence thicken, heard it shriek, Heard Life subsiding on the eternal hum : Welcome to women, when, between man's laws And Nature's thirsts, they, soul from body torn, Give suck at breast to a celestial cause, Named by the mouth infernal, and forsworn. Nathless her forehead twitched a sad content, To think the cure so manifest, so frail Her charm remaining. Was the curtain's rent Too wide ? he but a man of that herd male ? She saw him as that herd of the forked head Butting the woman harrowed on her knees, Clothed only in life's last devouring red. Confession at her fearful instant sees Judicial Silence write the devil fact In letters of the skeleton : at once, Swayed on the supplication of her act, The rabble reading, roaring to denounce, 60 Tin: SAGE BNAMOl BED \m> THE HONEST LAD? She joins. No longer colouring, with skins At tangles, picture that for eyes in teara Might swim tin- sequence, she addressed her lips To do the scaffold's olhce at his ears. Into the bitter judgement of that herd On women, she, deeming it present, fell. Her frenzy of abasement hugged the word They stone with, and bo pile their eitadel To launch at outcasts the foul levin bolt. As had he thing it, in her breast it burned. Face and reflect it did her hot revolt From hardness, to the writhing rebel turned j Because the golden buckler was withheld, She to herself applies the powder-spark, For joy of one wild demon burst ere quelled, Perishing to astound the tyrant Dark. She had the Scriptural word so scored on brain, It rang th rough air to sky, and rocked a world That danced down shades the scarlet dance profane; Most women ! see ! by the man's view dustward hurled, Impenitent, submissive, torn in two. They sink upon their nature, the unnamed, And sops of nourishment may get some few, In place of understanding scourged and shamed. Barely have seasoned women understood The great Irrational, who thunders power, Drives Nature to her primitive wild wood, And courts her in the covert's dewy hour; THE SAGE ENAMOURED AND THE HONEST LADY 61 Returning to his fortress nigh night's end, With execration of her daughters' lures. They help him the proud fortress to defend, Nor see what front it wears, what life immures, The murder it commits ; nor that its base Is shifty as a huckster's opening deal For bargain under smoothest market face, "While Gentleness bids frigid Justice feel, Justice protests that Reason is her seat ; Elect Convenience, as Reason masked, Hears calmly cramped Humanity entreat ; Until a sentient world is overtasked, And rouses Reason's fountain-self : she calls On Nature ; Nature answers : Share your guilt In common when contention cracks the walls Of the big house which not on me is built. The Lady said as much as breath will bear ; To happier sisters inconceivable : Contemptible to veterans of the fair, Who show for a convolving pearly shell, A treasure of the shore, their written book. As much as woman's breath will bear and live, Shaped she to words beneath a knotted look, That held as if for grain the summing sieve. Her judge now brightened without pause, as wakes Our homely daylight after dread of spells. Lips sugared to let loose the little snakes Of slimy lustres ringing elfin bells About a story of the naked flesh, Intending but to put some garment on, G- 1 1 1 1 : BAGE ENAMOURED ani> THE HONEST LAD? Should learn, that in the subject they enmesh, A traitor lurks and will be known anon. Delusion heating pricks the torpid doubt, Stationed for index down an ancient track: And ware of it was he while she poured out, A broken moon ou forest-waters black. Though past the stage where midway men are skilled To scan their senses wriggling under plough, When yet to the charmed seed of speech distilled, Their hearts are fallow, he, and witless how, Loathing, had yielded, like bruised limb to leech, Not handsomely ; but now beholding bleed Soul of the woman in her prostrate speech, The valour of that rawness he could read. Thence flashed it, as the crimson currents ran From senses up to thoughts, how she had read Maternally the warm remainder man Beneath his crust, and Nature's pity shed, In shedding dearer than heart's blood to light His vision of the path mild Wisdom walks. Therewith he could espy Confession's fright ; Her need of him: these flowers grow on stalks; They suck from soil, and have their urgencies Beside and with the lovely face mid leaves. Veins of divergencies, convergences, Our botanist in womankind perceives ; And if he hugs no wound, the man can prize That splendid consummation and sure proof Of more than heart in her, who might despise, Who drowns herself, for pity up aloof THE SAGE ENAMOURED AND THE HONEST LADY 63 To soar and be like Nature's pity : she Instinctive of what virtue in young days Had served hiin for his pilot-star on sea, To trouble him in haven. Thus his gaze Came out of rust, and more than the schooled tongue Was gifted to encourage and assure. He gave her of the deep well she had sprung ; And name it gratitude, the word is poor. But name it gratitude, is aught as rare From sex to sex ? And let it have survived Their conflict, comes the peace between the pair, Unknown to thousands husbanded and wived: Unknown to Passion, generous for prey : Unknown to Love, too blissful in a truce. Their tenderest of self did each one slay ; His cloak of dignity, her fleur de luce ; Her lily flower, and his abolla cloak, Things living, slew they, and no artery bled. A moment of some sacrificial smoke, They passed, and were the dearer for their dead. He learnt how much we gain who make no claims. A nightcap on his flicker of grey fire, Was thought of her sharp shudder in the flames, Confessing ; and its conjured image dire, Of love, the torrent on the valley dashed ; The whirlwind swathing tremulous peaks ; young force, Visioned to hold corrected and abashed Our senile emulous; which rolls its course Proud to the shattering end ; with these few last Hot quintessential drops of bryony juice, THE SAGE ENAMOURED AND THE HONES! LADY Squeezed out in anguish : all of that once vast I And still, though having skin for man's abuse, Though do more glorying in the beauteous wreath Shot skyward from a blood at passionate jet, Repenting but in words, that stand as, teeth Between the vivid lips; a vassal set; And numb, of formal value. Are we true In nature, never natural thing repents; Albeit receiving punishment for due, Among the group of this world's penitents; Albeit remorsefully regretting, oft Cravenly, while the scourge no shudder spares. Our world believes it stabler if the soft Are whipped to show the face repentance wears. Then hear it, in a moan of atheist gloom, Deplore the weedy growth of hypocrites ; Count Nature devilish, and accept for doom The chasm between our passions and our wits ! Affecting lunar whiteness, patent snows, It trembles at betrayal of a sore. Hers is the glacier-conscience, to expose Impurities for clearness at the core. She to her hungered thundering in breast, Ye shall not starve, not feebly designates The world repressing as a life repressed, Judged by the wasted martyrs it creates. How Sin, amid the shades Cimmerian, Repents, she points for sight : and she avers, The hoofed half-angel in the Puritan Nigh reads her when no brutish wrath deters. THE SAGE ENAMOURED AND THE HONEST LADY 65 Sin against immaturity, the sin Of ravenous excess, what deed divides Man from vitality ; these bleed within ; Bleed in the crippled relic that abides. Perpetually they bleed ; a limb is lost, A. piece of life, the very spirit maimed. But culprit who the law of man has crossed With Nature's, dubiously within is blamed ; Despite our cry at cutting of the whip, Our shiver in the night when numbers frown * We but bewail a broken fellowship, A sting, an isolation, a fall'n crown. Abject of sinners is that sensitive, The flesh, amenable to stripes, miscalled Incorrigible : such title do we give To the poor shrinking stuff wherewith we are walled ; And taking it for Nature, place in ban Our Mother, as a Power wanton-willed, The shame and baffler of the soul of man, The recreant, reptilious. Do thou build Thy mind on her foundations in earth's bed ; Behold man's mind the child of her keen rod, Por teaching how the wits and passions wed To rear that temple of the credible God ; Sacred the letters of her laws, and plain, Will shine, to guide thy feet and hold thee firm : Then, as a pathway through a field of grain, Man's laws appear the blind progressive worm, That moves by touch, and thrust of linking rings : The which to endow with vision, lift from mud Go" nil. SAGE ENAMOURED AM> THE HONEST l.Al>\ To level of theii nature's aims and springs, Must those, the twain beside our vital flood, Now on opposing banks, the twain at strife (Whom t lie so rosy ferryman invites To junction, and mid-channel over Life, Unmasked to the ghostly, much asunder smites), Instruct in deeper than Convenience, In higher than the harvest of a year. Only the rooted knowledge to high sense Of heavenly can mount, and feel the spur For fruitfullest advancement, eye a mark Beyond the path with grain on either hand, Help to the steering of our social Ark Over the barbarous waters unto land. For us the double conscience and its war, The serving of two masters, false to both, Until those twain, who spring the root and are The knowledge in division, plight a troth Of equal hands : nor longer circulate A pious token for their current coin, To growl at the exchange ; they, mate and mate, Fair feminine and masculine shall join Upon an upper plane, still common mould, "Where stamped religion and reflective pace A statelier measure, and the hoop of gold Rounds to horizon for their soul's embrace. Then shall those noblest of the earth and sun Inmix unlike to waves on savage sea. But not till Nature's laws and man's are one, Can marriage of the man and woman be. THE SAGE ENAMOUEED AND THE HONEST LADY 67 He passed her through the sermon's dull defile. Down under billowy vapour-gorges heaved The city and the vale and mountain-pile. She felt strange push of shuttle-threads that weaved- A new land in an old beneath her lay ; And forth to meet it did her spirit rush, As bride who without shame has come to say, Husband, in his dear face that caused her blush. A natural woman's heart, not more than clad By station and bright raiment, gathers heat From nakedness in trusted hands : she had The joy of those who feel the world's heart beat, After long doubt of it as fire or ice ; Because one man had helped her to breathe free ; Surprised to faith in something of a price Past the old charity in chivalry : — Our first wild step to right the loaded scales Displaying women shamefully outweighed. The wisdom of humaneness best avails For serving justice till that fraud is brayed. Her buried body fed the life she drank. And not another stripping of her wound ! The startled thought on black delirium sank, While with her gentle surgeon she communed, Ob THE SAGE ENAMOURED AND THE HONEST LADS And woman's prospect of the yoke repelled. Her buried body gave her flowers and food; The peace, the homely skies, the springs that welled; Love, the huge love that folds the multitude. Soul's chastity in honesty, and this With 1) lauty, made the dower to men refused. And little do they know the prize tiny miss; Which is their happy fortune ! Thus he mused. For him, the cynic in the Sage had play A hazy moment, by a breath dispersed ; To think, of all alive most wedded they, "Whom time disjoined! He needed her quick thirst For renovated earth : on earth she gazed, With humble aim to foot beside the wise. Lo, where the eyelashes of night are raised Yet lowly over morning's pure grey eyes. LOVE IS WINGED Love is winged for two, In the worst he weathers, When their hearts are tied ; But if they divide, too true ! Cracks a globe, and feathers, feathers, Feathers all the ground bestrew. I was breast of morning sea, Rosy plume on forest dun, I the laugh in rainy fleeces, While with me She made one. Now must we pick up our pieces, For that then so winged were we. ASK, IS LOVE DIVINE Ask, is Love divine, Voices all are, ay. Question for the sign, There 's a common sigh. Would we through our years, Love forego, Quit of scars and tears ? Ah, but no, no, no! JOY IS FLEET Joy is fleet, Sorrow slow. Love so sweet, Sorrow will sow. Love, that has flown Ere day's decline, Love to have known, Sorrow, be mine! THE LESSON OF GRIEF Not ere the bitter herb we taste, Which ages thought of happy times, To plant us in a weeping waste, Rings with our fellows this one heart Accordant chimes. When I had shed ray glad year's leaf, I did believe I stood alone, Till that great company of Grief Taught me to know this craving heart For not my own. THE WOODS OF WESTERMAIN Enter these enchanted woods, You who dare. Nothing harms beneath the leaves More than waves a swimmer cleaves. Toss your heart up with the lark, Foot at peace with mouse and worm, Fair you fare. Only at a dread of dark Quaver, and they quit their form : Thousand eyeballs under hoods Have you by the hair. Enter these enchanted woods, You who dare. ii Here the snake across your path Stretches in his golden bath : Mossy-footed squirrels leap Soft as winnowing plumes of Sleep: Yaffles on a chuckle skim Low to laugh from branches dim : Up the pine, where sits the star, Rattles deep the moth-winged jar. 7 1 THE W< » >DS < >i' \\ i;si r.k.MAlN Each has business of his own ; But should vou distrust ;i tune, Then beware. Shudder all tin; haunted roods, All the eyeballs under hoods Shroud you in their glare. Enter these enchanted woods, You who dare. in Open hither, open hence, Scarce a bramble weaves a fence, "Where the strawberry runs red, "With white star-flower overhead ; Cumbered by dry twig and cone, Shredded husks of seedlings flown, Mine of mole and spotted flint: Of dire wizardry no hint, Save mayhap the print that shows Hasty outward-tripping toes, Keels to terror, on the mould. These, the woods of Westermain, Are as others to behold, Rich of wreathing sun and rain ; Foliage lustreful around Shadowed leagues of slumbering sound. Wavy tree-tops, yellow whins, Shelter eager minikins, Myriads, free to peck and pipe : Would you better ? would you worse ? THE WOODS OF WESTERMALN 75 You with them may gather ripe Pleasures flowing not from purse. Quick and far as Colour flies Taking the delighted eyes, You of any well that springs May unfold the heaven of things ; Have it homely and within, And thereof its likeness win, Will you so in soul's desire : This do sages grant t' the lyre. This is being bird and more, More than glad musician this ; Granaries you will have a store Past the world of woe and bliss ; Sharing still its bliss and woe ; Harnessed to its hungers, no. On the throne Success usurps, You shall seat the joy you feel Where a race of water chirps, Twisting hues of flourished steel : Or where light is caught in hoop Up a clearing's leafy rise, Where the crossing deerherds troop Classic splendours, knightly dyes. Or, where old-eyed oxen chew Speculation with the cud, Read their pool of vision through, Back to hours when mind was mud ; Nigh the knot, which did untwine Timelessly to drowsy suns; Seeing Earth a slimy spine, 76 THE WOODS OF W lis TKl: M A I N Heaven a space for winging t<>ns. Farther, deeper, may 3 on read, II ivi- you sight for things afield, Where peeps she, the Nurse of seed, Cloaked, but In the peep revealed ; Showing a kind face and sweet: Look you with the soul you see't. Glory narrowing to grace, Grace to glory magnified, Following that will you embrace Close in arms or aery wide. Banished is the white Foam-born Not from here, nor under ban Phoebus lyrist, Phoebe's horn, Pipings of the reedy Pan. Loved of Earth of old they 7 were. Loving did interpret her; And the sterner worship bars None whom Song has made her stars. You have seen the huntress moon Radiantly facing dawn, Dusky meads between them strewn Glimmering like downy awn: Argent Westward glows the hunt, East the blush about to climb ; One another fair they front, Transient, yet outshine the time; Even as dewlight off the rose In the mind a jewel sows. Thus opposing grandeurs live Here if Beauty be their dower: THE WOODS OF WESTEKMAIN 77 Doth she of her spirit give, Fleetingness will spare her flower. This is in the tune we play, Which no spring of strength would quell ; In subduing does not slay ; Guides the channel, guards the well: Tempered holds the young blood-heat, Yet through measured grave accord, Hears the heart of wildness beat Like a centaur's hoof on sward. Drink the sense the notes infuse, You a larger self will find: Sweetest fellowship ensues "With the creatures of your kind. Ay, and Love, if Love it be Flaming over 7 and ME, Love meet they who do not shove Cravings in the van of Love. Courtly dames are here to woo, Knowing love if it be true. Reverence the blossom-shoot Fervently, they are the fruit. Mark them stepping, hear them talk, Goddess, is no myth inane, You will say of those who walk In the woods of Westermain. Waters that from throat and thigh Dart the sun his arrows back; Leaves that on a woodland sigh Chat of secret things no lack ; Shadowy branch-leaves, waters clear, 7b nil. WOODS OF \vi:s ii:i:m.\ in Bare or veiled they move sincere; Not by slavish tenors tripped; Being anew in nature dipped, Growths of what they Btep on, these; With the roots the grace of trees. Casket-breasts they give, nor hide, For a tyrant's flattered pride, Mind, which nourished not by light, Lurks the shuffling trickster sprite: Whereof are strange tales to tell; Some in blood writ, tombed in bell. Here the ancient battle ends, Joining two astonished friends, "Who the kiss can give and take With more warmth than in that world Where the tiger claws the snake, Snake her tiger clasps in furled, And the issue of their fight Peoples lands in snarling plight. Here her splendid beast she leads Silken-leashed and decked with weeds Wild as he, but breathing faint Sweetness of unfelt constraint. Love, the great volcano, flings Fires of lower Earth to sky, Love, the sole permitted, sings Sovereignly of ME and I. Bowers he has of Bacred shade, Spaces of superb parade, Voiceful . . . But bring you a note Wrangling, howsoe'er remote, THE WOODS OF WESTEEMAIN 79 Discords out of discord spin Round and round derisive din : Sudden will a pallor pant Chill at screeches miscreant ; Owls or spectres, thick they flee ; Nightmare upon horror broods ; Hooded laughter, monkish glee, Gaps the vital air. Enter these enchanted woods You who dare. IV You must love the light so well That no darkness will seem fell. Love it so you could accost Fellowly a livid ghost. Whish ! the phantom wisps away, Owns him smoke to cocks of day. In your breast the light must burn Fed of you, like corn in quern Ever plumping while the wheel Speeds the mill and drains the meal. Light to light sees little strange, Only features heavenly new ; Then you touch the nerve of Change, Then of Earth you have the clue ; Then her two-sexed meanings melt Through you, wed the thought and felt. Sameness locks no scurfy pond Here for Custom, crazy-fond : bO Tin: w 8 OF wkst 1:1;. main Change is on the wing to bud l. ,• in brain from rose in blood. Wisdom throbbing .shall you see ( ntral in complexity ; From her pasture 'mid the beasts j;ise to her ethereal leasts, Not, though lightnings track your wit Starward, scorning them you quit: For be sure the bravest wing Preens it in our common spring, Thence along the vault to soar, You with others, gathering more, Glad of more, till you reject Your proud title of elect, Perilous even here while few Roam the arched greenwood with you. Heed that snare. Muffled by his cavern-cowl Squats the scaly Dragon-fowl, Who was lord ere light you drank, And lest blood of knightly rank Stream, let not your fair princess Stray : he holds the leagues in stress, Watches keenly there. Oft has he been riven ; slain Is no force in Westermain. Wait, and we shall forge him curbs, Put his fangs to uses, tame, Teaili him, quick as cunning herbs, How to cure him sick and lame. Much restricted, much enringed, THE WOODS OF WESTERMAIN 81 Much he frets, the hooked and winged, Never known to spare. 'T is enough : the name of Sage Hits no thing in nature, nought ; Man the least, save when grave Age From yon Dragon guards his thought. Eye him when you hearken dumb To what words from Wisdom come. When she says how few are by Listening to her, eye his eye. Self, his name declare. Him shall Change, transforming late, Wonderously renovate. Hug himself the creature may : What he hugs is loathed decay. Crying, slip thy scales, and slough ! Change will strip his armour off ; Make of him who was all maw, Inly only thrilling-shrewd, Such a servant as none saw Through his days of dragonhood. Days when growling o'er his bone, Sharpened he for mine and thine j Sensitive within alone ; Scaly as in clefts of pine. Change, the strongest son of Life, Has the Spirit here to wife. Lo, their young of vivid breed, Bear the lights that onward speed, Threading thickets, mounting glades, Up the verdurous colonnades, 8- Tin; w •« K IDS OF WES i EEW \in Round the fluttered curves, and down, Out of sight of Earth's blue crown, Whither, in her centra] space, Spouts the Fount and Lure o' the chase. Fount unresting, Lure divine] There meet all : too late look most. Fire in water hued as wine, Springs amid a shadowy host; Circled : one close-headed mob, Breathless, scanning divers heaps Where a Heart begins to throb, Where it ceases, slow, with leaps. And 't is very strange, 't is said, How you spy in each of them Semblance of that Dragon red, As the oak in bracken-stem. And, 't is said, how each and each : Which commences, which subsides: First my Dragon ! doth beseech Her who food for all provides. And she answers with no sign; Utters neither yea nor nay ; ' Fires the water hued as wine; Kneads another spark in clay. Terror is about her hid ; Silence of the thunders locked ; Lightnings lining the shut lid ; Fixity on quaking rocked. Lo, you look at Flow and Drought Interflashed and inter wrought : Ended is begun, begun THE WOODS OF WESTEEMAIN 83 Ended, quick as torrents run. Young Impulsion spouts to sink ; Luridness and lustre link ; 'T is your come and go of breath ; Mirrored pants the Life, the Death; Each of either reaped and sown : Rosiest rosy wanes to crone. See you so ? your senses drift; 'T is a shuttle weaving swift. Look with spirit past the sense, Spirit shines in permanence. That is She, the view of whom Is the dust within the tomb, Is the inner blush above, Look to loathe, or look to love ; Think her Lump, or know her Flame ; Dread her scourge, or read her aim ; Shoot your hungers from their nerve ; Or, in her example, serve. Some have found her sitting grave ; Laughing, some ; or, browed with sweat, Hurling dust of fool and knave In a hissing smithy's jet. More it were not well to speak; Burn to see, you need but seek. Once beheld she gives the key Airing every doorway, she. Little can yoii stop or steer Ere of her you are the seer. On the surface she will witch, Rendering Beauty yours, but gaze 8-1 THE WOODS OF WEBTERMAIW Under, and the bouI is rich Past computing, past amaze. Then is courage that endures l ii her awful tremble yours. Then, the reflex uf that Fount Bpied below, will Reason mount Lordly and a quenchless force, Lighting Tain to its mad source, Scaring Fear till Fear escap Shot through all its phantom shapes. Then your spirit will perceive Fleshly seed of fleshly sins; Where the passions interweave, How the serpent tangle spins Of the sense of Earth misprised, Brainlessly unrecognized ; She being Spirit in her clods, Footway to the God of Gods. Then for you are pleasures pure, Sureties as the stars are sure : Not the wanton beckoning flags Which, of flattery and delight, Wax to the grim Habit-Hags Riding souls of men to night: Pleasures that through blood run sane, Quickening spirit from the brain. Each of each in sequent birth, Blood and brain and spirit, three (Say the deepest gnomes of Earth), Join for true felicity. Are they parted, then expect THE WOODS OF WESTERMAIN 85 Some one sailing will be wrecked : Separate hunting are they sped, Scan the morsel coveted. Earth that Triad is : she hides Joy from him who that divides ; Showers it when the three are one Glassing her in union. Earth your haven, Earth your helm, You command a double realm : Labouring here to pay your debt, Till your little sun shall set ; Leaving her the future task : Loving her too well to ask. Eglantine that climbs the yew, She her darkest wreathes for those Knowing her the Ever-new, And themselves the kin o' the rose. Life, the chisel, axe and sword, Wield who have her depths explored : Life, the dream, shall be their robe, Large as air about the globe ; Life, the question, hear its cry Echoed with concordant Why ; Life, the small self-dragon ramped, Thrill for service to be stamped. Ay, and over every height Life for them shall wave a wand : That, the last, where sits affright, Homely shows the stream beyond. Love the light and be its lynx, You will track her and attain ; 8G I hi WOODB OF WE8TERMATH Read her as do cruel Sphinx In the woods of W. .-;■ rmain. Daily fresh the woods are ranged; Glooms which otherwhere appal, Sounded : here, their worths exchanged, Urban joins with pastoral : Little lost, save what may drop Husk-like, and the mind preserves. Natural overgrowths they lop, Yet from nature neither swerves, Trained or savage : for this cause : Of our Earth they ply the laws, Have iu Earth their feeding root, Mind of man and bent of brute. Hear that song; both wild and ruled. Hear it : is it wail or mirth ? Ordered, bubbled, quite unschooled ? None, and all : it springs of Earth. but hear it ! 't is the mind ; Mind that with deep Earth unites, Round the solid trunk to wind Rings of clasping parasites. Music have you there to feed Simplest ami most soaring need. Tree to wind, and in desire "Winding, they to her attached Feel the trunk a spring of fire, And ascend to heights unmatched, Whence the ti-lal world is viewed As a sea of windy wheat, Momently black, barren, rude j THE WOODS OF WESTEKMAIN 87 5 Golden-brown, for harvest meet: Dragon-reaped from folly-sown ; Bride-like to the sickle-blade : Qnick it varies, while the moan, Moan of a sad creature strayed, Chiefly is its voice. So flesh Conjures tempest-flails to thresh Good from worthless. Some clear lamps Light it ; more of dead marsh-damps. Monster is it still, and blind, Fit but to be led by Fain. Glance we at the paths behind, Fruitful sight has Westermain. There we laboured, and in turn Forward our blown lamps discern, As you see on the dark deep Far the loftier billows leap, Foam for beacon bear. Hither, hither, if you will, Drink instruction, or instil, Bun the woods like vernal sap, Crying, hail to luminousness! But have care. In yourself may lurk the trap : On conditions they caress. Here you meet the light invoked: Here is never secret cloaked. Doubt you with the monster's fry All his orbit may exclude ; Are you of the stiff, the dry, Cursing the not understood ; 88 THE WOODS OF \\ i:>n.i;M Ai S Grasp you with the monster's claws j G vein with liis truncheon-saws ; Hate, iln- Bhadow of a -rain; You are lost in Westerinain : Earthward BWOOp8 a vulture sun, Nighted upon carrion : Straightway \renom winecups shout Toasts to One whose eyes are out: Flowers along the reeling floor Drip henbane and hellebore : Beauty, of her tresses shorn, Shrieks as nature's maniac: Hideousness on hoof and horn Tumbles, yapping in her track : Haggard Wisdom, stately once, Leers fantastical and trips : Allegory drums the sconce, Impiousness nibblenips. Imp that dances, imp that flits, Imp o' the demon-growing girl, Maddest! whirl with imp o' the pits Round you, and with them you whirl Fast where pours the fountain-rout Out of Him whose eyes are out: Multitudes on multitudes, Drenched in wallowing devilry: And you ask where you may be, In what reek of a lair Given to bones and ogre-broods: And they yell you Wliere. Enter these enchanted woods, You who dare. A BALLAD OF PAST MERIDIAN Last night returning from my twilight walk I met the grey mist Death, whose eyeless brow Was bent on me, and from his hand of chalk He reached me flowers as from a withered bough : Death, what bitter nosegays givest thou ! TI Death said, I gather, and pursued his way. Another stood by me, a shape in stone, Sword-hacked and iron-stained, with breasts of clay, And metal veins that sometimes fiery shone: Life, how naked and how hard when known ! in Life said, As thou hast carved me, such am I. Then memory, like the nightjar on the pine, And sightless hope, a woodlark in night sky, Joined notes of Death and Life till night's decline ; Of Death, of Life, those in wound notes are mine. Till: DAY OF THE DAUGHTEE OF HADES He who lias looked upon Earth Deeper than flower and fruit, Losing some hue of his mirth, As the tree striking rock at the root. Unto him shall the marvellous tale Of Callistes more humanly come With the touch on his breast than a hail From the markets that hum. II Now the youth footed swift to the dawn. 'T was the season when wintertide, In the higher rock-hollows updrawn, Leaves meadows to bud, and he spied, By light throwing shallow shade, Between the beam and the gloom, Sicilian Enna, whose Maid Such aspect wears in her bloom Underneath since the Charioteer Of Darkness whirled her away, On a reaped afternoon of the year. Nigh the poppy-droop of Day. THE DAY OF THE DAUGHTER OF HADES and naked of her, all dust, The majestic Mother and Nurse, Kinging cries to the God, the Just, Curled the land with the blight of her curse : Kecollected of this glad isle Still quaking. But now more fair, And momently fraying the while The veil of the shadows there, Soft Enna that prostrate grief Sang through, and revealed round the vines, Bronze-orange, the crisp young leaf, The wheat-blades tripping in lines, A hue unillumined by sun Of the flowers flooding grass as from founts: All the penetrable dun Of the morn ere she mounts. in Nor had saffron and sapphire and red Waved aloft to their sisters below, When gaped by the rock-channel head Of the lake, black, a cave at one blow, Keverberant over the plain : A sound oft fearfully swung For the coming of wrathful rain : And forth, like the dragon-tongue Of a fire beaten flat by the gale, But more as the smoke to behold, A chariot burst. Then a wail Quivered high of the love that would fold 91 92 nil. DAT OF nil. DAUGH PEB OP BADB8 Bliss immeasurable, bigger than heart, Though a God's: and the wheels were stayed, Ami the train of the Chariot swart Keared iii marble, the six, dismayed, Like hoofs that by night plashing sea Curve and ramp from the vast .s wan-wave: For, lo, the Great Mother, She! And Callistes gazed, he gave His eyeballs up to the sight: The embrace of the Twain, of whom To men are their day, their night, Mellow fruits and the shearing tomb: Our Lady of the Sheaves And the Lily of Hades, the Sweet Of Enna : he saw through leaves The Mother and Daughter meet. They stood by the chariot-wheel, Embraced, very tall, most like Fellow poplars, wind-taken, that reel Down their shivering columns and strike Head to head, crossing throats : and apart, For the feast of the look, they drew, Which Darkness no longer could thwart; And they broke together anew, Exulting to tears, flower and bud. But the mate of the Rayless was grave : She smiled like Sleep on its flood, That washes of all we crave : Like the trance of eyes awake And the spirit enshrouded, she cast The wan underworld on the lake. They were so, and they passed. THE DAY OF THE DAUGHTER OF HADES 93 IV He tells it, who knew the law Upon mortals : he stood alive Declaring that this he saw : He could see, and survive. Now the youth was not ware of the beams With the grasses intertwined, For each thing seen, as in dreams, Came stepping to rear through his mind, Till it struck his remembered prayer To be witness of this which had flown Like a smoke melted thinner than air, That the vacancy doth disown. And viewing a maiden, he thought It might now be morn, and afar Within him the memory wrought Of a something that slipped from the car When those, the august, moved by : Perchance a scarf, and perchance This maiden. She did not fly, Nor started at his advance : She looked, as when infinite thirst Pants pausing to bless the springs, Kefreshed, unsated. Then first He trembled with awe of the things 94 THE DAI OF Tin: DAUGHTEB <>f E1ADB8 He had seen ; and he did transfer, Divining and doubting in turn, His reverence unto herj Nor asked what he crouched to learn: The whence of her, whither, and why I [er presence there, and her name, Her parentage: under which sky Her birth, and how hither she came, So young, a virgin, alone, Unfriended, having no fear, As Oreads have ; no moan, Like the lost upon earth ; no tear; Not a sign of the torch in the blood, Though her stature had reached the height "When mantles a tender rud In maids that of youths have sight, If maids of our seed they be : For he said: A glad vision art thou ! And she answered him : Thou to me ! As men utter a vow. vr Then said she, quick as the cries Of the rainy cranes : Light ! light! And Helios rose in her eyes, That were full as the dew-balls bright, Relucent to him as dews Unshaded. Breathing, she sent Her voice to the God of the .Muse, And along the vale it went, THE DAY OF THE DAUGHTER OF HADES 95 Strange to hear : not thin, not shrill : Sweet, but no young maid's throat : The echo beyond the hill Ran falling on half the note : And under the shaken ground Where the Hundred-headed groans By the roots of great iEtna bound, As of him were hollow tones Of wondering roared : a tale Repeated to sunless halls. But now off the face of the vale Shadows fled in a breath, and the walls Of the lake's rock-head were gold, And the breast of the lake, that swell Of the crestless long wave rolled To shore-bubble, pebble and shell. A morning of radiant lids O'er the dance of the earth opened wide : The bees chose their flowers, the snub kids Upon hindlegs went sportive, or plied, Nosing, hard at the dugs to be filled : There was milk, honey, music to make : Up their branches the little birds billed : Chirrup, drone, bleat and buzz ringed the lake. shining in sunlight, chief After water and water's caress, Was the young bronze-orange leaf, That clung to the tree as a tress, Shooting lucid tendrils to wed With the vine-hook tree or pole, Like Arachne launched out on her thread. I ill. D \N "1 I'm: DAUQH III: OF HADES Then the maiden her dusky stole In the span of the black-starred zone, Gathered up for her footing fleet. As one thai bad t<>il of her own She followed the lines of wheat 'J'i ipping straight through the field, green blades, To the groves of olive grey, Downy-grey, golden-tinged : and to glades Where tin- pear-blossom thickens the spray In a night, like the snow-packed storm : !'■ ar, apple, almond, plum : Not wintry now: pushing, warm! And she touched them with finger and thumb, As the vine-hook closes : she smiled, Recounting again and again, Corn, wine, fruit, oil! like a child, With the meaning known to men. For hours in the track of the plough And the pruning-knife she stepped, And of how the seed works, and of how Yields the soil, she seemed adept. Then she murmured that name of the dearth, The Beneficent, Hers, who bade Our husbandmen sow for the birth Of the grain making earth full glad. She murmured that Other's : the dirge Of life-light: for whose dark lap Our locks are clipped on the verge Of the realm where runs no sap. She said : We have looked on both ! And her eyes had a wavering beam THE DAY OF THE DAUGHTER OF HADES 97 Of various lights, like the froth Of the storm-swollen ravine stream In flame of the bolt. What links Were these which had made him her friend ? He eyed her, as one who drinks, And would drink to the end. VII Now the meadows with crocus besprent, And the asphodel woodsides she left, And the lake-slopes, the ravishing scent Of narcissus, dark-sweet, for the cleft That tutors the torrent-brook, Delaying its forceful spleen With many a wind and crook Through rock to the broad ravine. By the hyacinth-bells in the brakes, And the shade-loved white windflower, half hid, And the sun-loving lizards and snakes On the cleft's barren ledges, that slid Out of sight, smooth as waterdrops, all, At a snap of twig or bark In the track of the foreign foot-fall, She climbed to the pineforest dark, Overbrowing an emerald chine Of the glass-billows. Thence, as a wreath, Running poplar and cypress to pine, The lake-banks are seen, and beneath, Vineyard, village, groves, rivers, towers, farms, The citadel watching the bay, Tin: DAY OF THE DAUGHTER OF HADES The bay with the town in its arms, The town shining white as the spray Of the Bapphire Bea on the rock, When- the rook Btai girdle of Bea, White-ringed, as the midday flock, Cli t >] m -t the paths that were racing alive Koinul boulder and hush, cleaving ways, Incessant, with sound of a hive. The height was a l'ountain-uni Pouring streams, and the whole solid height Leaped, chasing at every turn The pair in one spirit of Might To the folding pineforest. Yet here, Like the pause to things hunted, in doubt, The stillness bred spectral fear Of the awfulness ranging without, And imminent. Downward they fled, From under the haunted roof, To the valley aquake with the tread Of an iron-resounding hoof, As of legions of thunderful horse Broken loose and in line tramping hard. For the rage of a hungry force Roamed blind of its mark over sward: They saw it rush dense in the cloak Of its travelling swathe of steam, All the vale through a thin thread-smoke Was thrown back to distance extreme: And dull the full breast of it blinked, Like a buckler of steel breathed o'er, Diminished, in strangeness distinct, Glowing cold, unearthly, hoar : An Enna of fields beyond sun, Out of light, in a lurid web, And the traversing fury spun THE DAY OF THE DAUGHTEB OF HADES 105 Up aud down with a wave's flow and ebb ; As the wave breaks to grasp and to spurn, Retire, aud in ravenous greed, Inveterate, swell its return. Up and down, as if wringing from speed Sights that made the unsighted appear, Delude and dissolve, on it scoured. Lo, a sea upon land held career Through the plain of the vale half-devoured. Callistes of home and escape Muttered swiftly, unwitting of speech. She gazed at the Void of shape, She put her white hand to his reach, Saying : Now have we looked on the Three. And divided from day, from night, From air that is breath, stood she, Like the vale, out of light. Then again in disorderly words He muttered of home, and was mute, With the heart of the cowering birds Ere they burst off the fowler's foot. He gave her some redness thai streamed Through her limbs in a flitting glow. The sigh of our life she seemed, The bliss of it clothing in woe. Frailer than flower when the round Of the sickle encircles it : strong To tell of the tlflngs profound, lUC THE l'AV OF I Hi: DAUGH 1 BB OF HADES Our inmost uttering song, Unspoken. S >od she awhile In the gloom of the terror afield, Ami the silence about her smile Said more than of tongue is revealed. I have breathed: I have gazed: 1 have been: It said: and not joylessly shone The remembrance of light through the screen Of a lace that seemed shadow and stone. She led the youth trembling, appalled, To the lake-banks he saw sink and rise Like a panic-struck breast. Then she called, And the hurricane blackness had eyes. It launched like the Thunderer's bolt. Pale she drooped, and the youth by her side Would have clasped her and dared a revolt Sacrilegious as ever defied High Olympus, but vainly for strength His compassionate heart shook a frame Stricken rigid to ice all its length. On amain the black traveller came. Lo, a chariot, cleaving the storm, Clove the fountaining lake with a plough, And the lord of the steeds was in form He, the God of implacable brow, Darkness : he : he in person : he raged • Through the wave like a boar of the wilds From .In- hunters and hounds disengaged, And a name shouted hoarsely : his child's. Horror melted in anguish to hear. Lo, the wave hissed apart for the path THE DAY OF THE DAUGHTER OF HADES 107 Of the terrible Charioteer, With the foam and torn features of wrath, Hurled aloft on each arm in a sheet ; And the steeds clove it, rushing at land Like the teeth of the famished at meat. Then he swept out his hand. XI This, no more, doth Callistes recall : He saw, ere he dropped in swoon, On the maiden the chariot fall, As a thundercloud swings on the moon. Forth, free of the deluge, one cry From the vanishing gallop rose clear : And: Skiageneia! the sky- Rang : Skiageneia ! the sphere. And she left him therewith, to rejoice, Repine, yearn, and know not his aim, The life of their day in her voice, Left her life in her name. XII Now the valley in ruin of fields And fair meadowland, showing at eve Like the spear-pitted warrior's shields After battle, bade men believe That no other than wrathfullest God Had been loose on her beautiful breast, i 9 THE I'AV OF THE DAUGHTEB 0] HADES Where the flower lod, Wheat and vine as ;i trailing nest. The valley, discreet in grief, Disci ed but the open truth, And Enna lia live Renewed in endless ootes of glee, thirsty of his voice is he, For all i" hear and all to know That In' is joy. awake, aglow*, The tumult of tin- heart to hear Through pureness filtered crystal-clear, Ami know the pleasure Bprinkled bright By simple singing of delight, Shrill, irreflective, unrestrained, Rapt, ringing, on the jet sustained Without a break, without a fall, Sweet-silvery, sheer lyrical, Perennial, quavering up the chord Like myriad dews of sunny sward That trembling into fulness shine, Ami sparkle dropping argentine; Such wooing as the ear receives From zephyr caughl in choric leaves Of aspens when their chattering net [8 Hushed to white with shivers v, And such the water-spirit's chime On mountain heights in morning's prime, Too freshly sweel to seem excess, Too animate to need a stress; lint wider over many heads The starry voice ascending spreads, Awakening, as it waxes thin, THE LARK ASCENDING 113 The best in us to him akin ; And every face to watch him raised, Puts on the light of children praised, So rich our human pleasure ripes When sweetness on sincereness pipes, Though nought be promised from the seas, But only a soft-ruffling breeze Sweep glittering on a still content, Serenity in ravishment. For singing till his heaven fills, 'T is love of earth that he instils, And ever winging up and up, Our valley is his golden cup, And he the wine which overflows To lift us with him as he goes : The woods and brooks, the sheep and kine, He is, the hills, the human line, The meadows green, the fallows brown, The dreams of labour in the town ; He sings the sap, the quickened veins ; The wedding song of sun and rains He is, the dance of children, thanks Of sowers, shout of primrose-banks, And eye of violets while they breathe ; All these the circling song will wreathe, And you shall hear the herb and tree, The better heart of men shall see, Shall feel celestially, as long As you crave nothing save the song. 114 mi. LAKE ASCENDING Waa never voice of ours could say Our inmost in the sweetest way, Like yonder voice aloft, and link All hearers in the song they drink. Our wisdom speaks from failing blood, Our passion is too full in flood, We want the key of his wild note Of truthful in a tuneful throat, The song seraphically free Of taint of personality, So pure that it salutes the suns The voice of one for millions, In whom the millions rejoice For giving their one spirit voice. Yet men have we, whom we revere, Now names, and men still housing here, Whose lives, by many a battle-dint Defaced, and grinding wheels on flint, Yield substance, though they sing not, sweet For song our highest heaven to greet : "Whom heavenly singing gives us new, Enspheres them brilliant in our blue, From firmest base to farthest leap, Because their love of Earth is deep, And they are warriors in accord With life to serve, and pass reward, So touching purest and so heard In the brain's reflex of yon bird: THE LARK ASCENDING 115 Wherefore their soul in me, or mine, Through self-forgetfulness divine, . In them, that song aloft maintains, To fill the sky and thrill the plains With showerings drawn from human stores, As he to silence nearer soars, Extends the world at wings and dome, More spacious making more our home, Till lost on his aerial rings In light, and then the fancy sings. PHOEBUS WITH ADMETUS When by Zeus relenting the mandate was revoked, Sentencing to exile the bright Sim-(iod, Mindful were the ploughmen of who the steer had yoked, Who : and what a track showed the upturned sod! Mindful were the shepherds as now the noon severe Bent a burning eyebrow to brown evetide, How the rustic flute drew the silver to the sphere, 8 "er of his own, till her ray- fell wide. God ! of whom music And song and blood are pure, The day is never darkened That had thee here obscure. ii Chirping none the scarlet cicala- crouched in ranks: Slack the thistle-head piled its down-silk grey: Scarce the stony lizard sucked hollows in his flanks : Thick on spots of umbrage our drowsed Hocks lay. PHOEBUS WITH ADMETUS 117 Sudden bowed the chestnuts beneath a wind unheard, Lengthened ran the grasses, the sky grew slate : Then amid a swift flight of winged seed white as curd, Clear of limb a Youth smote the master's gate. God ! of whom music And song and blood are pure, The day is never darkened That had thee here obscure. in Water, first of singers, o'er rocky mount and mead, First of earthly singers, the sun-loved rill, Sang of him, and flooded the ripples on the reed, Seeking whom to waken and what ear fill. Water, sweetest soother to kiss a wound and cool, Sweetest and divinest, the sky-born brook, Chuckled, with a whimper, and made a mirror-pool Round the guest we welcomed, the strange hand shook. God ! of whom music And song and blood are pure, The day is never darkened That had thee here obscure. IV Many swarms of wild bees descended on our fields : Stately stood the wheatstalk with head bent high : Big of heart we laboured at storing mighty yields, Wool and corn, and clusters to make men cry ! 1 1 8 PHOEBUS WITH ASMETU8 Hand-like rushed the vintage; we strung the bellied skins Plump, and at the sealing the Youth's voice rose : Maidens Clung in circle, on little lists their chins; Gentle beasties through pushed a cold long nose. God ! of whom music And song and blood are pure, The day is never darkened That had thee here obscure. Foot to fire in snowtime we trimmed the slender shaft : Often down the pit spied the lean wolf's teeth Grin against his will, trapped by masterstrokes of craft ; Helpless in his froth-wrath as green logs seethe! Safe the tender lambs tugged the teats, and winter sped Whirled before the crocus, the year's new gold. Hung the hooky beak up aloft the arrowhead Reddened through his feathers for our dear fold. God ! of whom music And song and blood are pure, The day is never darkened That had thee here obscure. VI Tales we drank of giants at war with Gods above: Rocks were they to look on, and earth climbed air ! Tales of search for simples, and those who sought of love Ease because the creature was all too fair. PHOEBUS WITH ADMETUS 119 Pleasant ran our thinking that while our work was good, Sure as fruits for sweat would the praise come fast. He that wrestled stoutest and tamed the billow-brood Danced in rings with girls, like a sail-flapped mast. God ! of whom music And song and blood are pure, The day is never darkened That had thee here obscure. VII Lo, the herb of healing, when once the herb is known, Shines in shady woods bright as new-sprung flame. Ere the string was tightened we heard the mellow tone, After he had taught how the sweet sounds came. Stretched about his feet, labour done, 't was as you see Red pomegranates tumble and burst hard rind. So began contention to give delight and be Excellent in things aimed to make life kind. God ! of whom music And song and blood are pure, The day is never darkened That had thee here obscure. VIII You with shelly horns, rams! and, promontory goats, You whose browsing beards dip in coldest dew ! Bulls, that walk the pastures in kingly-flashing coats ! Laurel, ivy, vine, wreathed for feasts not few ! 120 Hi' >EBU8 Willi ADMET1 B . that build the Bhade-roof, and you thai oourt the 1 Xou thai Leap besprinkling the rock Btream-rent : He has been our fellow, the morning of our daj j Us he chose for housemates, and this way went. I k)d! "I whom music And song and blood arc pure, The day is never darkened That had thee here obscure. MELAMPUS With love exceeding a simple love of the things That glide in grasses and rubble of woody wreck ; Or change their perch on a beat of quivering wings From branch to branch, only restful to pipe and peck; Or, bristled, curl at a touch their snouts in a ball ; Or cast their web between bramble and thorny hook ; The good physician Melampus, loving them all, Among them walked, as a scholar who reads a book. ii For him the woods were a home and gave him the key Of knowledge, thirst for their treasures in herbs and flowers. ' The secrets held by the creatures nearer than we To earth he sought, and the link of their life with ours : And where alike we are, unlike where, and the veined Division, veined parallel, of a blood that flows In them, in us, from the source by man unattained Save marks he well what the mystical woods disclose. l-2'2 Ml I.AMITS III And this he deemed might be boon of love to a breast Embracing tenderly each little motive shape, The prone, the Hitting, who seek their food whither best Their wits direct, whither besl from their foes escape: For closer drawn to our mother's natural milk, A- babes they learn where her motherly help is great : They knew the juice fur the honey, juice for the silk, And need they medical antidotes find them straight. IV Of earth and sun they are wise, they nourish their broods, Weave, build, hive, burrow and battle, take joy and paiD Like swimmers varying billows: never in woods Buns white insanity fleeing itself : all sane The woods revolve : as the tree its shadowing limns To some resemblance in motion, the rooted life Restrains disorder : you hear the primitive hymns Of earth in woods issue wild of the web of strife. Now sleeping once on i day of marvellous fire, A brood of snakes he had cherished in grave regret That death his people had dealt their dam and their sire, Through savage dread of them, crept to his neck, and set Their tongues to lick him : the swift affectionate tongue Of each ran licking the slumberer : then his ears A forked red tongue tickled shrewdly: sudden upsprung, He heard a voice piping : Ay, for he has no fears ! MELAMPUS 1S-3 VI A bird said that, in the notes of birds, and the speech Of men, it seemed : and another renewed : He moves To learn and not to pursue, he gathers to teach ; He feeds his young as do we, and as we love loves. No fears have I of a man who goes with his head To earth, chance looking aloft at us, kind of hand : I feel to him as to earth of whom we are fed ; I pipe him much for his good could he understand. VII Melampus touched at his ears, laid finger on wrist : He was not dreaming, he sensibly felt and heard. Above, through leaves, where the tree-twigs thick intertwist. He spied the birds and the bill of the speaking bird. His cushion mosses in shades of various green, The lumped, the antlered, he pressed, while the sunny snake Slipped under : draughts he had drunk of clear Hippocrene, It seemed, and sat with a gift of the Gods awake. VIII Divinely thrilled was the man, exultingly full, As quick well-waters that come of the heart of earth, Ere yet they dart in a brook are one bubble-pool To light and sound, wedding both at the leap of birth. 124 .MKI.A.MI'l S The boh] of light vivid shone, a stream within stream; The sou] "i Bound from a musical shell outflow; Where others hear but a hum and Bee lmt ;i brain, The tongue aud eye oi the fountain of life he knew. IX He knew the Hours: they wore round him, laden with seed Of hours bestrewn upon vapour, and one by one They winged as ripened in fruit the burden decreed For each to scatter; they flushed like the buds in sun, Bequeathing seed to successive similar rings, Their sisters, bearers to men of what men have earned : He knew them, talked with the yet unreddened ; the stings, The sweets, they warmed at their bosoms divined, discerned. Not unsolicited, sought by diligent feet, By riddling fingers expanded, oft watched in growth With brooding deep as the noon-ray's quickening wheat, Ere touch'd, the pendulous flower of the plants of sloth, The plants of rigidness, answered question and squeeze, Revealing wherefore it bloomed uninviting, bent, V't making harmony breathe of life and disease, The deeper chord of a wonderful instrument. MELAMPUS 125 XI So passed he luminous-eyed for earth and the fates We arm to bruise or caress us : his ears were charged With tones of love in a whirl of voluble hates, With music wrought of distraction his heart enlarged. Celestial-shining, though mortal, singer, though mute, He drew the Master of harmonies, voiced or stilled, To seek him ; heard at the silent medicine-root A song, beheld in fulfilment the unfulfilled. XTI Him Phoebus, lending to darkness colour and form Of light's excess, many lessons and counsels gave ; Showed Wisdom lord of the human intricate swarm, And whence prophetic it looks on the hives that rave, And how acquired, of the zeal of love to acquire, And where it stands, in the centre of life a sphere ; And Measure, mood of the lyre, the rapturous lyre, He said was Wisdom, and struck him the notes to hear. XIII Sweet, sweet: 't was glory of vision, honey, the breeze In heat, the run of the river on root and stone, All senses joined, as the sister Pierides Are one, uplifting their chorus, the Nine, his own. tL'i: MKI.AMI'I'S l;i Btately order, evolved <»f Bound into sight, From M;-, r lii to Bound Lntershifting, the man descried The growths of earth, Ins adored, Like day out of night, Ascend in sung, seeing nature and song allied. XIV And there vitality, there, there solely in song, Resides, where earth and her uses to men, their needs, Their forceful cravings, the theme are : there is it strong, The Master said : and the studious eye that reads, (Yea, even as earth to the crown of Gods on the mount), In links divine with the lyrical tongue is bound. Pursue thy craft : it is music drawn of a fount To spring perennial ; well-spring is common ground. xv Melampus dwelt among men : physician and sage, He served them, loving them, healing them ; sick or maimed Or them that frenzied in some delirious rage < hit i,m the measure, his juice of the woods reclaimed. He played on men, as his master, Phoebus, on strings Melodious: as the God did he drive and chock. Through love exceeding a Bimple love of the things That glide in grasses and rubble of woody wreck. LOVE IX THE VALLEY Uxder yonder beech-tree single on the green-sward, Couched with her arms behind her golden head, Knees aDd tresses folded to slip and ripple idly, Lies my young love sleeping in the shade. Had I the heart to slide an arm beneath her, Press her parting lips as her waist I gather slow, Waking in amazement she could not but embrace me : Then would she hold me and never let me go ? Shy as the squirrel and wayward as the swallow, Swift as the swallow along the river's light Circleting the surface to meet his mirrored winglets, Fleeter she seems in her stay than in her flight. Shy as the squirrel that leaps among the pine-tops, AVayward as the swallow overhead at set of sun, She whom I love is hard to catch and conquer, Hard, but the glory of the winning were she won! • When her mother tends her before the laughing mirror, Tying up her laces, looping up her hair, Often she thinks, were this wild thing wedded, More love should I have, and much less care. 128 LOVE i\ THE VALLEY When her mother tends her before the Lighted mirror, Loosening her laces, combing down her curls, Often slie thinks, were this wild thing wedded, I should miss but one for many boys and girls. Beartless she is as the shadow in the meadows Flying to the hills on a blue and breezy noon. No, she is athirst and drinking up her wonder: Earth to her is young as the slip of the new moon. Deals she an unkindness, 'tis but her rapid measure, Even as in a dance; and her smile can heal no less: Like the swinging May -cloud that pelts the flowers with hailstones Off a sunny border, she was made to bruise and bless. Lovely are the curves of the white owl sweeping Wavy in the dusk lit by one large star. Lone on the fir-branch, his rattle-note unvaried, Brooding o'er the gloom, spins the brown evejar. Darker grows the valley, more and more forgetting : So were it with me if forgetting could be willed. Tell the grassy hollow that holds the bubbling well-spring, Tell it to forget the source that keeps it filled. Stepping down the hill with her fair companions, Arm in arm, all against the raying West, Boldly she sings, to the merry tune she marches, Brave is her shape, and sweeter unpossessed. LOVE IN THE VALLEY 129 Sweeter, for she is what my heart first awaking Whispered the world was ; morning light is she. Love that so desires would fain keep her changeless ; Fain would fling the net, and fain have her free. Happy happy time, when the white star hovers Low over dim fields fresh with bloomy dew, Near the face of dawn, that draws athwart the darkness, Threading it with colour, like yewberries the yew. Thicker crowd the shades as the grave East deepens Glowing, and with crimson a long cloud swells. Maiden still the morn is; and strange she is, and secret; Strange her eyes ; her cheeks are cold as cold sea-shells. Sunrays, leaning on our southern hills and lighting Wild cloud-mountains that drag the hills along, Oft ends the day of your shifting brilliant laughter Chill as a dull face frowning on a song. Ay, but shows the South-West a ripple-feathered bosom Blown to silver while the clouds are shaken and ascend Scaling the mid-heavens as they stream, there comes a sunset Eich, deep like love in beauty without end. When at dawn she sighs, and like an infant to the window Turns grave eyes craving light, released from dreams, Beautiful she looks, like a white water-lily Bursting out of bud in havens of the streams. l:;<> L0\ i: l\ THE \ All i \ When from bed Bhe rises clothed from Deck 60 ankle In her Long nightgown Bweet as boughs of May, Beautiful Bhe Looks, Like a tall garden lily Pure hum the night, and Bplendid for the day. M ither of the dews, dark eye-lashed twilight, Low-lidded twilight, o'er the valley's brim, Rounding <>n thy breast sings the dew-delighted skylark, Clear as though the dewdrops had their voice in him. Hidden where the rose-flush drinks the rayless plaint, Fountain-full he pours the spraying fountain-showers. Let me hear her laughter, I would have her ever Cuol as dew in twilight, the lark above the flowers. All the girls are out with their baskets for the primrose; Up lanes, woods through, they troop in joyful bands. My sweet leads : she knows not why, but now she loiters, lives the bent anemones, and hangs her hands. Such a look will tell that the violets are peeping, Coming the rose : and unaware a cry Springs in her bosom for odours and for colour, Covert and the nightingale ; she knows not why. Kerchiefed head and chin she darts between her tulips, Streaming Like a willow fe rey in arrowy rain : Some bend beaten cheek to gravel, and their angel She will be ; she lifts them, and on she speeds again. LOVE TN THE VALLEY 131 Black the driving raincloud breasts the iron gateway : She is forth to cheer a neighbour lacking mirth. So wheu sky and grass met rolling dumb for thunder Saw I once a white dove, sole light of earth. Prim little scholars are the flowers of her garden, Trained to stand in rows, and asking if they please. I might love them well but for loving more the wild ones my wild ones ! they tell me more than these. You, my wild one, you tell of honied field-rose, Violet, blushing eglantine in life; and even as they, They by the wayside are earnest of your goodness, You are of life's, on the banks that line the way. Peering at her chamber the white crowns the red rose, Jasmine winds the porch with stars two and three. Parted is the window ; she sleeps ; the starry jasmine Breathes a falling breath that carries thoughts of me. Sweeter unpossessed, have I said of her my sweetest ? Not while she sleeps : while she sleeps the jasmine breathes, Luring her to love; she sleeps; the starry jasmine Bears me to her pillow under white rose-wreaths. Yellow with birdfoot-trefoil are the grass-glades ; Yellow with cinquefoil of the dew-grey leaf; Yellow with stonecrop ; thp moss-mounds are yellow ; Blue-necked the wheat sways, yellowing to the sheaf. 1 3li LOVE IN THE VALLEY I en-yellow bursts from the copse the laughing yaffle; Sharp as ;i sickle is the edge oi Bhade and shine i 1. ,rtli in her heart laughs looking at the heavens, Thinking of the harvest: I look and think of mine. This I may know: her dressing and undressing Such a change of light shows as when the skit-s in sport Shift from cloud to moonlight; or edging over thunder Slips a ray of sun; or sweeping into port White sails furl ; or on the ocean boni' "White sails lean along the waves leaping green. Visions of her shower before me, but from eyesight Guarded she would be like the sun were she seen. Front door and back of the mossed old farmhouse Open with the morn, and in a breezy link Freshly sparkles garden to stripe-shadowed orchard, Green across a rill where on sand the minnows wink. Busy in the grass the early sun of summer Swarms, and the blackbird's mellow fluting notes Call my darling up with round and roguish challenge: Quaintest, richest carol of all the singing throats 1 Cool was the woodside ; cool as her white dairy Keeping sweet the cream-pan ; and there the boys from school, Cricketing below, rushed brown and red with sunshine ; the dark translucence of the deep-eyed cool ! LOVE IN THE VALLEY 133 Spying from the farm, herself she fetched a pitcher Full of milk, and tilted for each in turn the beak. Then a little fellow, mouth up and on tiptoe, Said, < I will kiss you ' : she laughed and leaned her cheek. Doves of the fir-wood walling high our red roof Through the long noon coo, crooning through the coo. Loose droop the leaves, and down the sleepy roadway Sometimes pipes a chaffinch ; loose droops the blue. Cows flap a slow tail knee-deep in the river, Breathless, given up to sun and gnat and fly. Nowhere is she seen ; and if I see her nowhere, Lightning may come, straight rains and tiger sky. the golden sheaf, the rustling treasure-armful ! the nutbrown tresses nodding interlaced ! the treasure-tresses one another over Nodding ! the girdle slack about the waist ! Slain are the poppies that shot their random scarlet Quick amid the wheatears : wound about the waist, Gathered, see these brides of Earth one blush of ripeness J the nutbrown tresses nodding interlaced ! Large and smoky red the sun's cold disk drops. Clipped by naked hills, on violet shaded snow : Eastward large and still lights up a bower of moonrise, Whence at her leisure steps the moon aglow. 134 LOVE in i in. \ ai.i.i.v N - on black print branches our beech-tree G in this whiteness : nightlong could I. 11 :• may life on death or death on Life be painted. I. | me i Lasp hex soul to know ahe cannot di G ant her faults ; they soour a narrow chamber Where there is n<> window, read not heaven or her. 1 When Bhe was a tiny,' one aged woman quavers, Plucks at my heart and Leads me by the ear. Faults she had once as Bhe learnt to run and tumbled: 1 raits of feature Borne Bee, beauty not complete. Yet, good gossips, beauty that makes holy 1. lLh and air, may have faults from head to feet. Hither she comes ; she comes to me ; she lingers, Deepens her brown eyebrows, while in new surprise Eigh rise the lashes in wonder of a stranger; Y't am I the light and living of her eyes. Something friends have told her fills her heart to brimming. Nel - her in her blushes, and wounds her, and tames. — Suit of her haven, <> like a dove alighting, Arms up, Bhe dropped: our souls were in our names. Soon will she lie like a white frost sunrise. .low oats and brown wheat, barley pale as rye, 1. ■ rince your sheaves have yielded to the thresher, Felt the girdle loosened, seen the tresses fly. LOVE IN THE VALLEY 135 Soon will she lie like a blood-red sunset. Swift with the to-morrow, green-winged Spring ! Sing from the South- West, bring her back the truants, Nightingale and swallow, song and dipping wiug. Soft new beech-leaves, up to beamy April Spreading bough on bough a primrose mountain, you Lucid in the moon, raise lilies to the skyfields, Youngest green transfused in silver shining through : Fairer than the lily, than the wild white cherry : Fair as in image my seraph love appears Borne to me by dreams when dawn is at my eyelids: Fair as in the flesh she swims to me on tears. Could I find a place to be alone with heaven, I would speak my heart out : heaven is my need. Every woodland tree is flushing like the dogwood, Flashing like the whitebeam, swaying like the reed. Flushing like the dogwood crimson in October ; Streaming like the flag-reed South-West blown ; Flashing as in gusts the sudden-lighted whitebeam : All seem to know what is for heaven alone. THE THREE SINGERS TO YOUNG BLOOD Carols nature, counsel men. Different notes as rook from wren, Hear we when our steps begin, Ami the choice is cast within, Where a robber raven's tale Urges passion's nightingale. Hark to the three. Chimed they in one, Life were music of the sun. Liquid first, and then the caw, Then the cry that knows not law. THE THREE SINGERS TO YOUNG BLOOD 137 As the birds do, so do we, Bill our mate, and choose our tree. Swift to building work addressed, Any straw will help a nest. Mates are warm, and this is truth, Glad the young that come of youth. They have bloom i' the blood and sap Chilling at no thunder-clap. Man and woman on the thorn, Trust not Earth, and have her scorn. They who in her lead confide, Wither me if they spread not wide ! Look for aid to little things, You will get them quick as wings, Thick as feathers ; would you feed, Take the leap that springs the need. : - jiii. iiiKi.i. siNGEKs ro roi ng i;l<«jd ii Contemplate the rutted road : Lifi ;h a lure and goad. n tu hold in measure just, Trample appetite tu dust. .Mark the fool and wanton spin: Keep to harness as a skin. Eire you follow nature's lead, Of her powers in you have heed j Else a shiverer you will find You have challenged humankind. Mates are chosen marketwise: Coolest hargainer best buys. Leap not, nor let leap the heart: Trot your track, and drag your cart. So your end may be in wool, Honoured, and with manger full. m THE THKEE SINGERS TO TOTING BLOOD 139 III the rosy light ! it fleets, Dearer dying than all sweets. That is life : it waves and goes : Solely in that cherished Rose Palpitates, or else 't is death. Call it love with all thy breath. Love ! it lingers : Love ! it nears : Love ! Love ! the Rose appears, Blushful, magic, reddening air. Now the choice is on thee : dare ! Mortal seems the touch, but makes Immortal the hand that takes. Feel what sea within thee shames Of its force all other claims, Drowns them. Clasp ! the world will be Heavenly Rose to swelling sea. Till: nil' II AIM) AND THE HEATH I < hanced upon an early walk to spy A troop of children through an orchard gate: The boughs hung low, the grass was high; They had but to lift hands or wait For fruits to fill them ; fruits were all their sky. They shouted, running on from tree to tree, And played the game the wind plays, on and round. 'T was visible invisible glee Pursuing ; and a fountain's sound Of laughter spouted, pattering fresh on me. I could have watched them till the daylight flee/, Their pretty bower made such a light of day. A Mnall one tumbling sang, 'Oh ! head!' The rest to comfort her straightway Seized ou a branch and thumped down apples red The tiny creature flashing through green grasw, And laughing with her feet and eyes among I a]. pies, while a little lass Over as o'er breeze-ripples hung : That Bight I saw, and passed as aliens paws. THE OliCHARD AND THE HEATH 1-11 My footpath left the pleasant farms and lanes, Soft cottage-smoke, straight cocks a-crow, gay flowers ; Beyond the wheel-ruts of the wains, Across a heath I walked for hours, And met its rival tenants, rays and rains. Still in my view mile-distant firs appeared, When, under a patched channel-bank enriched With foxglove whose late bells drooped seared, Behold, a family had pitched Their camp, and labouring the low tent upreared. Here, too, were many children, quick to scan A new thing coming ; swarthy cheeks, white teeth: In many-coloured rags they ran, Like iron runlets of the heath. Dispersed lay broth-pot, sticks, and drinking-can. Three girls, with shoulders like a boat at sea Tipped sideways by the wave (their clothing slid From either ridge unequally), Lean, swift and voluble, bestrid A starting-point, unfrocked to the bent knee. They raced ; their brothers yelled them on, and broke In act to follow, but as one they snuffed Wood-fumes, and by the fire that spoke Of provender, its pale flame puffed, And rolled athwart dwarf furzes grey-blue smoke. 1 12 THE ORCHARD and nil; HEATH Soon on the dark edge of a ruddier gleam, The mother-pot perusing, all, stretched ilat, Paused for its bubbling-up supreme: upright in circle And ol't his nose went with the Hying steam. I turned and looked on heaven awhile, where now The moor-faced sunset broaden'd with red light; Threw high aloft ;i golden bough, And Beemed the desert of the night Fur down with mellow orchards to endow. EARTH AND MaN On her great venture, Man, Earth gazes while her fingers dint the breast Which is his well of strength, his home of rest, And fair to scan. ii More aid than that embrace, That nourishment, she cannot give : his heart Involves his fate ; and she who urged the start Abides the race. in For he is in the lists Contentious with the elements, whose dower First sprang him ; for swift vultures to devour If he desists. IV His breath of instant thirst Is warning of a creature matched with strife, To meet it as a bride, or let fall life On life's accursed. 1 II l.Aki 11 .\Mi MAS V longer forth lie bounds Th( animal, afield to roam, But peering in Earth's entrails, whore the gnome Strange themes propounds. VI By hunger sharply sji'il I [i at weapons i re he learns their use, In each new ring he bears a giant's thews, An infant's head. VII Ainl ever that old task Oi reading what he is and whence he came, Whither to go, finds wilder letters rlaine Across her mask. VIII She hoars his wailful prayer, When now to tin- Invisible he raves To rend him from her, now his mother craves Her calm, her care. IX The thing that shudders most Within him is the burden of his cry. i of his dread, she is to his blank eye The eyeless Ghost. EARTH AND MAN 145 X Or sometimes she will seem Heavenly, but her blush, soon wearing white, Veils like a gorsebush in a web of blight, With gold-buds dim. XI Once worshipped Prime of Powers, She still was the Implacable : as a beast, She struck him down and dragged him from the feast She crowned with flowers. XII Her pomp of glorious hues, Her revelries of ripeness, her kind smile, Her songs, her peeping faces, lure awhile With symbol-clues. XIII The mystery she holds For him, inveterately he strains to see, And sight of his obtuseness is the key Among those folds. xrv He may entreat, aspire, He may despair, and she has never heed. She drinking his warm sweat will soothe his need, Not his desire. MO J AK111 AND -MAN XV She prompts him to rejoice, Yet Bcarea him on the threshold with the shroud. Be deems her cherishing of her best*endowed A wanton's choice. XVI Albeit thereof he has found Firm roadway between lusti'ulness and pain; ilas half transferred the battle to his brain, From bloody ground ; XVII He will not read her good, Or wise, but with the passion Self obscures; Through that old devil of the thousand lures, Through that dense hood : XVIII Through terror, through distrust ; The greed to touch, to view, to have, to live: Through all that makes of him a sensitive Abhorring dust. XIX Behold his wormy home I And he the wind-whipped, anywhither wave I ily tumbled on a shingle-grave To waste in foam. EAliTH AND MAN 14' XX Therefore the wretch inclines Afresh to the Invisible, who, he saith, Can raise him high : with vows of living faith Tor little signs. XXI Some signs he must demand, Some proofs of slaughtered nature ; some [ Aztk. -few, To satisfy the senses it is true, And in his hand, XXII This miracle which saves Himself, himself doth from extinction ciutch, By virtue of his worth, contrasting much With brutes and knaves. XXIII From dust, of him abhorred, He would be snatched by Grace discovering worth. ' Sever me from the hollowness of earth ! Me take, dear Lord ! ' XXTV She hears him. Him she owes For half her loveliness a love well won By work that lights the shapeless and the dun, Their common foes. 148 l.AKIll AM» MAN XXV He builds the soaring spires, That sing his soul in stone : of her he draws, Though blind to her, by spelling at her laws, Her purest lires. XXVI Through him hath she exchanged, For the gold harvest-robes, the mural crown, Her haggard quarry-features and thick frown Where monsters ranged. XXVII And order, high discourse, And decency, than which is life less dear, She has of him : the lyre of language clear, Love's tongue and source. XXVIII SI if hears him, and can hear With glory in his gains by work achieved : With grief for grief that is the unperceived In her so near. XXIX If lie aloft for aid Imploring storms, her essence is the spur. His cry to heaven is a cry to her He would evade. EARTH AND MAN 149 XXX Not elsewhere can he tend. Those are her rules which bid him wash foul sins ; Those her revulsions from the skull that grins To ape his end. XXXI And her desires are those For happiness, for lastingness, for light. »T is she who kindles in his haunting night The hoped dawn-rose. XXXII Fair fountains of the dark Daily she waves him, that his inner dream May clasp amid the glooms a springing beam, A quivering lark : XXXIII This life and her to know For Spirit : with awakenedness of glee To feel stern joy her origin: not he The child of woe. XXXIV But that the senses still Usurp the station of their issue mind, He would have burst the chrysalis of the blind : As yet he will ; i;>0 EAKl II AM) MAN .WW As yet he will, she prays, Yet will when his distempered devil of Self ;- The glutton Eoi her fruits, the wily elf la shifting rays; — x x \ v I Thai captain <>i the Boomed; The coveter of life i'i soul and shell, The fratricide, the thief, the inlidel, The hoofed and homed ; — XXXVII He singularly doomed To what lie execrates and writhes to shun ; — When fire has passed him vapour to the sun, And sun relumed, XXXVIII Then shall the horrid pall Be lifted, and a spirit nigh divine, • Dive in thy offspring as I live in mine/ "Will hear her call. XXXIX "Whence looks he on a land Whereon his labour is a earven page; And forth from heritage to heritage Nought writ on sand. EABTH AND MAN lol XL His fables of the Above, And his gapped readings of the crown and sword, The hell detested and the heaven adored, The hate, the love, XLI The bright wing, the black hoof, He shall peruse, from Reason not disjoined, And never unfaith clamouring to be coined To faith by proof. XLII She her just Lord may view, Not he, her creature, till his soul has yearned With all her gifts to reach the light discerned Her spirit through. XLIII Then in him time shall run As in the hour that to young sunlight crows ; And — ' If thou hast good faith it can repose,' She tells her son. XLIV Meanwhile on him, her chief Expression, her great word of life, looks she ; Twi-minded of him, as the waxing tree, Or dated leaf. A BALLAD OF FAIR LADIES IX REVOLT Si i: tin' sweet women, friend, that lean beneath The ever-falling fountain of green leaves Round tin; white bending Btem, ami like a wreath Of our most blushful flower shine trembling through, To teach philosophers the thirst of thieves: Is one for me ? is one for you ? ii -Fair sirs, we give you welcome, yield you place, And you shall choose among us which you will, Without the idle pastime of the chase, If to this treaty you can well agree: To wed our cause, and its high task fulfil. ll>' who's for us, for him are we! in -Most gracious ladies, nigh when light has birth, A troop of maids, brown as burnt heather-bells, And rich with life as moss-roots breathe of earth In the first plucking of them, past us flew To labour, singing rustic ritornells : 111 they a cause ? are they of you ? A BALLAD OF FAIIl LADIES IN IlEVOLT loi> IV ■ Sirs, they are as unthinking armies are To thoughtful leaders, and our cause is theirs. When they know men they know the state of war; But now they dream like sunlight on a sea, And deem you hold the half of happy pairs. He who 's for us, for him are we ! - Ladies, I listened to a ring of dames ; Judicial in the robe and wig ; secure As venerated portraits in their frames; And they denounced some insurrection new Against sound laws which keep you good and pure. Are you of them ? are they of you ? VI • Sirs, they are of us, as their dress denotes, And by as much : let them together chime : It is an ancient bell within their throats, Pulled by an aged ringer ; with what glee Befits the yellow yesterdays of time. He who 's for us, for him are we ! 101 A BALLAD OF l All; LADIES IN REVOLT VII Sweet ladies, you with beauty, you with wit; 1 1 red of all favours and all blessed things Whereat the ruddy lurch oi Love is lit; Wherefore this vain and outworn strife renew, Which Btay8 tin- tide no more than eddy-rings? \\ hu 16 for love must be lor you. VIII The manners of the market, honest sirs, 'T is hard to quit when you behold the wares. You flatter us, or perchance our milliners You flatter; so this vain and outworn She May still be the charmed snake to your soft airs I A higher lord than Love claim we. IX One day, dear lady, missing the broad track, I aie on a wood's border, by a mead, "Where gohh-n May ran up to moted black: And there I saw Queen Beauty hold review, With Love before her throne in act to plead. lake him for me, take her for you. A BALLAD OF FAIK LADIES IN REVOLT loJ Ingenious gentleman, the tale is known. Love pleaded sweetly : Beauty would not melt : She would not melt: he turned in wrath : her throne The shadow of his back froze withering^, And sobbing at his feet Queen Beauty knelt. not such slaves of Love are we ! XI • Love, lady, like the star above that lance Of radiance flung by sunset on ridged cloud, Sad as the last line of a brave romance ! — Young Love hung dim, yet quivering round him threw Beams of fresh fire while Beauty waned and bowed. Scorn Love, and dread the doom for you. XII — Called she not for her mirror, sir ? Forth ran Her women : I am lost, she cried, when lo, Love in the form of an admiring man Once more in adoration bent the knee And brought the faded Pagan to full blow : For which hfir throne she gave : not we ! 100 A r.Ai.i..\i> "i i \n: LADIES IN BEVOLT XIII -My version, madam, runs not to that end. A certain madness of an hour half past, Caught hex like fever : her just lord do friend She fancied; aimed beyond beauty, and thence grew The prim acerbity, sweet Love's outcast. ( treat heaven ward oil that stroke from you! XIV — Your prayer to heaven, good sir, is generous: How generous likewise that you do not name nded nature ! She from all of us Couched idle underneath our showering tree, May quite withhold her most destructive flame; And then what woeful women we ! XV Quite, could not be, fair lady; yet your youth Mi\ run to drought in visionary schemes: And a l.tt.' waking to perceive the truth, When day falls shrouding her supreme adieu, vs darker wastes than unaccomplished dreams: And that may be in store for you. A BALLAD OF FA1U LADIES FN HE VOLT 157 XVI sir, the truth, the truth ! is 't in the skies, Or iu the grass, or in this heart of ours ? But the truth, the truth ! the many eyes That look on it ! the diverse things they see, According to their thirst for fruit or flowers ! Pass on : it is the truth seek we. XVII Lady, there is a truth of settled laws That down the past burns like a great watch-fire. Let youth hail changeful mornings; but your cause, Whetting its edge to cut the race in two, Is felony : you forfeit the bright lyre, Much honour and much glory you ! XVIII Sir, was it glory, was it honour, pride, And not as cat and serpent and poor slave, Wherewith we walked in union by your side ? Spare to false womanliness her delicacy, Or bid true manliness give ear, we crave: In our defence thus chained are we. A BALLAD OF i.\ll; LADIES IN BEVOLX XIX — Yours, madam, were the privileges of life Proper to man's ideal; you irere the mark Of action, and the banner in tin- strifes ^ i. .'I yonr vexj weakness once you drew The Btrength that sounds the wells, outilies the lark; \\ rapped iu a robe of iiame were you 1 xx • Your friend looks thoughtful. Sir, when we were chill, Son clothed us warmly; all in honour! when We starved you led us ; all in honour still: ( »h, all in honour, ultra-honourably ! Deep is the gratitude we owe to men, For privileged indeed were we ! XXI You cite exceptions, madam, that are sad, But come in the red struggle of our growth, Alas, that I should have to say it ! bad Is two-sexed upon earth: this which you do, Shows animal impatience, mental sloth: Man monstrous, pining seraphs youl A BALLAD OF FAIR LADIES IN EEVOLT 159 XXII • I fain would ask your friend . . . but I will ask You, sir, how if in place of numbers vague, Your sad exceptions were to break that mask They wear for your cool miud historically, And blaze like black lists of a present plague ? But in that light behold them we. XXIII Your spirit breathes a mist upon our world, Lady, and like a rain to pierce the roof And drench the bed where toil-tossed man lies curled In his hard-earned oblivion ! You are few, Scattered, ill-counselled, blinded : for a proof, I have lived, and have known none like you. XXIV We may be blind to men, sir : we embrace A future now beyond the fowler's nets. Though few, we hold a promise for the race That was not at our rising: you are free To win brave mates; you lose but marionnettes. He who 's for us, for him are we. ItiU A BALLAD «'i PAIR LADIES IN BEVOLT x x v -Ah! madam, were tiny puppets who withstood Youth** cravii For adventure to preserve The '1' I ways of womanhood '.' The lio'lit which lcmls us from the paths of rue, That light above us, never Been t<> swerve, Should be the home-lamp trimmed by you. XXVI — Ah ! sir, our worshipped posture we perchance Shall not abandon, though we see not how, Being to that lamp-posl fixed, we may advance I'- side our lords in any real degree, I nk'sjj we move: and to advance is now A sovereign need, think more than we. XXVII — So push you out of harbour in small craft, With little seamanships and comes a gale, The world will laugh, the world has often laughed, ly, to see how bold when skies are blue, When black winds churn the deeps how panic-pale, 1 [ow swift to the old nest fly you! A BALLAD OF FAIR LADIES IN REVOLT 161 XXVIII - What thinks your friend, kind sir ? We have escaped But partly that old half-tamed wild beast's paw Whereunder woman, the weak thing, was shaped : Men too have known the cramping enemy In grim brute force, whom force of brain shall awe : Him our deliverer, await we ! XXIX - Delusions are with eloquence endowed, And yours might pluck an angel from the spheres To play in this revolt whereto you are vowed, Deliverer, lady ! but like summer dew O'er fields that crack for rain your friends drop tears, Who see the awakening for you. XXX - Is he our friend, there silent ? he weeps not. sir, delusion mounting like a sun On a mind blank as the white wife of Lot, Giving it warmth and movement! if this be Delusion, think of what thereby was won For men, and dream of what win we. 1 - A BALLAD 0] I am; LADIES in BEVOLT XXXI — Lady, the destiny uf minor powers, Who would recast us, is but tu convul ^i mi enter on a Btrife that frets and soars; Yon can but win sick disappointment's hue; And simply an accelerated pulse, me tonio yuu have drunk moves you. XXXII — Thinks your friend so ? Good sir, your wit is bright; But wit that strives to speak the popular voice, Puts on its nightcap and puts out its light; Curfew, would seem your conqueror's decree To women likewise: and we have DO choice Save darkness or rebellion, we ! XXXIII — A plain safe intermediate way is cleft I' foiling passion : you that rave 1 I mad .alternatives to right and left bo the tempter, madam : and 't is due Unto your bi s to shun it as the grave. This later apple offered you. A BALLAD OF FAIR LADIES LN REVOLT 163 XXXIV - This apple is not ripe, it is not sweet ; Nor rosy, sir, nor golden : eye and mouth Are little wooed by it ; yet we would eat. We are somewhat tired of Eden, is our plea. We have thirsted long ; this apple suits our drouth : ; T is good for men to halve, think we. XXXV - But say, what seek you, madam ? 'T is enough That you should have dominion o'er the springs Domestic and man's heart : those ways, how rough, How vile, outside the stately avenue Where you walk sheltered by your angel's wings, Are happily unknown to you. xxx VI - We hear women's shrieks on them. We like your phrase, Dominion domestic ! And that roar, 'What seek you ?' is of tyrants in all days. Sir, get you something of our purity, And we will of your strength : we ask no more. That is the sum of what seek we. ilil A BALLAD OP l'Aii; LADIES IN REVOLT .\ X.N VII — o for an image, madam, in one word, show yon as the lightning night reveals, ir error and your perils: you have erred In mind only, and the perils that «'nsue B \ itt heela may Boften ; wherefore to swift heels Address your hopes of safety you I XXXVIII -To err in mind, sir . . . your friend smiles: he may 1 To err in mind, if err in mind we can, Is grievous error you do well to stay. Hut how different from reality Men's fiction is ! how like you in the plan, Is woman, knew you her as we I XXXIX -Look, lady, where yon river winds its line I ward sunset, and receives on breast and face The Bplendour of fair life : to be divine, 'T is nature bids you be to nature true, Flowing with beauty, lending earth your grace, J Reflecting heaven in clearness you. A BALLAD OF FAIR LADIES IN REVOLT 165 XL - Sir, you speak well : your friend no word vouchsafes. To flow with beauty, breeding fools and worse, Cowards and worse : at such fair life she chafes Who is not wholly of the nursery, Nor of your schools : we share the primal curse ; Together shake it off, say we ! XLI - Here, then, my friend, madam ! Tongue-restrained he stands Till words are thoughts, and thoughts, like swords enriched With traceries of the artificer's hands, Are fire-proved steel to cut, fair flowers to view. — Do I hear him? Oh, he is bewitched, bewitched ! Heed him not ! Traitress beauties you ! XLII — We have won a champion, sisters, and a sage ! — Ladies, you win a guest to a good feast ! — Sir spokesman, sneers are weakness veiling rage. — Of weakness, and wise men, you have the key. — Then are there fresher mornings mounting East Than ever yet have dawned, sing we ! 1GG A BALLAD OF FAIB LADIES IX BEVOLT XLIII — False ends as false began, madam, be sure I — What lure there is the pur< purifies] — Who parities the victim of the Lure? — That soul which bids us our high light pursue. — Some heights are measured down: the wary wise Shun Keasou in the masque with you! XLIV Sir, for the friend you bring us, take our thanks. 5 , Beauty was of old this 1 unit mi goal ; A thing with claws; and brute-like in her pranks ! But could she give more loyal guarantee Than wooing wisdom, that in her a soul Has risen ? Adieu : content are we I XLV Those ladies led their captive to the flood's en edge. He Boating with them seemed the most L-flushed old noddy ever crowned with buds. Happier than 1 ! Then, why not wiser too? For he that lives with Beauty, he may boast His comrade over me and you. A BALLAD OF FAIR LADIES IX REVOLT 167 XLVI * Have women nursed some dream since Helen sailed Over the sea of blood the blushing star, That beauty, whom frail man as Goddess hailed, When not possessing her (for such is he !), Might in a wondering season seen afar, Be tamed to say not ' I,' but ' we ' ? XLVII And shall they make of Beauty their estate, The fortress and the weapon of their sex ? Shall she in her frost-brilliancy dictate, More queenly than of old, how we must woo, Ere she will melt ? The halter 's on our necks, Kick as it likes us, I and you. XLvin Certain it is, if Beauty has disdained Her ancient conquests, with an aim thus high If this, if that, if more, the fight is gained. But can she keep her followers without fee ? Yet ah ! to hear anew those ladies cry, He who 's for us, for him are we ! JUCflLTXG JERRY Fitch here tlie tent, while the old horse grazes: By the old hedge-side we '11 halt a stage. It 's nigh my last above the daisies: My next leaf 11 be man's blank page, i . my old girl ! and it 's no use crying: Juggler, constable, king, must bow. One that outjuggles all 's been spying Long to have me, and he has me now. II We 've travelled times to this old common Often we 've hung our pots in the gorse. We 've had a stirring life, old woman! \ ou, and I, and the old grey horse. ] and fairs, and royal occasions, Found us coining to their call : '.- they '11 miss us at out stations: r l'h.' Juggler outjuggles all I JUGGLING JEEEY lOi) III Up goes the lark, as if all were jolly ! Over the duck-poud the willow shakes. Easy to think that grieving 's folly, When the hand 's firm as driven stakes ! Ay, when we 're strong, and braced, and manful, Life 's a sweet fiddle : but we 're a batch Born to become the Great Juggler's han'ful: Balls he shies up, and is safe to catch. IV Here 's where the lads of the village cricket : I was a lad not wide from here : Could n't I whip off the bale from the wicket ? Like an old world those days appear ! Donkey, sheep, geese, and thatched ale-house — I know them ! They are old friends of my halts, and seem, Somehow, as if kind thanks I owe them : Juggling don't hinder the heart's esteem. Juggling 's no sin, for we must have victual : Nature allows us to bait for the fool. Holding one's own makes us juggle no little; But, to increase it, hard juggling 's the rule. You that are sneering at my profession, Have n't you juggled a vast amount ? There 's the Prime Minister, in one Session, Juggles more games than my sins '11 count. 170 JUGGLING JEBRY VI I \e murdered insects with mock thunder: i ascienoe, Eor that, in nun don't quail. I've made bread from the bump of wonder: That \s my business, and there 's my tale. I jhion and rank all praised the professor: \ : and 1 've had my smile from the Queen: l: . i, Jerryl she meant: God bless her! Ain't this a sermon on that scene ? VII I 've studied men from my topsy-turvy Close, and, I reckon, rather true. iie are fine fellows: some, right scurvy: Most, a dash between the two. But it 's a woman, old girl, that makes me Think more kindly of the race: And it 's a woman, old girl, that shakes me When the Great Juggler I must face. VIII We two were married, due and legal : 1 [onest \\r 've lived since we 've been one. I. id! I could then jump like an eagle: Fou limn ed bright as a bit o' the sun. I !s in a May-bush we were! right merry! All night we kiss'd, we juggled all day. J ;s the heart of Juggling Jerryl Now from his old girl he 's juggled away. JUGGLING JERRY 171 IX It 's past parsons to console us : No, nor no doctor fetch for ine : I can die without my bolus ; Two of a trade, lass, never agree ! Parson and Doctor ! — don't they love rarely, Fighting the devil in other men's fields ! Stand up yourself and match him fairly: Then see how the rascal yields ! I, lass, have lived no gipsy, flaunting Finery while his poor helpmate grubs : Coin I 've stored, and you won't be wanting : You sha'n't beg from the troughs and tubs. Nobly you 've stuck to me, though in his kitchen Many a Marquis would hail you Cook ! Palaces you could have ruled and grown rich in, But your old Jerry you never forsook. XI Hand up the chirper! ripe ale winks in it; Let 's have comfort and be at peace. Once a stout draught made me light as a linnet. Cheer up ! the Lord must have his lease. May be — for none see in that black hollow — It 's just a place where we.'re held in pawn, And, when the Great Juggler makes as to swallow, It 's just the sword-trick — I ain't quite gone ! 17- JUGGLING JERBY XII Yonder came smells of the gorse, so nutty, Gold-like and warm: it's the prime of May. B ttei than mortar, brick and putty, Is God's house on a blowing day. i me more up the mound; now I feel it: All tin' <»ld heath-smells ! Ain't it strange ? re s tin/ world laughing, as if to conceal it, But He 's by us, juggling the change. XIII I mind it well, by the sea-beach lying, Once — it 's long gone — when two gulls we beheld, Which, as the moon got up, were flying Down a big wave that sparked and swelled. Crack, went a gun: one fell: the second "Wheeled round him twice, and was off for new luck: There in the dark her white wing beckon'd : — Drop me a kiss — I 'in the bird dead-struck ! THE OLD CHARTIST Whate'er I be, old England is my dam ! So there 's my answer to the judges, clear. I'm nothing of a fox, nor of a lamb; I don't know how to bleat nor how to leer : I 'm for the nation ! That 's why you see me by the wayside here, Returning home from transportation. II It 's Summer in her bath this morn, I think. I 'm fresh as dew, and chirpy as the birds : And just for joy to see old England wink Thro' leaves again, I could harangue the herds : Is n't it something To speak out like a man when you 've got words, And prove you 're not a stupid dumb thing ? 174 Tin: OLD 0HABTI8T in They shipped me off for it ; I 'm here again, i England is my dam, whate'er 1 be ! . 1 '11 tramp it home, and Bee the grain: • It yon Bee well, you're king of what you see: l".\ esight is having, If you 're not given, I said, to gluttony. Such talk to ignorance sounds as raving. IV You dear old brook, that from his Grace's park Come bounding! on you run near my old town My lord can't lock the water; nor the lark, Unless he kills him, can my lord keep down. Up, is the song-note ! I 've tried it, too : — for comfort and renown, I rather pitch'd upon the wrong note. 1 'm not ashamed: Not beaten 's still my boast: in I '11 rouse the people up to strike. But home 'a where different politics jar most. R bility the women like. This form, or that form, — Tl l • may be hungry pike, But d - you mount a Chartist platform! THE OLD CHARTIST 175 VI Well, well ! Not beaten — spite of them, I shout ; And my estate is suffering for the Cause. — No, — what is yon brown water-rat about, Who washes his old poll with busy paws ? What does he mean by 't ? It 's like defying all our natural laws, For him to hope that he '11 get clean by 't. VII His seat is on a mud-bank, and his trade Is dirt : — he 's quite contemptible ; and yet The fellow 's all as anxious as a maid To show a decent dress, and dry the wet. Now it 's his whisker, And now his nose, and ear : he seems to get Each moment at the motion brisker! VIII To see him squat like little chaps at school, I could let fly a laugh with all my might. He peers, hangs both his fore-paws : — bless that fool, He 's bobbing at his frill now ! — what a sight ! Licking the dish up, As if he thought to pass from black to white, Like parson into lawny bishop. 170 THE OLD CIIAKTIST IX The elms and yellow reed-Mags in the sun, Look on quite grave : — the Bunlight Hecks his side; And links of bindweed-flowers round him run, And shine up doubled with him in the tide. / "m nearly splittin J; it nature seems like seconding his pride, And thinks that his behaviour's fitting. That isle o' mud looks baking dry with gold. His needle-muzzle still works out and in. It really is a wonder to behold, And makes me feel the bristles of my chin. Judged by appearance, I fancy of the two I 'in nearer Sin, And might as well commence a clearance. XI And that's what my fine daughter said: — she meant Pray, hold your tongue, and wear a Sunday face. Her husband, the young linendraper, spent Much argument thereon : — I 'm their disgrace. Bother the couple ! I feel superior to a chap whose place Commands him to be neat and supple. THE OLD CHAIiTIST 177 XII But if I go and say to my old hen : I '11 mend the gentry's boots, and keep discreet, Until they grow too violent, — why, then, A warmer welcome I might chance to meet: Warmer and better. And if she fancies her old cock is beat, And drops upon her knees — so let her ! xm She suffered for me : — women, you '11 observe, Don't suffer for a Cause, but for a man. When I was in the dock she show'd her nerve : I saw beneath her shawl my old tea-can. Trembling . . . she brought it To screw me for my work : she loath'd my plan, And therefore doubly kind I thought it. XIV I 've never lost the taste of that same tea : That liquor on my logic floats like oil, When I state facts, and fellows disagree. For human creatures all are in a coil ; All may want pardon. I see a day when every pot will boil Harmonious in one great Tea-garden ! ITS T11K (»LI) (IIAKTIST XV We trait the Betting of the Dandy's day, Before that time! — He's furbishing his dress, He will be ready for it! — and I say, That yon old dandy rat amid the cress, — Thanks to hard labour ! — It cleanliness is next to godliness, The old fat fellow 's heaven's neighbour 1 XVI You teach me a fine lesson, my old boy I I 've looked on my superiors far too long, And small has been my profit as my joy. You 've done the right while I 've denounced the wrong. Prosper me later ! Like you I will despise the sniggering throng, And please myself and my Creator. XVII I '11 bring the linendraper and his wife Son,.- day to see you ; taking off my hat. Should they ask why, I'll answer: in my life I never found so true a democrat. Base occupation Can't rob you of your own esteem, old rati I '11 preach you to the British nation. MARTIN'S PUZZLE There she goes up the street with her book in her hand, And her Good morning, Martin ! Ay, lass, how d' ye do ? Very well, thank you, Martin ! — I can't understand ! I might just as well never have cobbled a shoe ! I can't understand it. She talks like a song ; Her voice takes your ear like the ring of a glass ; She seems to give gladness while limping along, Yet sinner ne'er suffer'd like that little lass. ii First, a fool of a boy ran her down with a cart. Then, her fool of a father — a blacksmith by trade — Why the deuce does he tell us it half broke his heart ? His heart ! — where 's the leg of the poor little maid ! Well, that 's not enough ; they must push her downstairs, To make her go crooked : but why count the list ? If it 's right to suppose that our human affairs Are all order'd by heaven — there, bang goes my fist ! lso mabtln's puzzlb III For if angels can look on such sights — never mind! "When you 're next to blaspheming, it 's hest to be mum. Tin' parson declares that her woes were n't designed; But, then, with the parson it's all kingdom-come. Lose a leg, save a soul — a convenient text ; I call it Tea doctrine, not savouring of God. When poor little Molly wants 'chastening,' why, next The Archangel Michael might taste of the rod. IV But, to see the poor darling go limping for miles To read books to sick people ! — and just of an age When girls learn the meaning of ribands and smiles ! Makes me feel like a squirrel that turns in a cage. The more I push thinking the more I revolve : I never get farther : — and as to her face, It starts up when near on my puzzle I solve, And says, * This crush'd body seems such a sad case.' Not that she 's for complaining : she reads to earn pence ; And from those who can't pay, simple thanks are enough. Does she leave lamentation for chaps without sense ? Howsoever, she 's made up of wonderful stuff. Ay, the soul in her body must be a stout cord , She sings little hymns at the close of the day, Though she has but three fingers to lift to the Lord, And only one leg to kneel down with to pray. martin's puzzle 181 VI What I ask is, Why persecute such a poor dear, If there 's Law above all ? Answer that if you can ! Irreligious I 'm not ; but I look on this sphere As a place where a man should just think like a man. It is n't fair dealing! But, contrariwise, Do bullets in battle the wicked select ? Why, then it 's all chance-work ! And yet, in her eyes, She holds a fixed something by which I am checked. VII Yonder riband of sunshine aslope on the wall, If you eye it a minute '11 have the same look : So kind ! and so merciful ! God of us all ! It 's the very same lesson we get from the Book. Then, is Life but a trial ? Is that what is meant ? Some must toil, and some perish, for others below: The injustice to each spreads a common content; Ay ! I 've lost it again, for it can't be quite so. VIII She 's the victim of fools : that seems nearer the mark. On earth there are engines and numerous fools. Why the Lord can permit them, we 're still in the dark; He does, and in some sort of way they 're his tools. It 's a roundabout way, with respect let me add, If Molly goes crippled that we may be taught : But, perhaps, it 's the only way, though it 's so bad ; In that case we '11 bow down our heads, — as we ought. 1 -J MARTIN'S PUZZLE IX But the worst of vie is, that when I bow my head, I perceive a thought wriggling away in the dust, And I follow its tracks, quite forgetful, instead Of humble acceptance : for, question I must! Here 's a creature made carefully — carefully made! Put together with craft, and then stamped on, and why ? Tin- answer Beema nowhere: it's discord that's played. The sky 's a blue dish ! — an implacable sky 1 Stop a moment. I seize an idea from the pit. They tell us that discord, though discord, alone, Can be harmony when the notes properly fit : Ami judging all things from a single false tone ? Is the Universe one immense Organ, that rolls From devils to angels ? I 'm blind with the sight. It pours such a splendour on heaps of poor souls ! I might try at kneeling with Molly to-night. MARIAN She can be as wise as we, And wiser when she wishes ; She can knit with cunning wit, And dress the homely dishes. She can flourish staff or pen, And deal a wound that lingers ; She can talk the talk of men, And touch with thrilling fingers. II * Match her ye across the sea, Natures fond and fiery ; Ye who zest the turtle's nest With the eagle's eyrie. Soft and loving is her soul, Swift and lofty soaring; Mixing with its dove-like dole Passionate adoring. 1S4 ItABIAH III Such a she who '11 match with me ? In Hying or pursuing, Subtle wiles are in her smiles To set the world a-wooing. She is steadfast as a star, And yet the maddest maiden : She can wage a galhint war, And give the peace of Eden. SONNETS 185 SONNETS LUCIFER IN STARLIGHT On a starred night Prince Lucifer uprose. Tired of his dark dominion swung the fiend Above the rolling ball in cloud part screened, Where sinners hugged their spectre of repose. Poor prey to his hot fit of pride were those. And now upon his western wing he leaned, Now his huge bulk o'er Afric's sands careened, Now the black planet shadowed Arctic snows. Soaring through wider zones that pricked his scars With memory of the old revolt from Awe, He reached a middle height, and at the stars, Which are the brain of heaven, he looked, and sank. Around the ancient track marched, rank on rank, The army of unalterable law. BONNETS THE STAR S1RIUS Bbight Sirius ! that when Orion pales To dotling8 under moonlight still art keen With cheerful fervour oi a warrior's mien Who holds in his great heart the battle-scales: Unquenched of flame though swift the flood assails, Reducing many lustrous to the lean : Be thou my star, and thou in me be seen To show what source divine is, and prevails. Long watches through, at one with godly night, I mark thee planting joy in constant fire; And thy quick beams, whose jets of life inspire Life to the spirit, passion for the light, 1 >ii k Earth since first she lost her lord from sight Hi, viewed and felt them sweep her as a lyre. SONNETS 187 SENSE AND SPIEIT The senses loving Earth or well or ill, Ravel yet more the riddle of our lot. The mind is in their trammels, and lights not By trimming fear-bred tales ; nor does the will To find in nature things which less may chill An ardour that desires, unknowing what. Till we conceive her living we go distraught, At best but circle-windsails of a mill. Seeing she lives, and of her joy of life Creatively has given us blood and breath For endless war and never wound unhealed, The gloomy Wherefore of our battle-field Solves in the Spirit, wrought of her through strife To read her own and trust her down to death. 188 INNETS EARTH'S SECRET Not solitarily in fields we find Earth's Becret open, though one page is there; Her plainest, such as children spell, and share With bird and beast; raised letters for the blind. Not where the troubled passions toss the mind, In turbid cities, can the key be bare. It hangs for those who hither thither fare, Close interthreading nature with our kind. They, hearing History speak, of what men were, Ami have become, are wise. The gain is great In vision and solidity ; it lives. Yet at a thought of life apart from her, Solidity and vision lose their state, For Earth, that gives the milk, the spirit gives. SONNETS 189 THE SPIRIT OF SHAKESPEARE Thy greatest knew thee, Mother Earth ; unsoured He knew thy sons. He probed from hell to hell Of human passions, but of love deflowered His wisdom was not, for he knew thee well. Thence came the honeyed corner at his lips, The conquering smile wherein his spirit sails Calm as the God who the white sea-wave whips, Yet full of speech and intershifting tales, Close mirrors of us : thence had he the laugh We feel is thine : broad as ten thousand beeves At pasture ! thence thy songs, that winnow chaff From grain, bid sick Philosophy's last leaves Whirl, \2 they have no response — they enforced To fatten Earih when from her soul divorced. [90 BONNETS THE SPIRIT OF SHAKESPEARE (continued) 1I..W smiles he at a generation ranked In gloomy noddings over life ! They pass. Not he to feed upon a breast unthanked, Or eye a beauteous face in a cracked glass. But he can spy that little twist of brain Which moved some weighty leader of the blind, Unwitting 'twas the goad of personal pain, To view in curst eclipse our Mother's mind, And show us of some rigid harridan The wretched bondmen till the end of time. lived the Master now to paint us Man, That little twist of brain would ring a chime Of whence it came and what it caused, to start Thunders of laughter, clearing air and heart. SONNETS 191 INTERNAL HAEMONY Assured of worthiness we do not dread Competitors ; we rather give them hail And greeting in the lists where we may fail: Must, if we bear an aim beyond the head ! My betters are my masters : purely fed By their sustainment 1 likewise shall scale Some rocky steps between the mount and vale ; Meanwhile the mark I have and I will wed. So that I draw the breath of finer air, Station is nought, nor footways laurel-strewn, Nor rivals tightly belted for the race. Good speed to them ! My place is here or there ; My pride is that among them I have place : And thus I keep this instrument in tune. 192 BONNETS GRACE AND LOVE Two lower-enfolding crystal vases she I love lills daily, mindful but of one: And close behind pale morn she, like the sun Priming our world with light, pours, sweet to see, Clear water in the cup, and into me The image of herself: and that being done, Choice of what blooms round her fair garden run In climbers or in creepers or the tree, She ranges with unerring fingers fine, To harmony so vivid that through sight I hear, I have her heavenliness to fold Beyond the senses, where such love as mine, Such grace as hers, should the strange Fates withhoJ** Their starry more from her aud me, unite. SONNETS 193 APPKECIATION Earth was not Earth before her sons appeared, Nor Beauty Beauty ere young Love was born : And thou when I lay hidden wast as morn At city-windows, touching eyelids bleared; To none by her fresh wingedness endeared ; Unwelcome unto revellers outworn. I the last echoes of Diana's horn In woodland heard, and saw thee come, and cheered. No longer wast thou then mere light, fair soul ! And more than simple duty moved thy feet. New colours rose in thee, from fear, from shame, From hope, effused : though not less pure a scroll May men read on the heart I taught to beat : That change in thee, if not thyself, I claim. l'J4 BONNETS THE DISCIPLINE OF WLSDOM Rich labour is the struggle to be wise, "While we make sure the struggle cannot cease. Else better were it in some bower of peace Slothful to swing, contending with the flies. You point at "Wisdom fixed on lofty skies, As mid barbarian hordes a sculptured Greece : She falls. To live and shine, she grows her fleece, Is shorn, and rubs with follies and with lies. So following her, your hewing may attain The right to speak unto the mute, and shun That sly temptation of the illumined brain, Deliveries oracular, self-spun. "Who sweats not with the flock will seek in vain To shed the words which are ripe fruit of sun. SONNETS 195 THE STATE OF AGE Rub thou thy battered lamp : nor claim nor beg Honours from aught about thee. Light the youug. Thy frame is as a dusty mantle hung, O grey one ! pendant on a loosened peg. Thou art for this our life an ancient egg, Or a tough bird : thou hast a rudderless tongue, Turning dead trifles, like the cock of dung; Which runs, Time's contrast to thy halting leg. Nature, it is most sure, not thee admires. But hast thou in thy season set her fires To burn from Self to Spirit through the lash, Honoured the sons of Earth shall hold thee high : Yea, to spread light when thy proud letter I Drops prone and void as any thoughtless dash. l'Jli SON M. IS PROGRESS In Progress you have little faith, say you : Men will maintain dear interests, wreak base hates, By force, and gentle women choose their mates Most amorously from the gilded fighting crew : The human heart Bellona's mad hulloo "Will ever fire to dicing with the Fates. 'Now at this time,' says History, 'those two States 'Stood ready their past wrestling to renew. ' They sharpened arms and showed them, like the brutes 'Whose haunches quiver. But a yellow blight 'Fell on their waxing harvests. They deferred 'The bloody settlement of their disputes 'Till God should bless them better.' They did right. And naming Progress, both shall have the word. SONNETS 197 THE WORLD'S ADVANCE Judge mildly the tasked world ; and disincline To brand it, for it bears a heavy pack. You have perchance observed the inebriate's track At night when he has quitted the inn-sign : He plays diversions on the homeward line, Still that way bent albeit his legs are slack : A hedge may take him, but he turns not back, Nor turns this burdened world, of curving spine. ' Spiral,' the memorable Lady terms Our mind's ascent : our world's advance presents That figure on a flat ; the way of worms. Cherish the promise of its good intents, And warn it, not one instinct to efface Ere Eeason ripens for the vacant place. 198 SONNETS A CERTAIN PEOPLE As Puritans they prominently wax, And none more kindly gives and takes hard knocks. Strong psalmic chanting, like to nasal cocks, They join to thuuderings of their hearty thwacks. But naughtiness, with hoggery, not lacks When Peace another door in them unlocks, Where conscience shows the eyeing of an ox Grown dully apprehensive of an Axe Graceless they are when gone to frivolousness, Fearing the God they flout, the God they glut. They need their pious exercises less Than schooling in the Pleasures : fair belief That these are devilish only to their thief, Charged with an Axe nigh on the occiput. SONNETS 199 THE GAKDEN OF EPICUKUS That Garden of sedate Philosophy Once flourished, fenced from passion and mishap, A shining spot upon a shaggy map ; Where mind and body, in fair junction free, Luted their joyful concord ; like the tree From root to flowering twigs a flowing sap. Clear Wisdom found in tended Nature's lap, Of gentlemen the happy nursery. That Garden would on light supremest verge, Were the long drawing of an equal breath Healthful for Wisdom's head, her heart, her aims. Our world which for its Babels wants a scourge, And for its wilds a husbandman, acclaims The crucifix that came of Nazareth. 200 SONNETS A LATER ALEXANDRIAN Ax inspiration caught from dubious hues, Filled him, and mystic wryuesses he chased; For they lead farther than the single-faced, • Wave subtler promise when desire pursues. The moon of cloud discoloured was his Muse, His pipe the reed of the old moaning waste. Love was to him with anguish fast enlaced, Ami Beauty where she walked blood-shot the dews. Men railed at such a singer ; women thrilled Responsively : he sang not Nature's own Divinest, but his lyric had a tone, As 't were a forest-echo of her voice : What barrenly they yearn for seemed distilled From what they dread, who do through tears rejoice. SONNETS 201 AN ORSON OF THE MUSE Her son, albeit the Muse's livery And measured courtly paces rouse his taunts, Naked and hairy in his savage haunts, To Nature only will he bend the knee ; Spoutiug the founts of her distillery Like rough rock-sources ; and his woes and wants, Being Nature's, civil limitation daunts His utterance never ; the nymphs blush, not he. Him, when he blows of Earth, and Man, and Fate, The Muse will hearken to with graver ear Than many of her train can waken : him Would fain have taught what fruitful things and dear Must sink beneath the tidewaves, of their weight, If in no vessel built for sea they swim. 202 BONNETS THE POINT OF TASTE Unhappy poets of a sunken prime 1 You to reviewers are as ball to bat. They shadow you with Homer, knock you flat With Shakespeare : bludgeons brainingly sublime On you the excommunicates of Khyme, Because you sing not in the living Fat. The wiry whizz of an intrusive gnat Is verse that shuns their self-producing time. Sound them their clocks, with loud alarum trump, Or watches ticking temporal at their fobs, You win their pleased attention. But, bright God 0' the lyre, what bully-drawlers they applaud! Rather for us a tavern-catch, and bump Chorus where Lumpkin with his Giles hobnobs. SONNETS 203 CAMELUS SALTAT What say you, critic, now you have become An author and maternal ? — in this trap (To quote you) of poor hollow folk who rap On instruments as like as drum to drum. You snarled tut-tut for welcome to tum-tum, So like the nose fly-teased in its noon's nap. You scratched an insect-slaughtering thunder-clap With that between the fingers and the thumb. It seemeth mad to quit the Olympian couch, Which bade our public gobble or reject. spectacle of Peter, shrewdly pecked, Piper, by his own pepper from his pouch! What of the sneer, the jeer, the voice austere, You dealt? — the voice austere, the jeer, the sneer. 204 BONKET8 CAMELUS SALTAT (continued) Oracle of the market ! thence you drew The taste which .stamped you guide of the inept. — A North-sea pilot, Hildebraud yclept, A sturdy aud a briny, once men knew. He loved small beer, and for that copious brew, To roll in gurgitation till he slept, Rations exchanged with flavour for the adept: And merrily plied him captain, mate and crew. At last this dancer to the Polar star Sank, washed out within, and overboard was pitched, To drink the sea and pilot him to land. O captain-critic! printed, neatly stitched, Know, while the pillory-eggs fly fast, they are Not eggs, but the drowned soul of Hildebraud, SONNETS 205 TO J. M. Let Fate or Insufficiency provide Mean ends for men who what they are would be t Penned in their narrow day no change they see Save one which strikes the blow to brutes and pride. Our faith is ours and comes not on a tide : And whether Earth's great offspring, by decree, Must rot if they abjure rapacity, Not argument but effort shall decide. They number many heads in that hard flock : Trim swordsmen they push forth : yet try thy steel. Thou, fighting for poor humankind, wilt feel The strength of Roland in thy wrist to hew A chasm sheer into the barrier rock, And bring the army of the faithful through. 206 Su.NM.Ts TO A FRIEND LOST (t. t.) When I remember, friend, whom lost I call, Because a man beloved is taken hence, The tender humour and the fire of sense In your good eyes ; how full of heart for all, And chiefly for the weaker by the wall, You bore that lamp of sane benevolence ; Then see I round you Death his shadows dense Divide, and at your feet his emblems fall. For surely are you one with the white host, Spirits, whose memory in our vital air Through the great love of Earth they had : lo, these, Like beams that throw the path on tossing seas, Can bid us feel we keep them in the ghost, Partakers of a strife they joyed to share. SONNETS 207 MY THEME Of me and of my theme think what thou wilt : The song of gladness one straight bolt can check. But I have never stood at Fortune's beck: Were she and her light crew to run atilt At my poor holding little would be spilt ; Small were the praise for singing o'er that wreck. Who courts her dooms to strife his bended neck; He grasps a blade, not always by the hilt. Nathless she strikes at random, can be fell With other than those votaries she deals The black or brilliant from her thunder-rift. I say but that this love of Earth reveals A soul beside our own to quicken, quell, Irradiate, and through ruinous floods uplift. 208 snNNKTS MY THEME (continued) 'T is true the wisdom that my mind exacts Through contemplation from a heart unbent By many tempests may be stained and rent: The summer flies it mightily attracts. Yet they seem choicer than your sons of facts, Which scarce give breathing of the sty's content For their diurnal carnal nourishment: Which treat with Nature in official pacts. The deader body Nature could proclaim. Much life have neither. Let the heavens of wrath Rattle, then both scud scattering to froth. But during calms the flies of idle aim Less put the spirit out, less baffle thirst For light than swinish grunters, blest or curst. SONNETS 209 TIME AND SENTIMENT I see a fair young couple in a wood, And as they go, one bends to take a flower, That so may be embalmed their happy hour, And in another day, a kindred mood, Haply together, or in solitude, Recovered what the teeth of Time devour The joy, the bloom, and the illusive power, Wherewith by their young blood they are endued To move all enviable, framed in May, And of an aspect sisterly with Truth : Yet seek they with Time's laughing things to wed : Who will be prompted on some pallid day To lift the hueless flower and show that dead, Even such, and by this token, is their youth. 14 BALLADS AND POEMS OF TRAGIC LIFE THE TWO MASKS Melpomene among her livid people, Ere stroke of lyre, upon Thaleia looks, Warned by old contests that one inuseful ripple Along those lips of rose with tendril hooks, Forebodes disturbance in the springs of pathos, Perchance may change of masks midway demand, Albeit the man rise mountainous as Athos, The woman wild as Cape Leucadia stand. ii For this the Comic Muse exacts of creatures Appealing to the fount of tears : that they Strive never to outleap our human features, And do Right Reason's ordinance obey, In peril of the hum to laughter nighest. But prove they under stress of action's fire Nobleness, to that test of Reason highest, She bows : she waves them for the loftier lyre. VOL. II. — l ARCHDUCHESS ANNE In middle age an evil thing Befell Archduchess Anne : She looked outside her wedding-ring Upon a princely man. ii Count Louis was for horse and arms ; And if its beacon waved, or love ; but ladies had not charms To match a danger braved. in On battlefields he was the bow Bestrung to fly the shaft : In idle hours his heart would flow As winds on currents waft. BALLADS AND POEMS OF TliAGIC LITE 213 IV His blood was of those warrior tribes That streamed from morning's fire, "Whom now with traps and now with bribes The wily Council wire. v Archduchess Anne the Council ruled, Count Louis his great dame ; And woe to both when one had cooled! Little was she to blame. VI Among her chiefs who spun their plots, Old Kraken stood the sword : As sharp his wits for cutting knots Of babble he abhorred. VII He reverenced her name and line, Nor other merit had Save soldierwise to wait her sign, And do the deed she bade. VIII He saw her hand jump at her side Ere royally she smiled On Louis and his fair young bride Where courtly ranks defiled. 214 BALLADS AND POEMS OF TEAGIC LIFE IX That was a moment when a shock Through the procession ran, And thrilled the plumes, and stayed the clock, Yet smiled Archduchess Anne. x No touch gave she to hound in leash, N>o wiuk to sword in sheath : She seemed a woman scarce of flesh ; Above it, or beneath. XI Old Kraken spied with kennelled snarl, His Lady deemed disgraced. He rooted as on burning marl, When out of Hall he paced. XII 'T was seen he hammered striding legs, And stopped, and strode again. Now Vengeance has a brood of eggs, But Patience must be hen. XIII Too slow are they for wrath to hatch, Too hot for time to rear. Old Kraken kept unwinking watch} He marked his day appear. BALLADS AND POEMS OF TRAGIC LITE 215 XIV He neighed a laugh, though moods were rough With standards in revolt : His nostrils took the news for snuff, His smackiDg lips for salt. XV Count Louis' wavy cock's plumes led His troops of black-haired manes, A rebel ; and old Kraken sped To front him on the plains. XVI Then camp opposed to camp did they Fret earth with panther claws For signal of a bloody day, Each reading from the Laws. XVII * Fore fend it, heaven! ' Count Louis cried, * And let the righteous plead : My country is a willing bride, Was never slave decreed. XVIII 'Not we for thirst of blood appeal To sword and slaughter curst ; We have God's blessing on our steel, Do we our pleading first.' 216 BALLADS AND I'OEMS ill' ll:A. beggared, grey ; seeking an alms ; with nod 01' palsy doing task of thanks for bread ; Upon the stature of a God, He whom the Gods have struck bends low his head. ii Weak words he has, that slip the nerveless tongue 1 Reformed, like his great frame : a broken arc: Once radiant as the javelin flung Eight at the centre breastplate of bis mark. in Oft pausing on bis white-eyed inward look, Some undermountain narrative he tells, As gapped by Lykian beat the brook Cut from the source tbat in the upland swells. IV The cottagers who dole him fruit and crust, With patient inattention hear him prate: And comes the snow, and conies the dust, Comes the old wanderer, more bent of late. BALLADS AND POEMS OF TRAGIC LIFE 305 A crazy beggar grateful for a meal Has ever of himself a world to say. For them he is an ancient wheel Spinning a knotted thread the livelong day. VI He cannot, nor do they, the tale connect ; For never singer in the land had been Who him for theme did not reject : Spurned of the hoof that sprang the Hippocrene. VII Albeit a theme of flame to bring them straight The snorting white-winged brother of the wave, They hear him as a thing by fate Cursed in unholy babble to his grave. VIII As men that spied the wings, that heard the snort, Their sires have told ; and of a martial prince Bestriding him ; and old report Speaks of a monster slain by one long since. IX There is that story of the golden bit By Goddess given to tame the lightning steed: A mortal who could mount, and sit Flying, and up Olympus midway speed. 306 BALLADS AND POEMS OF TRAGIC I. Hi: He rose like the loosed fountain's utmost leap; He played the star at span of heaven right o'er Men's heads: they saw the snowy step, Saw the winged shoulders : him they saw not more. XI He fell : and says the shattered man, I fell : And sweeps an arm the height an eagle wins ; And in his breast a mouthless well Heaves the worn patches of his coat of skins. XII Lo, this is he in whom the surgent springs Of recollections richer than our skies To feed the flow of tuneful strings, Show but a pool of scum for shooting flies. PHAfiTHON. ATTEMPTED IN THE GALLIAMBIC MEASURE. At the coming up of Phoebus the all-luminous charioteer, Double-visaged stand the mountains in imperial multi- tudes, And with shadows dappled men sing to him, Hail, Benefi- cent! For they shudder chill, the earth-vales, at his clouding, shudder to black ; In the light of him there is music thro' the poplar and river-sedge, Renovation, chirp of brooks, hum of the forest — an ocean- song. Never pearl from ocean-hollows by the diver exultingly, In his breathlessness, above thrust, is as earth to Helios. Who usurps his place there, rashest ? Aphrodite's loved one it is ! To his son the flaming Sun-God, to the tender youth, Phaethon, Rule of day this day surrenders as a thing hereditary, Having sworn by Styx tremendous, for the proof of his parentage, He would grant his son's petition, whatsoever the sign thereof. 308 BALLADS AND POEMS OF TBAGIC LD7B Then, rejoiced, the .stripling answered: ( Bule of day give ine ; give it me, 'Give me place that men may see me how I blaze, and transcendingly, 'I, divine, proclaim my birthright.' Darkened Helios, and his utterance Choked prophetic : ' half mortal ! ' he exclaimed in an agony, '0 lost son of mine! lost son! No! put a prayer for another thing : ' Not for this : insane to wish it, and to crave the gift impious ! 1 Cannot other gifts my godhead shed upon thee ? miracu- lous 'Mighty gifts to prove a blessing, that to earth thou shalt be a joy ? 'Gifts of healing, wherewith men walk as the Gods benefi- cently ; •As a God to sway to concord hearts of men, reconciling them ; 'Gifts of verse, the lyre, the laurel, therewithal that thine origin 4 Shall be known even as when /strike on the string'd shell with melody, 'And the golden notes, like medicine, darting straight to the cavities, 1 Fill them up, till hearts of men bound as the billows, the ships thereon.' Thus intently urged the Sun-God ; but the force of his eloquence Was the pressing on of sea-waves scattered broad from the rocks away. BALLADS AND POEMS OF TRAGIC LIFE 309 What shall move a soul from madness ? Lost, lost in delirium, Eock-fast, the adolescent to his father, irreverent, 'By the oath ! the oath ! thine oath ! ' cried. The effulgent foreseer then, Quivering in his loins parental, on the boy's beaming countenance Looked and moaned, and urged him for love's sake, for sweet life's sake, to yield the claim, To abandon his mad hunger, and avert the calamity. But he, vehement, passionate, called out : * Let me show I am what I say, ' That the taunts I hear be silenced : I am stung with their whispering. ' Only, Thou, my Father, Thou tell how aloft the revolving wheels, ' How aloft the cleaving horse-crests I may guide peremp- torily, ' Till I drink the shadows, fire-hot, like a flower celestial, ' And my fellows see me curbing the fierce steeds, the dear dew-drinkers : 1 Yea, for this I gaze on life's light ; throw for this any sacrifice.' All the end foreseeing, Phoebus, to his oath irrevocable, Bowed obedient, deploring the insanity pitiless. Then the flame-outsnorting horses were led forth : it was so decreed. They were yoked before the glad youth by his sister- ancillaries. Swift the ripple ripples follow'd, as of aureate Helicon, 310 BALLADS AND POEMS OF TRAGIC LIFE Down their Hanks, while they impatient pawed desire of the distances, And the bit with fury champed. oh ! unimaginable delight! Onimagined Bpeed and splendour in the circle of upper air] Glory grander than the armed host upon earth singing victory ! Chafed the youth with their spirit surcharged, as when blossom is shaken by winds, Marked that labour by his sister l'haethontiades finished, quick On the slope of the car his forefoot set assured : and the morning rose : Seeing whom, and what a day dawned, stood the God, as in harvest fields, When the reaper grasps the full sheaf and the sickle that severs it : Hugged the withered head with one hand, with the other, to indicate (If this woe might be averted, this immeasurable evil), Laid the kindling course in view, told how the reins to manipulate : Named the horses fondly, fearful, caution'd urgently betweenwhiles : Their diverging tempers dwelt on, and their wantonness, wickedness, That the voice of Gods alone held in restraint ; but the voice of Gods ; None but Gods can curb. He spake : vain were the words.- scarcely listening, Mounted 1'haethon, swinging reins loose, and, ' Behold me, companions, BALLADS AND POEMS OF TRAGIC LD7E 311 1 It is I here, I ! ' he shouted, glancing down with supremacy ; ' Not to any of you was this gift granted ever in annals of men ; ' I alone what only Gods can, I alone am governing day ! ' Short the triumph, brief his rapture: see a hurricane suddenly Beat the lifting billow crestless, roll it broken this way and that ; — At the leap on yielding ether, in despite of his reprimand, Swayed tumultuous the fire-steeds, plunging reckless hither and yon ; Unto men a great amazement, all agaze at the Troubled East : — Pitifully for mastery striving in ascension, the charioteer, Reminiscent, drifts of counsel caught confused in his arid wits ; The reins stiff ahind his shoulder madly pulled for the mastery, Till a thunder off the tense chords thro' his ears dinned horrible. Panic seized him : fled his vision of inviolability ; Pled the dream that he of mortals rode mischances pre- dominant ; And he cried, ' Had I petitioned for a cup of chill aconite, ' My descent to awful Hades had been soft, for now must I go 'With the curse by father Zeus cast on ambition immoderate. 'Oh, my sisters! Thou, my Goddess, in whose love I was enviable, ' From whose arms I rushed bef renzied, what a wreck will this body be, 312 BALLADS AM' POEMS OP TRAGIC LIFE 'That admired of thee stood rose-warm in the courts where thy mysteries 'Celebration had from me, me the most splendidly privi- leged ! 'Never more shall I thy temple fill with incenses bewilder. 'Not again hear thy half-murmurs — I am lost! — never, never more. 'I am wrecked on seas of air, hurled to my death in a vessel of flame ! 'Hither, sisters! Father, save me! Hither, succour me, Cypria!' Now a wail of men to Zeus rang : from Olympus the Thunderer Saw the rage of the havoc wide-mouthed, the bright car superintending Over Asia, Africa, low down ; ruin flaming over the vales; Light disastrous rising savage out of smoke in veterately ; Beast-black, conflagration like a menacing shadow move With voracious roaring southward, where aslant, insuffer- able, The bright steeds careered their parched way down an arc of the firmament. For the day grew like to thick night, and the orb was its beacon-fire, And from hill to hill of darkness burst the day's apparition forth. Lo, a wrestler, not a God, stood in the chariot ever lowering : Lo, the shape of one who raced there to outstrip the legiti- mate hours : BALLADS AND POEMS OF TRAGIC LIFE 313 Lo, the ravish'd beams of Phoebus dragged in shame at the chariot-wheels : Light of days of happy pipings by the mead-singing rivulets ! Lo, lo, increasing lustre, torrid breath to the nostrils ; lo, Torrid brilliancies thro' the vapours lighten swifter, pene- trate them, Fasten merciless, ruminant, hueless, on earth's frame crack- ling busily. He aloft, the frenzied driver, in the glow of the universe, Like the paling of the dawn-star withers visibly, he aloft: Bitter fury in his aspect, bitter death in the heart of him. Crouch the herds, contract the reptiles, crouch the lions under their paws. White as metal in the furnace are the faces of human- kind: Inarticulate creatures of earth, dumb all await the ultimate shock. To the bolt he launched, ' Strike dead, thou,' uttered Zeus, very terrible ; 'Perish folly, else 'tis man's fate'; and the bolt flew unerringly. Then the kindler stooped ; from the torch-car down the measureless altitudes Leaned his rayless head, relinquished rein and footing, raised not a cry. Like the flower on the river's surface when expanding it vanishes, Gave his limbs to right and left, quenched : and so fell he precipitate, 31-4 BALLADS AND POEMS OF TRAGIC LIFE Seen of men as a glad rain-fall, sending coolness je\ ere it conies : So he showered above them, shadowed o'er the blue archi- pelagoes, O'er the silken-shining pastures of the continents and the isles; So descending brought revival to the greenery of our earth. Lither, noisy in the breezes now his sisters shivering weep, By the river flowing smooth out to the vexed sea of Adria, AY here he fell, and where they suffered sudden change to the tremulous Ever-wailful trees bemoaning him, a bruised purple cycla- men. A READING OF EARTH SEED-TIME Flowers of the willow-herb are wool; Flowers of the briar berries red; Speeding their seed as the breeze may rule, Flowers of the thistle loosen the thread. Flowers of the clematis drip in beard, Slack from the fir-tree youngly climbed; Chaplets in air, flies foliage seared; Heeled upon earth, lie clusters rimed. ii Where were skies of the mantle stained Orange and scarlet, a coat of frieze Travels from North till clay has waned, Tattered, soaked in the ditch's dyes; Tumbles the rook under grey or slate ; Else enfolding us, damps to the bone; Narrows the world to my neighbour's gate; Paints me Life as a wheezy crone. 316 A READING OF EAKTH III Now seems none but the spider lord; Star in circle his web waits prey, Silvering bush-mounds, blue brushing sward; Slow runs the hour, swift Hits the ray. Now to his thread-shroud is he nigh, Nigh to the tangle where wings are sealed* He who frolicked the jewelled fly; All is adroop on the down and the weald. IV Mists more lone for the sheep-bell enwrap Nights that tardily let slip a morn Paler than moons, and on noontide's lap Flame dies cold, like the rose late born. Rose born late, born withered in bud! — I, even I, for a zenith of sun Cry, to fulfil me, nourish my blood: for a day of the long light, one! Master the blood, nor read by chills, Earth admonishes: Hast thou ploughed, Sown, reaped, harvested grain for the mills, Thou hast the light over shadow of cloud. Steadily eyeing, before that wail Animal-infant, thy mind began, Momently nearer me : should sight fail, Plod in the track of the husbandman. A READING OF EARTH 317 VI Verily now is our season of seed, Now in our Autumn; and Earth discerns Them that have served her in them that can read, Glassing, where under the surface she burns, Quick at her wheel, while the fuel, decay, Brightens the fire of renewal: and we? Death is the word of a bovine day, Know you the breast of the springing To-be. HAKD WEATHER BuBSTS from a rending East in Haws The young green leaflet's harrier, sworn To strew the garden, strip the shuws, And show our Spring with banner torn. Was ever such virago morn? The wind lias teeth, the wind has claws. All the wind's wolves through woods are loose, The wild wind's falconry aloft. Shrill underfoot the grassblade shrews, At gallop, clumped, and down the croft Bestrid by shadows, beaten, tossed; It seems a scythe, it seems a rod. The howl is up at the howl's accost; The shivers greet and the shivers nod. Is the land ship? we are rolled, we drive Tritonly, cleaving hiss and hum; Whirl with the dead, or mount or dive, Or down in dregs, or on in scum. And drums the distant, pipes the near, And vale and hill are grey in grey, As when the surge is crumbling sheer, And sea-mews wing the haze of spray. Clouds — are they bony witches? — swarms, Darting swift on the robber's flight, Hurry an infant sky in arms: It peeps, it becks; 'tis day, 'tis night. A READING OF EARTH 319 Black while over the loop of blue The swathe is closed, like shroud on corse. Lo, as if swift the Furies flew, The Fates at heel at a cry to horse I Interpret me the savage whirr: And is it Nature scourged, or she, Her offspring's executioner, Eeducing land to barren sea? But is there meaning in a day When this fierce angel of the air, Intent to throw, and haply slay, Can, for what breath of life we bear, Exact the wrestle? Call to mind The many meanings glistening up When Nature to her nurslings kind, Hands them the fruitage and the cup! And seek we rich significance Not otherwhere than with those tides Of pleasure on the sunned expanse, Whose flow deludes, whose ebb derides? Look in the face of men who fare Lock-mouthed, a match in lungs and thews For this fierce angel of the air, To twist with him and take his bruise. That is the face beloved of old Of Earth, young mother of her brood: Nor broken for us shows the mould When muscle is in mind renewed: Though farther from her nature rude, Yet nearer to her spirit's hold: 320 A RKAIMXC OF KARTH And though of gentler mood serene, Still forceful of her fountain-jet. So shall her blows be shrewdly met, Be luminously read the scene Where Life is at her grindstone set, That she may give us edgeing keen, String us for battle, till as play The common strokes of fortune shower. Such meaning in a dagger-day Our wits may clasp to wax in power. Yea, feel us wanner at her breast, By spin of Mood in lusty drill, Than when her honeyed hands caressed, And Pleasure, sapping, seemed to till. Behold the life at ease; it drifts. The sharpened life commands its course. She winnows, winnows roughly; sifts, To dip her chosen in her source: Contention is the vital force, Whence pluck they brain, her prize of gifts, Sky of the senses! on which height, Not disconnected, yet released, They see how spirit comes to light, Through conquest of the inner beast, Which Measure tames to movement sane, In harmony witli what is fair. Never is Earth misread by brain: That is the welling of her, there The mirror; with one step beyond, For likewise is it voice; and more, A READING OF EARTH 221 Benignest kinship bids respond, When wail the weak, and then restore Whom days as fell as this may rive, While Earth sits ebon in her gloom, Us atomies of life alive Unheeding, bent on life to come. Her children of the labouring brain, These are the champions of the race, True parents, and the sole humane, With understanding for their base. Earth yields the milk, but all her mind Is vowed to thresh for stouter stock. Her passion for old giantkind, That scaled the mount, uphurled the rock, Devolves on them who read aright Her meaning and devoutly serve; Nor in her starlessness of night Peruse her with the craven nerve: But even as she from grass to corn, To eagle high from grubbing mole, Prove in strong brain her noblest born, The station for tne flight of soul. 21 THE SOUTH-WESTER Day of the cloud in fleets! day Of wedded white and blue, that sail Immingled, with a footing ray Iu shadow-sandals down our vale! — And swift to ravish golden meads, Swift up the run of turf it speeds, Thy bright of head and dark of heel, To where the hilltop flings on sky, As hawk from wrist or dust from wheel, The tiptoe scalers tossed to fly : — Thee the last thunder's caverned peal Delivered from a wailful night: All dusky round thy cradled light, Those brine-born issues, now in bloom Transfigured, wreathed as raven's plume And briony-leaf to watch thee lie : Dark eyebrows o'er a dreamful eye Nigh opening: till in the braid Of purpled vapours thou wert rosed: Till that new babe a Goddess maid Appeared and vividly disclosed Her beat of life: then crimson played On edges of the plume and leaf: Shape had they and fair feature brief, The wings, the smiles: they flew the breast, Earth's milk. But what imperial march A BEADING OF EARTH 323 Their standards led for earth, none guessed Ere upward of a coloured arch, An arrow straining eager head Lightened, and high for zenith sped. Fierier followed; followed Fire. Name the young lord of Earth's desire, Whose look her wine is, and whose mouth Her music! Beauteous was she seen Beneath her midway West of South ; And sister was her quivered green To sapphire of the Nereid eyes On sea when sun is breeze; she winked As they, and waved, heaved waterwise Her flood of leaves and grasses linked: A myriad lustrous butterflies A moment in the fluttering sheen; Becapped with the slate air that throws The reindeer's antlers black between Low-frowning and wide-fallen snows, A minute after; hooded, stoled To suit a graveside Season's dirge. Lo, but the breaking of a surge, And she is in her lover's fold, Illumined o'er a boundless range Anew : and through quick morning hours The Tropic- Arctic counterchange Did seem to pant in beams and showers. But noon beheld a larger heaven; Beheld on our reflecting field The Sower to the Bearer given, And both their inner sweetest yield, 324 A BEADING OF BABTH 4 Fresh as when dewa were grey or first Received the flush of hues athirst. Beard we the woodland, eyeing sun, As harp and harper were they one. A murky cloud a fair pursued, Assailed, and felt the limits (dude: II.' sat 1 1 i in down to oil"' his woe > Ami some strange beast of sky became: A giant's club withheld tin- blow; A milky cloud went all to flame. And there were groups where silvery springs The ethereal forest showed begirt By companies in choric rings, "Whom but to see made ear alert. For music did each movement rouse, And motion was a minstrel's rage To have our spirits out of house, And bathe them on the open page. This was a day that knew not age. Since flew the vapoury twos and threes From western pile to eastern rack; As on from peaks of Pyrenees To Graians; youngness ruled the track. When songful beams were shut in caves, And rainy drapery swept across; When the ranked clouds were downy waves, Breast of swan, eagle, albatross, In ordered lines to screen the blue, Youngest of light was nigh, we knew. A READING OF EARTH 325 The silver finger of it laughed Along the narrow rift: it shot, Slew the huge gloom with golden shaft; Then haled on high the volumed blot, To build the hurling palace, cleave The dazzling chasm ; the flying nests, The many glory-garlands weave, Whose presence not our sight attests Till wonder with the splendour blent, And passion for the beauty flown, Make evanescence permanent, The thing at heart our endless own. Only at gathered eve knew we The marvels of the day : for then Mount upon mountain out of sea Arose, and to our spacious ken Trebled sublime Olympus round In towering amphitheatre. Colossal on enormous mound, Majestic gods we saw confer,, They wafted the Dream-messenger From off the loftiest, the crowned : That Lady of the hues of foam In sun-rays : who, close under dome, A figure on the foot's descent, Irradiate to vapour went, As one whose mission was resigned; Dispieced, undraped, dissolved to threads. Melting she passed into the mind, Where immortal with mortal weds. 326 A BEADING OF EABTH Whereby was known thai we had viewed The anion of our earth and skies Renewed: nor less alive renewed Than when old bavds, in nature wise, Conceived pure beauty given to eyes f Ami with undyingness imbued. Pageant of man's poetic brain, His grand procession of the song, It was; the Muses and their train; Their God to lead the glittering throng; At whiles a beat of forest gong; At whiles a glimpse of Python slain. Mostly divinest harmony, The lyre, the dance. We could believe A life in orb and brook and tree And cloud: and still holds Memory A morning in the eyes of eve. THE THRUSH IN FEBRUARY I know him, February's thrush, And loud at eve he valentines On sprays that paw the naked bush Where soon will sprout the thorns and bines. Now ere the foreign singer thrills Our vale his plain-song pipe he pours, A herald of the million bills; And heed him not, the loss is yours. My study, flanked with ivied fir And budded beech with dry leaves curled, Perched over yew and juniper, He neighbours, piping to his world : — The wooded pathways dank on brown, The branches on grey cloud a web, The long green roller of the down, An image of the deluge-ebb : — And farther, they may hear along The stream beneath the poplar row, By fits, like welling rocks, the song Spouts of a blushful Spring in flow. 328 A BEADING OF EARTH But most he loves to front the vale When waves of warm South-western rains Have lefl our heavens clear in pale, With faintest beck of moist red veins: Vermilion wings, by distance held To pause aflight while fleeting swift: And high alofl the pearl inshelled Her lucid glow in glow will lift; A little south of coloured sky; Directing, gravely amorous, The human of a tender eye Through pure celestial on us : Remote, not alien; still, not cold; Unraying yet, more pearl than star; She seems a while the vale to hold In trance, and homelier makes the far. Then Earth her sweet unscented breathes; An orb of lustre quits the height ; And like broad iris-flags, in wreaths The sky takes darkness, long ere quite. His Island voice then shall you hear, Nor ever after separate From such a twilight of the year Advancing to the vernal gate. A READING OF EARTH 329 He sings me, out of Winter's throat, The young time with the life ahead; And my young time his leaping note Eecalls to spirit-mirth from dead. Imbedded in a land of greed, Of mammon-quakings dire as Earth's, My care was but to soothe my need ; At peace among the little worths. To light and song my yearning aimed; To that deep breast of song and light Which men have barrenest proclaimed; As 't is to senses pricked with fright. So mine are these new fruitings rich The simple to the common brings ; I keep the youth of souls who pitch Their joy in this old heart of things: Who feel the Coming young as aye, Thrice hopeful on the ground we plough ; Alive for life, awake to die ; One voice to cheer the seedling Now. Full lasting is the song, though he, The singer, passes: lasting too, For souls not lent in usury, The rapture of the forward view. A i:i:ai.in<; of kaktii With that I bear my senses fraught Till what I am fast Bhoreward drives. They are the vessel of the Thought. The vessel splits, the Thought survives. Nought else are we when sailing brave, Save husks to raise and bid it burn. Glimpse of its livingness will wave A light the senses can discern Across the river of the death, Their close. Meanwhile, O twilight bird Of promise! bird of happy breath! I hear, I would the City heard. The City of the smoky fray ; A prodded ox, it drags and moans : Its Morrow no man's child ; its Day A vulture's morsel beaked to bones. It strives without a mark for strife; It feasts beside a famished host: The loose restraint of wanton life, That threatened penance in the ghost! Yet there, our battle urges; there Spring In roes many: issuing thence, Names that should leave no vacant air For fresh delight in confidence. A READING OF EARTH 331 Life was to them the bag of grain, And Death the weedy harrow's tooth. Those warriors of the sighting brain Give worn Humanity new youth. Our song and star are they to lead The tidal multitude and blind From bestial to the higher breed By fighting souls of love divined. They scorned the ventral dream of peace, Unknown in nature. This they knew : That life begets with fair increase Beyond the flesh, if life be true. Just reason based on valiant blood, The instinct bred afield would match To pipe thereof a swelling flood, Were men of Earth made wise in watch. Though now the numbers count as drops An urn might bear, they father Time. She shapes anew her dusty crops ; Her quick in their own likeness climb. Of their own force do they create ; They climb to light, in her their root. Your brutish cry at muffled fate She smites with pangs of worse than brute. 332 A BEADING OF BSABTH She. judged of shrinking nerves, appears A Mother whom do ory ran melt; But read her past desires and fears, The letters on her breast are spelt. A slayer, yea, as when she pressed Her savage to the slaughter-heaps, To sacrifice she prompts her best: She reaps them as the sower reaps. But read her thought to speed the race, And stars rush forth of blackest night: You chill not at a cold embrace To come, nor dread a dubious might. Her double visage, double voice, In oneness rise to quench the doubt. This breath, her gift, has only choice Of service, breathe we in or out. Since Pain and Pleasure on each hand Led our wild steps from slimy rock To yonder sweeps of gardenland, We breathe but to be sword or block. The sighting brain her good decree Accepts; obeys those guides, in faith, By reason hourly fed, that she, To some the clod, to some the wraith, A READING OF EARTH 333 Is more, no mask; a flame, a stream. Flame, stream, are we, in mid career From torrent source, delirious dream, To heaven-reflecting currents clear. And why the sons of Strength have been Her cherished offspring ever; how The Spirit served by her is seen Through Law; perusing love will show. Love born of knowledge, love that gains Vitality as Earth it mates, The meaning of the Pleasures, Pains, The Life, the Death, illuminates. For love we Earth, then serve we all ; Her mystic secret then is ours : We fall, or view our treasures fall, Unclouded, as beholds her flowers Earth, from a night of frosty wreck, Enrobed in morning's mounted fire, When lowly, with a broken neck, The crocus lays her cheek to mire. THE APPEASEMENT OF DEMETER Demeter devastated our good land, In blackness for her daughter snatched below. Smoke-pillar or loose hillock was the sand, Where soil had been to clasp warm seed and throw The wheat, vine, olive, ripe to Summer's ray. Now whether night advancing, whether day, Scarce did the baldness show: The hand of man was a defeated hand. n Necessity, the primal goad to growth, Stood slirunken; Youth and Age appeared as one; Like Winter Summer; good as labour sloth; Nor was there answer wherefore beamed the sun, Or why men drew the breath to carry pain. High reared the ploughshare, broken lay the wain, Idly the flax-wheel spun Uuridered: starving lords were wasp and moth. A READING OF EARTH 335 III Lean grassblades losing green on their bent flags, Sang chilly to themselves; lone honey-bees Pursued the flowers that were not with dry bags ; Sole sound aloud the snap of sapless trees, More sharp than slingstones on hard breastplates hurled Back to first chaos tumbled the stopped world, Careless to lure or please. A nature of gaunt ribs, an Earth of crags. IV No smile Demeter cast: the gloom she saw, Well draped her direful musing; for in gloom, In thicker gloom, deep down the cavern-maw, Her sweet had vanished ; liker unto whom, And whose pale place of habitation mute, She and all seemed where seasons, pledged for fruit Anciently, gaped for bloom : Where hand of man was as a plucked fowl's claw. The wrathful Queen descended on a vale, That ere the ravished hour for richness heaved. Iambe, maiden of the merry tale, Beside her eyed the once red-cheeked, green-leaved. It looked as if the Deluge had withdrawn. Pity caught at her throat ; her jests were gone. More than for her who grieved, She could for this waste home have piped the wail. :'' :;,i A BEADING 0] iaktii VI Limbo, her dear mountain-rivulet To waken laughter from cold stones, beheld A riven wheatfield cracking for the wet, And seed like infant's teeth, that never swelled, Apeep up flinty ridges, milkless round. Teeth of the giants marked Bhe where thin ground Rocky in spikes rebelled. Against the hand here slack as rotted net. VII The valley people up the ashen scoop She beckoned, aiming hopelessly to win Her Mistress in compassion of yon group So pinched and wizened; with their aged grin, For lack of warmth to smile on mouths of woe, White as in chalk outlining little Dumb, from a falling chin ; Young, old, alike half-bent to make the hoop. VIII Their tongues of birds they wagged, weak-voiced as wIipu Dark underwaters the recesses choke; With cluck and upper quiver of a hen In grasp, past pecking: cry before the croak. Relentlessly their gold-haired Heaven, their fount Bountiful of old days, heard them recount This and that cruel stroke: Nor eye nor ear had she for piteous men. A READING OF EARTH 337 IX A figure of black rock by sunbeams crowned Through stormclouds, where the volumed shades enfold An earth in awe before the claps resound And woods and dwellings are as billows rolled, The barren Nourisher unnielted shed Death from the looks that wandered with the dead Out of the realms of gold, In famine for ner lost, her lost unfound. Iambe from her Mistress tripped; she raised The cattle-call above the moan of prayer; And slowly out of fields their fancy grazed, Among the droves, defiled a horse and mare : The wrecks of horse and mare : such ribs as view Seas that have struck brave ships ashore, while through Shoots the swift foamspit: bare They nodded, and Demeter on them gazed. XI Howbeit the season of the dancing blood, Forgot was horse of mare, yea, mare of horse : Reversed, each head at either's flank, they stood. Whereat the Goddess, in a dim remorse, Laid hand on them, and smacked; and her touch pricked. Neighing within, at either's flank they licked; Played on a moment's force At courtship, withering to the crazy nod. 338 A READING "l EABTH XII The nod was that we gather for consent; And mournfully amid the group a dame, Interpreting the tiling in nature meant, Her hands held out like bearers of the flame, .vnd nodded for the negative sideways. Keen ;it her Mistress glanced Eambe: rays From the Great Mother came : Her lips were opened wide; the curse was rent. XIII She laughed: since our first harvesting heard none Like thunder of the song of heart : her face, The dreadful darkness, shook to mounted sun, And peal on peal across the hills held chase. She laughed herself to water; laughed to fire; Laughed the torrential laugh of dam and sire Full of the marrowy race. Her laughter, Gods! was flesh on skeleton. XIV The valley people huddled, broke, afraid, Assured, and taking lightning in the veins, They puffed, they leaped, linked hands, together swayed, Unwitting happiness till golden rains Of tears in laughter, laughter weeping, smote Knowledge of milky mercy from that throat Pouring to heal their pains: And one bold youth set month at a shy maid. A BEADING OF EAKTH 339 XV Iambe clapped to see the kindly lusts Inspire the valley people, still on seas, Like poplar-tops relieved from stress of gusts, With rapture in their wonderment; but these, Low homage being rendered, ran to plough, Fed by the laugh, as by the mother cow Calves at the teats they tease: Soon drove they through the yielding furrow-crusts. XVI Uprose the blade in green, the leaf in red, The tree of water and the tree of wood: And soon among the branches overhead Gave beauty juicy issue sweet for food. Laughter! beauty plumped and love had birth. Laughter! thou reviver of sick Earth! Good for the spirit, good For body, thou! to both art wine and bread! EARTH AND A WEDDED WOMAN The shepherd, with his eye on hazy South, Has told of rain upon the fall of day. But promise is there none for Susan's drouth, That he will come, who keeps in dry delay. The freshest of the village three years gone, She hangs as the white field-rose hangs short-lived; And she and Earth are one In withering unrevived. Rain! the glad refresher of the grain! And welcome waterspouts, had we sweet rain ! ii Ah, what is Marriage, says each pouting maid, When she who wedded with the soldier hides At home as good as widowed in the shade, A lighthouse to the girls that would be brides: Nor dares to give a lad an ogle, nor To dream of dancing, but must hang and moan Her husband in the war, And she to lie alone. Rain ! O the glad refresher of the grain ! And welcome waterspouts, had we sweet rain! A READING OF EAHTH III 341 They have not known; they are not in the stream; Light as the flying seed-ball is their play, The silly maids! and happy souls they seem; Yet Grief would not change fates with such as they. They have not struck the roots which meet the fires Beneath, and bind us fast with Earth, to know The strength of her desires, The sternness of her woe. Eain! the glad refresher of the grain! And welcome waterspouts, had we sweet rain! IV Now, shepherd, see thy word, where without shower A borderless low blotting Westward spreads. The hall-clock holds the valley on the hour; Across an inner chamber thunder treads : The dead leaf trips, the tree-top swings, the floor Of dust whirls, dropping lumped : near thunder speaks, And drives the dames to door, Their kerchiefs flapped at cheeks. Kain! the glad refresher of the grain! And welcome waterspouts of blessed rain! Through night, with bedroom window wide for air, Lay Susan tranced to hear all heaven descend: And gurgling voices came of Earth, and rare, Past flowerful, breathings, deeper than life's end, 3 t_' A BE \M\<; OF EARTH From her heaved breast of Bacred common mould; Whereby this lone-laid wife was moved to feel [Jnworded things and old To her pained heart appeal. Rain! the glad refresher <>f the grain! And down in deluges of blessed rain! VI At morn she stood to live for ear and sight, Love sky or cloud, or rose or grasses drenched. A lureful devil, that in glow-worm light Set languor writhing all its folds, she quenched. But she would muse when neighbours praised her face, Her services, and staunchness to her mate: Knowing by some dim trace, The change might bear a date. Rain ! the glad refresher of the grain ! Thrice beauteous is our sunshine after rain! MOTHER TO BABE Fleck of sky you are, Dropped through branches dark, my little one, mine! Promise of the star, Outpour of the lark; Beam and song divine. ii See this precious gift, Steeping in new birth All my being, for sign Earth to heaven can lift, Heaven descend on earth, Both in one be mine! in Life in light you glass When you peep and coo, You, my little one, mine! Brooklet chirps to grass, Daisy looks in dew Up to dear sunshine. WOODLANP PEACE Sweet as Eden is the air, And Eden-sweet the ray. Nc Paradise is lost for them Who foot by branching root and stem, And lightly with the woodland share The change of night and day. Here all say, We serve her, even as I : We brood, we strive to sky, We gaze upon decay, We wot of life through death, How each feeds each we spy; And is a tangle round, Are patient; what is dumb, We question not, nor ask The silent to give sound, The hidden to unmask, The distant to draw near. And this the woodland saith: I know not hope or fear; I take whate'er may conic: I raise my head to aspects fair, From foul I turn away. Sweet as Eden is the air, And Eden-sweet the ray. THE QUESTION WHITHER When we have thrown off this old suit, So much in need of mending, To sink among the naked mute, Is that, think you, our ending? We follow many, more we lead, And you who sadly turf us, Believe not that all living seed Must flower above the surface. ii Sensation is a gracious gift, But were it cramped to station, The prayer to have it cast adrift, Would spout from all sensation. Enough if we have winked to sun, Have sped the plough a season ; There is a soul for labour clone, Endureth fixed as reason. 346 A BEADING OF ILAKTII in Then let our trust be firm in Good, Though we be of the fasting; Our questions are a mortal brood, Our work is everlasting. We children of Beneficence Arc in its being sharers; And Whither vainer sounds than Whence, For word with such wayfarers. OUTER AND INNER From twig to twig the spider weaves At noon his webbing fine. So near to mute the zephyrs flute That only leaflets dance. The sun draws out of hazel leaves A smell of woodland wine. I wake a swarm to sudden storm At any step's advance. ii Along my path is bugloss blue, The star with fruit in moss; The foxgloves drop from throat to top A daily lesser bell. The blackest shadow, nurse of dew, Has orange skeins across ; And keenly red is one thin thread That flashing seems to swell. in My world I note ere fancy comes, Minutest hushed observe: What busy bits of motioned wits Through antlered mosswork strive. 348 A BEADING OF l.AKTH But now so low the stillness hums, My Bprings of serin- Bwerve, For half a wink to thrill and think The woods with nymphs alive. IV I neighbour the invisible So close that my consent Is only asked for spirits masked To leap from trees and flowers. And this because with them I dwell In thought, while calmly bent To read the lines dear Earth designs Shall speak her life on ours. Accept, she says; it is not hard In woods; but she in towns Kepeats, accept; and have we wept, And have we quailed with fears, Or shrunk with horrors, sure reward We have whom knowledge crowns ; Who see in mould the rose unfold, The soul through blood and tears. NATUKE AND LIFE Leave the uproar : at a leap Thou shalt strike a woodland path, Enter silence, not of sleep, Under shadows, not of wrath ; Breath which is the spirit's bath, In the old Beginnings find, And endow them with a mind, Seed for seedling, swathe for swathe. That gives Nature to us, this Give we her, and so we kiss. ii Fruitful is it so : but hear How within the shell thou art, Music sounds; nor other near Can to such a tremor start. Of the waves our life is part; They our running harvests bear: Back to them for manful air, Laden with the woodland's heart! That gives Battle to us, this Give we it, and good the kiss. DIRGE IX WOODS A wind sways the pines, And below Kot a breath of wild air; Still as the mosses that glow On the flooring and over the lines Of the roots here and there. The pine-tree drops its dead; They are quiet, as under the sea. Overhead, overhead Rushes life in a race, As the clouds the clouds chase; And we go, And we drop like the fruits of the tree, Even we, Even so. A FAITH ON TKIAL On the morning of May, Ere the children had entered my gate With their wreaths and mechanical lay, A metal ding-dong of the date ! I mounted our hill, bearing heart That had little of life save its weight: The crowned Shadow poising dart Hung over her: she, my own, My good companion, mate, Pulse of me : she who had shown Fortitude quiet as Earth's At the shedding of leaves. And around The sky was in garlands of cloud, Winning scents from unnumbered new births, Pointed buds, where the woods were browned By a mouldered beechen shroud ; Or over our meads of the vale, Such an answer to sun as he, Brave in his gold; to a sound, None sweeter, of woods flapping sail, With the first full flood of our year, For their voyage on lustreful sea: Unto what curtained haven in chief, Will be writ in the book of the sere. But surely the crew are we, S52 A BEADING OF EAETH Eager or Btamped or bowed; Counted thinner at fall of the leaf. Grief heard them, and passed like a bier. Due Summerward, lo, they were set, In volumes of foliage proud, On the heave of their favouring tides, Ainl their song broadened out to the eheer When a neck of the ramping surf Rattles thunder a boat overrides. All smiles ran the highways wet; The worm drew its links from the turf; The bird of felicity loud, Spun high, and a South wind blew. Weak out of sheath downy leaves Of the beech quivered lucid as dew, Their radiance asking, who grieves; For nought of a sorrow they knew : No space to the dread wrestle vowed, No chamber in shadow of night. At times as the steadier breeze Flutter-huddled their twigs to a crowd, The beam of them wafted my sight To league-long sun upon seas: The golden path we had crossed Many years, till her birthland swung Recovered to vision from lost, A light in her filial glance. And sweet was her voice with the tongue, The speech ful tongue of her France, Soon at ripple about us, like rills Ever busy with little : away A HEADING OF EARTH 353 Through her Normandy, down where the mills Dot at lengths a rivercourse, grey As its bordering poplars bent To gusts off the plains above. Old stone chateau and farms, Home of her birth and her love ! On the thread of the pasture you trace, By the river, their milk, for miles, Spotted once with the English tent, In days of the tocsin's alarms, To tower of the tallest of piles, The country's surveyor breast-high. Home of her birth and her love ! Home of a diligent race; Thrifty, deft-handed to ply Shuttle or needle, and woo Sun to the roots of the pear Frogging each mud-walled cot. The elders had known her in arms. There plucked we the bluet, her hue Of the deeper forget-me-not; Well wedding her ripe-wheat hair. I saw, unsighting : her heart I saw, and the home of her love There printed, mournfully rent: Her ebbing adieu, her adieu, And the stride of the Shadow athwart. For one of our Autumns there ! . . . Straight as the flight of a dove We went, swift winging we went. A K LADING OF EARTH We trod solid ground, we breathed air, The heavens were unbroken. Break they, The word of the world is adieu : Her word : and the torrents are round, The jawed wolf-waters of prey. We stand upon isles, who stand: A Shadow before us, and back, A phantom the habited land. We may cry to the Sunderer, spare That dearest! he loosens his pack. Arrows we breathe, not air. The memories tenderly bound To us are a drifting crew, Amid grey-gapped waters for ground- Alone do we stand, each one, Till rootless as they we strew Those deeps of the corse-like stare At a foreign and stony sun. Eyes had I but for the scene Of my circle, what neighbourly grew. If haply no finger lay out To the figures of days that had been, I gathered my herb, and endured j My old cloak wrapped me about. Unfooted was ground-ivy blue, Whose rustic shrewd odour allured In Spring's fresh of morning: unseen Her favourite wood-sorrel bell As yet, though the leaves' green floor Awaited their flower, that would tell A READING OF EABTH 355 Of a red-veined moist yestreen, With its droop and the hues it wore, When we two stood overnight One, in the dark van -glow . On our hill-top, seeing beneath, Our household's twinkle of light Through spruce-boughs, gem of a wreath. Budding, the service-tree, white Almost as whitebeam, threw, From the under of leaf upright, Flecks like a showering snow On the flame-shaped junipers green, On the sombre mounds of the yew. Like silvery tapers bright By a solemn cathedral screen, They glistened to closer view. Turf for a rooks' revel striped, Pleased those devourers astute. Chorister blackbird and thrush Together or alternate piped ; A free-hearted harmony large, With meaning for man, for brute, When the primitive forces are brimmed. Like featherings hither and yon Of aery tree-twigs over marge, To the comb of the winds, untrimmed, Their measure is found in the vast. Grief heard them, and stepped her way on. She has but a narrow embrace. Distrustful of hearing she passed. A READING "i EARTH They piped her young Earth's Bacchic rout; The raoej and the prize of the racej Earth's lustihead pressing to sprout. But sight holds a Boberer space. Colourless dogwood low, Curled up a twisted root, Nigh yellow-green musses, to flush Redder than sun upon rocks, When the creeper clematis-shoot Shall climb, cap his branches, and show, Beside veteran green of the box, At close of the year's maple blush, A bleeding greybeard is he, Now hale in the leafage lush. Our parasites paint us. Hard by, A wet yew-trunk flashed the peel Of our naked forefathers in fight; With stains of the fray sweating free; And him came no parasite nigh: Firm on the hard knotted knee, lie stood in the crown of his dun; Earth's toughest to stay her wheel: Under whom the full day is night; Whom the century-tempests call son, Having striven to rend him in vain. I walked to observe, not to feel, Not to fancy, if simple of eye One may be among images reaped For a shift of thp glance, as grain: A READING OF EARTH 357 Profitless froth you espy- Ashore after billows have leaped. I fled nothing, nothing pursued: The changeful visible face Of our Mother I sought for my food; Crumbs by the way to sustain. Her sentence I knew past grace. Myself I had lost of us twain, Once bound in mirroring thought. She had flung me to dust in her wake ; And I, as your convict drags His chain, by the scourge untaught, Bore life for a goad, without aim. I champed the sensations that make Of a ruffled philosophy rags. For them was no meaning too blunt, Nor aspect too cutting of steel. This Earth of the beautiful breasts, Shining up in all colours aflame, To them had visage of hags: A Mother of aches and jests : Soulless, heading a hunt Aimless except for the meal. Hope, with the star on her front; Fear, with an eye in the heel; Our links to a Mother of grace ; They were dead on the nerve, and dead For the nature divided in three; Gone out of heart, out of brain, Out of soul : I had in their place The calm of an empty room. 358 A BEADING OP BAETH We were joined but by that thin thread, My disciplined habit to see. And those conjure images, those, The puppets of loss or gain; Not he who is bare to his doom; For whom never Bemblance plays To bewitch, overcloud, illume. The dusty mote-images ro Sheer film of the surface awag: They sank as they rose; their pain Declaring them mine of old days. Now gazed I where, sole upon gloom, As flower-bush in sun-specked crag, Up the spine of the double combe With yew-boughs heavily cloaked, A young apparition shone: Known, yet wonderful, white Surpassingly ; doubtfully known, For it struck as the birth of Light: Even Day from the dark unyoked. It waved like a pilgrim flag O'er processional penitents flown "When of old they broke rounding yon spine: the pure wild-cherry in bloom! For their Eastward march to the shrine Of the footsore far-eyed Faith, Was banner so brave, so fair, So quick with celestial sign Of victorious rays over death? For a conquest of coward despair; — A READING OF EARTH 3". 9 Division of soul from wits, And these made rulers ; — full sure, More starlike never did shine To illumine the sinister field Where our life's old night-bird flits. I knew it: with her, my own, Had hailed it pure of the pure ; Our beacon yearly : but strange When it strikes to within is the known; Richer than newness revealed. There was needed darkness like mine. Its beauty to vividness blown, Drew the life in me forward, chased, From aloft on a pinnacle's range, That hindward spidery line, The length of the ways I had paced, A footfarer out of the dawn, To Youth's wild forest, where sprang, For the morning of May long gone, The forest's white virgin ; she Seen yonder; and sheltered me, sang; She in me, I in her; what songs The fawn-eared wood-hollows revive To pour forth their tune-footed throngs; Inspire to the dreaming of good Illimitable to come: She, the white wild cherry, a tree, Earth-rooted, tangibly wood, Yet a presence throbbing alive; Nor she in our language dumb: A spirit born of a tree ; 360 A READING of EAETH Because earth-rooted alive: Huntress of things worth pursuit <>i bouIs; in oar naming, dreams. And each unto Othei was lute, By fits quick as breezy gleams. My quiver of aims and desires Had colour that she would have owned; And if by humanei tires lined later, these held her enthroned: .M\ crescent oi Earth; my blood At the silver) early stir; Hour of the thrill of the bud About to burst, and by her Directed, attuned, englobed: .My Goddess, the chaste, not chill; Choir over choir white-robed; White-bosomed fold within fold: For so could I dream, breast-bare, In my time of blooming; dream still Through the maze, the mesh, and the wreck, Despite, since manhood was bold, The yoke of the flesh on my neck. She beckoned, I gazed, unaware How a shaft of the blossoming tree Was shot from the yew-wood's core. I stood to the touch of a key Turned in a fast-shut door. They rounded my garden, content, The small fry, clutching their fee, Their fruit of the wreath and the pole; And, chatter, hop, skip, they were sent, A READING OF EARTH 361 In a buzz of young company glee, Their natural music, swift shoal To the next easy shedders of pence. Why not? for they had me in tune With the hungers of my kind. Do readings of earth draw thence, Then a concord deeper than cries Of the Whither whose echo is Whence, To jar unanswered, shall rise As a fountain-jet in the mind Bowed dark o'er the falling and strewn. • ••••• Unwitting where it might lead, How it came, for the anguish to cease, And the Questions that sow not nor spin, This wisdom, rough-written, and black, As of veins that from venom bleed, I had with the peace within; Or patience, mortal of peace, Compressing the surgent strife In a heart laid open, not mailed, To the last blank hour of the rack, When struck the dividing knife: When the hand that never had failed In its pressure to mine hung slack. But this in myself did I know, Not needing a studious brow, Or trust in a governing star, While my ears held the jangled shout o&J, A BEADING OF BABTH Tlio children were lifting afar: That Qatures at interflow With all of their past, and the now, Arc chords to the Nature without, ( >xbs to the greater whole: First then, nor utterly then Till our lord of sensations at war, The rebel, the heart, yields place To brain, each prompting the soul. Thus our dear Earth we embrace For the milk, her .strength to men. And crave we her medical herb, We have but to see and hear, Though pierced by the cruel acerb, The troops of the memories armed Hostile to strike at the nest That nourished and flew them warmed. Not she gives the tear for the tear. Weep, bleed, rave, writhe, be distraught, She is moveless. Not of her breast A re the symbols we conjure when Fear Takes leaven of Hope. I caught, With Death in me shrinking from Death, A cold from cold, for a sign Of the life beyond ashes: I cast, Believing the vision divine, Wings of that dream of my Youth To the spirit beloved: 't was unglassed On her breast, in her depths austere: A flash through the mist, mere breath, A HEADING OF EARTH Breath on a buckler or steel. For the flesh in revolt at her laws, Neither song nor smile in ruth, Nor promise of things to reveal, Has she, nor a word she saith : We are asking her wheels to pause. Well knows she the cry of unfaith. If we strain to the farther shore, We are catching at comfort near. Assurances, symbols, saws, Revelations in Legends, light To eyes rolling darkness, these Desired of the flesh in affright, For the which it will swear to adore, She yields not for prayers at her knees; The woolly beast bleating will shear. These are our sensual dreams ; Of the yearning to touch, to feel The dark Impalpable sure, And have the Unveiled appear; Whereon ever black she beams, Doth of her terrible deal, She who dotes over ripeness at play, Rosiness fondles and feels, Guides it with shepherding crook, To her sports and her pastures alway. Not she gives the tear for the tear: Harsh wisdom gives Earth, no more; In one the spur and the curb: An answer to thoughts or deeds; To the Legends an alien look; 363 A BEADING OF EABTH To tne Queationa a Bgure of clay. j . t we have bul to sr*.. and hear, Crave we her medical herb. For the road to heT soul is the Keal: The root of the growth of man: And tin- senses must traverse it fresh With a love that no scourge shall abate, reach the lone heighta where we scan In tip- mind's rarer vision this flesh; In the charge of the Mother our fate; Her law as the one common weal. We, whom the view benumbs, We, quivering upward, each hour Know battle in air and in ground For the breath that goes as it comes, For the choice between sweet and sour, For the smallest grain of our worth: And he who the reckoning sums, Finds nought in his hand save Earth. Of Earth are we stripped or crowned. The fleeting Present we crave, Barter our best to wed, In hope of a cushioned bower, What is it but Future and Past Like wind and tide at a wave! Idea of the senses, bred For the senses to snap and devour: Thin as the shell of a sound I .-, withered in light. Cry we for permanence fast, A READING OF EARTH o65 Permanence hangs by the grave ; Sits on the grave green-grassed, On the roll of the heaved grave-mound. By Death, as by Life, are we fed: The two are one spring; our bond With the numbers; with whom to unite Here feathers wings for beyond: Only they can waft us in flight. For they are Reality's flower. Of them, and the contact with them, Issues Earth's dearest daughter, the firm In footing, the stately of stem; Unshaken though elements lour; A warrior heart unquelled; Mirror of Earth, and guide To the Holies from sense withheld: Reason, man's germinant fruit. She wrestles with our old worm Self in the narrow and wide : Relentless quencher of lies, With laughter she pierces the brute; And hear we her laughter peal, 'T is Light in us dancing to scour The loathed recess of his dens ; Scatter his monstrous bed, And hound him to harrow and plough. She is the world's one prize; Our champion, rightfully head; The vessel whose piloted prow, Though Folly froth round, hiss and hoot, Leaves legible print at the keel. 366 \ 1:1 \I>IN<; OF EAETH Nor least is the Bervice she does, That service t < » her may cleanse The well of the Sorrows in us; For a common < 1 « • 1 i ;_^ 1 1 1 will drain The rank individual lens Of a wound refusing to heal While the old worm slavers its root. I bowed as a leal in rain; As a tree when the leaf is shed To winds in the season at wane: And when from my soul I said, May the worm bo trampled: smite, Sacred Reality ! power Filled me to front it aright. I had come of my faith's ordeal. It is not to stand on a tower And see the flat universe reel; Our mortal sublimities drop Like raiment by glisterlings worn, At a sweep of the scythe for the crop. Wisdom is won of its fight, The combat incessant; and dries To mummywrap perching a height. It chows the contemplative cud In peril of isolate scorn, dnfed of the onward flood. ■ liferent morn If we gaze with the deeper sight, With the deeper thought forewise: A READING OF EARTH 367 The world is the same, seen through; The features of men are the same. But let their historian new, In the language of nakedness write, Rejoice we to know not shame, Not a dread, not a doubt: to have done With the tortures of thought in the throes, Our animal tangle, and grass Very sap of the vital in this : That from flesh unto spirit man grows Even here on the sod under sun: That she of the wanton's kiss Broken through with the bite of an asp, Is Mother of simple truth, Relentless quencher of lies; Eternal in thought; discerned In thought mid-ferry between The Life and the Death, which are one, As our breath in and out, joy or teen. She gives the rich vision to youth, If we will, of her prompting wise; Or men by the lash made lean, Who in harness the mind subserve, Their title to read her have earned; Having mastered sensation — insane At a stroke of the terrified nerve; And out of the sensual hive, Grown to the flower of brain; To know her a thing alive, Whose aspects mutably swerve, Whose laws immutably reign. 368 a READING Of fcABTH Our sentencer, clothei in mist, Her morn bends breasl to hei noon, N«.on to the hour dark-dyed, Ii we will, of her promptings wise: Her light is our own if we list. The Legends that sweep her aside, Cr\ Lng loud Eor an opiate boon, To comfort the human want, From the bosom of magical skies, She smiles on, marking their source: They read her with infant eyes. Good ships of morality they, For our crude developing force; Granite the thought to stay, That she is a thing alive To the living, the falling and strewn. But the Questions, the broods that haunt Sensation insurgent, may drive, The way of the channelling mole, Head in a ground-vault gaunt As your telescope's skeleton moon. barren comfort to these will she dolej Dead is her face to their cries. Intelligence pushing to taste, A lesson from beasts might heed. They scatter a voice in the waste, Where any dry swish of a reed By grey-glassy water replies. 1 They see not above or below; 1 Farthest are they from my soul/ A READING OF EARTH 369 Earth whispers: 'they scarce have the thirst, ' Except to unriddle a rune ; ' And I spin none ; only show, ' Would humanity soar from its worst, ' Winged above darkness and dole, 1 How flesh unto spirit must grow. ' Spirit raves not for a goal. * Shapes in man's likeness hewn, * Desires not; neither desires * The Sleep or the Glory : it trusts ; 1 Uses my gifts, yet aspires; ' Dreams of a higher than it. 4 The dream is an atmosphere ; ' A scale still ascending to knit * The clear to the loftier Clear. ' 'T is Keason herself, tiptoe * At the ultimate bound of her wit, ' On the verges of Night and Day. ' But is it a dream of the lusts, ' To my dustiest 'tis decreed; ' And them that so shuffle astray, 4 1 touch with no key of gold ' For the wealth of the secret nook; * Though I dote over ripeness at play, * Rosiness fondle and feed, ' Guide it with shepherding crook * To my sports and my pastures alway. ' The key will shriek in the lock, * The door will rustily hinge, * Will open on features of mould, ' To vanish corrupt at a glimr>se, 370 A READING OF EARTH ' And mock as the wild echoes mock, 1 Soulless in mimic, doth Greed 'Or the passion for fruitage tinge ' That dream, for your parricide imps ' To wing through the body of Time, 'Yourselves in slaying him slay. 1 Much are you shots of your prime, ' You men of the act and the dream: 1 And please you to fatten a weed ' That perishes, pledged to decay, ' 'T is dearth in your season of need, 4 Down the slopes of the shoreward way; — 1 Nigh on the misty stream, 1 Where Ferryman under his hood, 1 With a call to be ready to pay 4 The small coin, whitens red blood. 1 But the young ethereal seed * Shall bring you the bread no buyer * Can have for his craving supreme; 1 To my quenchless quick shall speed * The soul at her wrestle rude 1 With devil, with angel more dire; ' With the flesh, with the Fates, enringed. ' The dream of the blossom of Good, * Is your banner of battle unrolled ' In its waver and current and curve 1 (Choir over choir white-winged, * White-bosomed fold within fold): ' Hopeful of victory most ' When hard is the task to sustain ' Assaults of the fearful sense A READING OF EARTH 371 ' At a mind in desolate mood ' With the Whither, whose echo is Whence; * And humanity's clamour, lost, lost; ' And its clasp of the staves that snap; ' And evil abroad, as a main 4 Uproarious, bursting its dyke. ' For back do you look, and lo, ' Forward the harvest of grain! — ' Numbers in council, awake 1 To love more than things of my lap, ' Love me; and to let the types break, ' Men be grass, rocks rivers, all flow ; ' All save the dream sink alike ' To the source of my vital in sap: 4 Their battle, their loss, their ache, ' For my pledge of vitality know. ' The dream is the thought in the ghost; ' The thought sent flying for food; ' Eyeless, but sprung of an aim * Supernal of Reason, to find ' The great Over-Reason we name 'Beneficence: mind seeking Mind. ' Dream of the blossom of Good, * In its waver and current and curve, ' With the hopes of my offspring enscrolledl * Soon to be seen of a host ' The flag of the Master I serve! * And life in them doubled on Life, * As flame upon flame, to behold, ' High over Time-tumbled sea, ' The bliss of his headship of strife, ' Him through handmaiden me.' CHANGE IN EECUIMi'KN'CE I stood at the gate of the cot Where my darling, with side-glance demure, Would spy, on her trim garden-plot, The busy wild things chase and lure. For these with their ways were her feast They had surety no enemy lurked. Their deftest of tricks to their least, She gathered in watch as she worked. ii When berries were red on her ash, The blackbird would rifle them rough, Till the ground underneath looked a gash, And her rogue grew the round of a chough. The squirrel cocked ear o'er his hoop, Up the spruce, quick as eye, trailing brush. She knew any tit of the troop All as well as the snail-tapping thrush. A READING OF EARTH 373 III I gazed : 't was the scene of the frame, With the face, the dear life for me, fled. No window a lute to my name, No watcher there plying the thread. But the blackbird hung pecking at will; The squirrel from cone hopped to cone; The thrush had a snail in his bill, And tap-tapped the shell hard on a stone. HYMN TO COLOUR With Life and Death I walked when Love appeared, And made them on each side a shadow seem. Through wooded vales the land of dawn we neared, Where down smooth rapids whirls the helmless dream To fall on daylight; and night puts away Her darker veil for grey. ii In that grey veil green grassblades brushed we by ; We came where woods breathed sharp, and overhead Rocks raised clear horns on a transforming sky: Around, save for those shapes, with him who led And linked them, desert varied by no sign < >f other life than mine. in By this the dark-winged planet, raying wide, From the mild pearl glow to the rose upborne, Drew in h . less faint than far descried, Pure-fronted on a stronger wave of morn: And those two shapes tht> splendour interweaved, Hung web-like, sank and heaved. A HEADING OP EARTH 375 IV Love took my hand when hidden stood the sun To fling his robe on shoulder-heights of snow. Then said : There lie they, Life and Death in one. Whichever is, the other is : but know, It is thy craving self that thou dost see, Not in them seeing me. Shall man into the mystery of breath, From his quick beating pulse a pathway spy? Or learn the secret of the shrouded death, By lifting up the lid of a white eye? Cleave thou thy way with fathering desire Of fire to reach to fire. VI Look now where Colour, the soul's bridegroom, makes The house of heaven splendid for the bride. To him as leaps a fountain she awakes, In knotting arms, yet boundless : him beside, She holds the flower to heaven, and by his power Brings heaven to the flower. 376 A READING OF EABTH VII He gives her homeliness in desert air, And sovereignty in spaciousness; lie leads Through widening chambers of surprise to where Throbs rapture near an end that aye recedes, Because his touch is infinite and lends A yonder to all ends. VIII Death begs of Life his blush; Life Death persuades To keep long day with his caresses graced. He is the heart of light, the wing of shades, The crown of beauty : never soul embraced Of him can harbour unfaith; soul of him Possessed walks never dim. IX Love eyed his rosy memories: he sang: bloom of dawn, breathed up from the gold sheaf Held springing beneath ( Irient! that dost hang The space of dewdrops running over leaf; Thy fleetingness is bigger in the ghost Than Time with all his host! A READING OF EARTH 377 Of thee to say behold, has said adieu. But love remembers how the sky was green, And how the grasses glimmered lightest blue; How saint-like grey took fervour: how the screen Of cloud grew violet; how thy moment came Between a blush and flame. XI Love saw the emissary eglantine Break wave round thy white feet above the gloom; Lay finger on thy star; thy raiment line With cherub wing and limb; wed thy soft bloom, Gold-quivering like sunrays in thistle-down, Earth under rolling brown. xn They do not look through love to look on thee, Grave heavenliness ! nor know they joy of sight, Who deem the wave of rapt desire must be Its wrecking and last issue of delight. Dead seasons quicken in one petal-spot Of colour unforgot. 378 A BEADING OF EABTH XIII This way have men come out of hrutishness To spell the letters of the sky and ivad A rehVx upon earth else meaningless. With thee, fount of the Untimed! to load; Drink they of thee, thee eyeing, they imaged Shall on through brave wars waged. XIV More gardens will they win than any lost; The vile plucked out of them, the unlovely slain. Not forfeiting the beast with which they are crossed, To stature of the Gods will they attain. They shall uplift their Earth to meet her Lord, Themselves the attuning chord! xv The song had ceased; my vision with the song. Then of those Shadows, which one made descent ide me I knew not: but Life ere long Came on me in the public ways and bent Eyes deepei I han of old : 1 teath met I too, And saw the dawn glow through. MEDITATION UNDER STAES What links are ours with orbs that are So resolutely far : The solitary asks, and they Give radiance as from a shield: Still at the death of day, The seen, the unrevealed. Implacable they shine To us who would of Life obtain An answer for the life we strain, To nourish with one sign. Nor can imagination throw The penetrative shaft: we pass The breath of thought, who would divine If haply they may grow As Earth; have our desire to know; If life comes there to grain from grass, And flowers like ours of toil and pain; Has passion to beat bar, Win space from cleaving brain; The mystic link attain, Whereby star holds on star. Those visible immortals beam Allurement to the dream : Ireful at human hungers brook No question in the look. 180 A BEADING OF BABTH For ever virgin to oui Remote they wane to gaze Intense: Prolong it, and in ruthlessness they smite The beating heart behind the ball of sight: Till we conceive their heavens hoar, Those lights they raise bui sparkles frore, Ami Earth, onr blood-warm Earth, a shuddering prey To thai (rigidity of brainless ray. Yet space is given for breath of thought Beyond our bounds when musing: more When to that musing love is brought, And love is asked of love's wherefore. 'T is Earth's, her gift; else have we nought: Her gift, her secret, here our tie. And not with her and yonder sky? Bethink you: were it Earth alone Breeds love, would not her region be The sole delight and throne Of generous Deity? To deeper than this ball of sight Appeal the lustrous people of the night. Fronting yon shoreless, sown with fiery sails, It is our ravenous that quails, Flesh by its craven thirsts and fears distraught. The spirit leaps alight, Doubts not in them is he, The binder of his sheave-, the same, the right: Of magnitude to magnitude is wrought, A READING OF EARTH 381 To feel it large of the great life they hold: In them to come, or vaster intervolved, The issues known in us, our unsolved solved : That there with toil Life climbs the self-same Tree, Whose roots enrichment have from ripeness dropped. So may we read and little find them cold: Let it but be the lord of Mind to guide Our eyes; no branch of Reason's growing lopped; Nor dreaming on a dream; but fortified By day to penetrate black midnight; see, Hear, feel, outside the senses ; even that we, The specks of dust upon a mound of mould, We who reflect those rays, though low our place, To them are lastingly allied. So may we read, and little find them cold: Not frosty lamps illumining dead space, Not distant aliens, not senseless Powers. The fire is in them whereof we are born; The music of their motion may be ours. Spirit shall deem them beckoning Earth and voiced Sisterly to her, in her beams rejoiced. Of love, the grand impulsion, we behold The love that lends her grace Among the starry fold. Then at new flood of customary morn, Look at her through her showers, Her mists, her streaming gold, A wonder edges the familiar face : She wears no more that robe of printed hours; Half strange seems Earth, and sweeter than her flowers. WOODMAN AXD ECHO Close Echo hears the woodman's axe, To double on it, as in glee, With clap <>f hands, and little lacics Of meaning in her repartee. For all shall fall, As one has done, The tree of me, Of thee the tree; And unto all The fate we wait Hi-veals the wheels ^Yhereon we run : We tower to flower, We spread the shade, We drop for crop, At length are laid; Are rolled in mould, From chop and lop: And are we thick in woodland tracks, Or tempting of our stature we, The end is one, we do but wax service over land and sea. So, strike! the like Shall thus of us, My brawny woodman, claim the tax. A BEADING OF EARTH 383 Nor foe thy blow, Though wood be good, And shriekingly the timber cracks: The ground we crowned Shall speed the seed Of younger into swelling sacks. For use he hews, To make awake The spirit of what stuff we be: Our earth of mirth And tears he clears For braver, let our minds agree; And then will men Within them win And Echo clapping harmony. THE WISDOM OF ELD We spend our lives in learning pilotage. And grow good steersmen when the vessel f s crunk! Gap-toothed he spake and with a tottering shank Sidled to gain the sunny bench of Age. It is the sentence which completes that stage; A testament of wisdom leading blank. The seniors of the race, on their last plank, Pass mumbling it as nature's final page. These, bent by such experience, are the band Who captain young enthusiasts to maintain What tilings we view, and Earth's decree withstand, Lest dreaded Change, long dammed by dull decay, Should bring the world a vessel steered by brain, And ancients musical at close of day. EARTH'S PREFERENCE Earth loves her young: a preference manifest: She prompts them to her fruits and flower-beds; Their beauty with her choicest interthreads, And makes her revel of their merry zest. As in our East much were it in our West, If men had risen to do the work of heads. Her gabbling grey she eyes askant, nor treads The ways they walk; by what they speak oppressed. How wrought they in their zenith? 'T is not writ; Not all ; yet she by one sure sign can read : Have they but held her laws and nature dear, They mouth no sentence of inverted wit. More prizes she her beasts than this high breed Wry in the shape she wastes her milk to rear. SnC'IKTY Histobic be the survey of our kind, And how their brave Society took shape. Lion, wolf, vulture, fox, jackal and ape, The strong of limb, the keen of nose, we find, Who, with some jars in harmony, combined, Their primal instincts taming, to escape The brawl id decent, and hot passions drape. Convenience pricked conscience, that the mind. Thus entered they the held of milder beasts, Which in some sort of civil order graze, And do half-homage to the God of Laws. But are they still for their old ravenous feasts, Earth gives the edifice they build no base: They spring another flood of fangs and claws. WINTER HEAVENS Sharp is the night, biit stars with frost alive Leap off the rim of earth across the dome. It is a night to make the heavens our home More than the nest whereto apace we strive. Lengths down our road each fir-tree seems a hive, It swarms outrushing from the golden comb. They waken waves of thoughts that burst to foam The living throb in me, the dead revive. Yon mantle clothes us : there, past mortal breath, Life glistens on the river of the death. It folds us, flesh and dust; and have we knelt, Or never knelt, or eyed as kine the springs Of radiance, the radiance enrings : And this is the soul's haven to have felt. WIND ON THE LYRE That was the chirp of Ariel You heard, as overhead it flew, The farther going more to dwell, And wing our green to wed our blue: But whether note of joy or knell, Not his own Father-singer knew; Nor yet can any mortal tell, Save only how it shivers through; The breast of us a sounded shell, The blood of us a lighted dew. THE YOUTHFUL QUEST His Lady queen of woods to meet, He wanders day and night: The leaves have whisperings discreet. The mossy ways invite. Across a lustrous ring of space, By covert hoods and caves, Is promise of her secret face In film that onward waves. For darkness is the light astrain, Astrain for light the dark. A grey moth down a larches' lane Unwinds a ghostly spark. Her lamp he sees, and young desire Is fed while cloaked she flies. She quivers shot of violet fire To ash at look of eyes. THE EMPTY PUESE A Skrmont to 01 i; Lateb 1'kodigal Son Thou, run to the dry on this wayside bank, Too plainly of all the propellers bereft! Quenched youth, and is that thy purse? Even such limp slough as the snake has left Slack to the gale upon spikes of whin, For cast-off coat of a life gone blank In its frame of a grin at the seeker, is thine; And thine to crave and to curse The sweet thing once within. Accuse him: some devil committed the theft, "Which leaves of the portly a skin, No more; of the weighty a whine. Pursue him: and first, to be sure of his trsck, Over devious ways that have led to this, In the stream's consecutive line, Let memory lead thee back To where waves Morning her fleur-de-lys, Unfinished at the front of the roseate door Unopened yet": never shadow there A READING OF EARTH 39] Of a Tartarus lighted by Dis For souls whose cry is, alack! An ivory cradle rocks, apeep Through his eyelashes' laugh, a breathing pearl. There the young chief of the animals wore A likeness to heavenly hosts, unaware Of his love of himself; with the hours at leap. In a dingle away from a rutted highroad, Around him the earliest throstle and merle, Our human smile between milk and sleep, Effervescent of Nature he crowed. Fair was that season ; furl over furl The banners of blossom; a dancing floor This earth; very angels the clouds; and fair Thou on the tablets of forehead and breast: Careless, a centre of vigilant care. Thy mother kisses an infant curl. The room of the toys was a boundless nest, A kingdom the field of the games, Till eutered the craving for more, And the worshipped small body had aims. A good little idol, as records attest, When they tell of him lightly appeased in a scream By sweets and caresses : he gave but sign, That the heir of a purse-plumped dominant race, Accustomed to plenty, not dumb would pine. Almost magician, his earliest dream Was lord of the unpossessed For a look; himself and his chase, A BEADING OF EABTH As on puffs of a wind at whirl, Made one in the wink of a gleam. She 1. i locket curl, She conjures to vision :i cherub face, Whrii her butterfly counted his erided, and taken for play The fling of au urchin's cap. "When her butterfly showed him an eaglet born, For proving too heedlessly bred, What a heart clapped in thee then! With what fuller colours of morn! And high to the uttermost heavens it flew, Swift as on poet's pen. It flew to be wedded, to wed The mystery scented around: Issue of flower and dew, Issue of light and sound: Thinner than either; a thread Spun of the dream they threw To kindle, allure, evade. It ran the sea-wave, the garden's dance, 1 the forest's dark heart down a dappled glade; 1. d "ii by a perishing glance, By a twinkle's eternal waylaid. Woman, the name was, when she took form; Sheaf of the wonders of life. She fled, Clo he neared, far seen. How she made P lpitate earth of the living and dead! A READING OF EARTH 393 Did she not show thee the world designed Solely for loveliness? Nested warm, The day was the morrow in flight. Aud for thee, She muted the discords, tuned, refined; Drowned sharp edges beneath her cloak. Eye of the waters and throb of the tree, Sliding on radiance, winging from shade, With her witch-whisper o'er ruins, in reeds, She sang low the song of her promise delayed; Beckoned and died, as a finger of smoke Astream over woodland. And Was not she History's heroines white on storm? Remember her summons to valorous deeds. Shone she a lure of the honey-bag swarm, Most was her beam on the knightly : she led For the honours of manhood more than the prize; Waved her magnetical yoke Whither the warrior bled, Ere to the bower of sighs. And shy of her secrets she was ; under deeps Plunged at the breath of a thirst that woke The dream in the cave where the Dreaded sleeps. Away over heaven the young heart flew, And caught many lustres, till some one said (Or was it the thought into hearing grew?), Not thou as commoner men ! Thy stature puffed and it swayed, It stiffened to royal-erect; A brassy trumpet brayed ; 39 1 A READING OF BABTB A whirling seized th\ head; The \ isiuii of beauty was flecked. Note well the how and the when, The tiling that prompted and sped. Thereanon the keen passions clapped wing, Fixed eve. and the world was prey. \ simple world of thy greenblade Spring) Nor world of thy flowerful prime ( >n the topmost < Orient peak Above a yet vaporous day. Flesh was it. breast to beak: A four-walled windowless world without ray, ( >nly darkening jets on a river of slime, Where harsh over music as woodland jay, A voice chants, Woe to the weakl And along an insatiate feast, Women and men are one In the cup transforming to beast. Magian worship they paid to their sun, 1 rd of the Purse! Behold him climb. balked ever such figure of fun For monarch in great-grin pantomime? See now the heart dwindle, the frame distend; The soul to its anchorite cavern retreat, From a life that reeks of the rotted end; While he — is he pictureable? replete, Gourd-like swells of the rank of the soil, Hollow, more hollow at core. And for him did the hundreds toil A READING OF EARTH 395 Despised ; in the cold and heat, This image ridiculous bore On their shoulders for morsels of meat! Gross, with the fumes of incense full, With parasites tickled, with slaves begirt, He strutted, a cock, he bellowed, a bull, He rolled him, a dog, in dirt. And dog, bull, cock, was he, fanged, horned, plumed; Original man, as philosophers vouch; Carnivorous, cannibal; length-long exhumed, Frightfully living and armed to devour; The primitive weapons of prey in his poucli ; The bait, the line and the hook : To feed on his fellows intent. God of the Danae shower, He had but to follow his bent. He battened on fowl not safely hutched, On sheep astray from the crook; A lure for the foolish in fold. To carrion turning what flesh he touched. 'o And the grace of his air, As he at the goblet sips, A centre of girdles loosed, With their grisly label, Sold! Credulous hears the fidelity swear, Which has roving eyes over yielded lips : To-morrow will fancy himself the seduced, The stuck in a treacherous slough, Because of his faith in a purchased pair, False to a vinous vow. 396 A BEADING OF EAETH In his glory of banquet strip him bare, Ami what is the creature we view? Our pursy Apollo Apollyon's tool; \ Bmall one, still of the crew By Berpent Apollyon blest: Bis plea in apology, blindfold Fool. A fool surcharged, propelled, an warmed; Not viler, you hear him protest: Of a popular countenance not incorrect. But deeds are the picture in essence, deeds Paint him the hooved and horned, Despite the poor pother he pleads, And his look of a nation's elect. We have him, our quarry confessed! And scan him: the features inspect Of that bestial multiform: cry, Corroborate I, Samian Sage! The book of thy wisdom, proved On me, its last hieroglyph page, Alive in the horned and hooved'.'' Thou! will he make reply. Thus lias the plenary purse I>"ne often: to do will engage Anew upon all of thy like, or worse. And now is thy deepest regret To be man, clean rescued from boast: From the grip oi the Sorcerer, Gold, Celestially relea Jed. A READING OF EARTH 397 But now from his cavernous hold, Free may thy soul be set, As a child of the Death and the Life, to learn, Refreshed by some bodily sweat, The meaning of either in turn, What issue may come of the two : — A morn beyond mornings, beyond all reach Of emotional arms at the stretch to enfold : A firmament passing our visible blue. To those having nought to reflect it, 't is nought; To those who are misty, 't is mist on the beach From the billow withdrawing; to those who see Earth, our mother, in thought, Her spirit it is, our key. Ay, the Life and the Death are her words to us here, Of one significance, pricking the blind. This is thy gain now the surface is clear: To read with a soul in the mirror of mind, Is man's chief lesson. — Thou smilest! I preach! Acid smiling, my friend, reveals Abysses within; frigid preaching a street Paved unconcernedly smooth For the lecturer straight on his heels, Up and down a policeman's beat; Bearing tonics not labelled to soothe. Thou hast a disgust of the sermon in rh^me. It is not attractive in being too chaste. The popular tale of adventure and crime Would equally sicken an overdone taste. So, then, onward. Philosophy, thoughtless to soothe, Lifts, if thou wilt, or there leaves thee supine. 398 A BEADING OF BABTfl Thy condition, good sooth, lias no Beeraing of sweet; It walks our first crags, it is Hint for the tooth, For i he thirsts of onr aature brine. But manful has met it, manful will meet. And think of thy privilege: supple with youth, To have sight of the headlong swine, Duct' fouling thee, jumping the dips! \~ the coin of thy purse poured out: An animal's holiday pasl : And free of them thou, to begin a new bout; To start a fresh hunt on a resolute blast: No more an imp-ridden to bournes of eclipse: Having knowledge to spur thee, a gift to compare; Rubbing shoulder to shoulder, as only the book Of the world can be read, by necessity urged. For witness, what blinkers are they who look From the state of the prince or the millionnaire! They see but the fish they attract, The hungers on them converged; And never the thought in the shell of the act, Nor ever life's fangless mirth. I5ut first, that the poisonous of thee be purged, Go into thyself, strike Earth. 8he is there, she is felt in a blow struck hard. Thou findest a pugilist countering quick, Cunning at drives where thy shutters are barred; . after the studied professional trick, Blue-sealing; she brightens the sight. Strike Earth, Antaeus, young giant, whom fortune trips! And thou COm'st on a saving fact, To nourish thy planted worth. A HEADING OF EARTH 399 Be it clay, flint, mud, or the rubble of chips, Thy roots ha\ r e grasp in the stern-exact: The redemption of sinners deluded! the last Dry handful, that bruises and saves. To the common big heart are we bound right fast, When our Mother admonishing nips At the nakedness bare of a clout, And we crave what the commonest craves. This wealth was a fortress-wall, Under which grew our grim little beast-god stout; Self- worshipped, the foe, in division from all; With crowds of illogical Christians, no doubt; Till the rescuing earthquake cracked. Thus are we man made firm; Made warm by the numbers compact. We follow no longer a trumpet-snout, At a trot where the hog is tracked, Nor wriggle the way of the worm. Thou wilt spare us the cynical pout At humanity : sign of a nature bechurled. No stenchy anathemas cast Upon Providence, women, the world. Distinguish thy tempers and trim thy wits. The purchased are things of the mart, not classed Among resonant types that have freely grown. Thy knowledge of women might be surpassed: As any sad dog's of swppt flesh when he quits The wayside wandering bone! No revilings of comrades as ingrates : thee 400 A BEADING OF EARTH The tempter, misleader, and criminal (screened l'._\ Laws yet barbarous) own. If some one performed Fiend's deputy, i [e was for awhile tin- Fiend. Still, nursing a passion to speak, As the punch-bowl does, in the moral vein, \\ hen the ladle has finished its leak, And the vessel is loquent of nature's inane, Hie where the demagogues roar Like a Phalaris bull, with Liu- victim's force: Hurrah to their jolly attack ( in a I !ity that smokes of the Plain; A city of sin's death-dyes, I lidding revel of worms in a corse; A city of malady sore, Over-ripe for the big doom's crack: A city of hymnical snore; Connubial truths and lies Demanding an instant divorce, Clean as the bright from the black. It were well for thy system to sermonize. There are giants to slay., and they call for their Jack. Then up stand thou in the midst: Thy good grain out of thee thresh, 1 land upon heart: relate What things thou legally did'st For the A rcl r "I flesh. Omitting the murmurs at women and fate, A READING OF EARTH 401 Confess thee an instrument armed To be snare of our wanton, our weak, Of all by the sensual charmed. For once shall repentance be done by the tongue: Speak, though execrate, speak A word on grandmotherly Laws Giving rivers of gold to our young, In the days of their hungers impure; To furnish them beak and claws, And make them a banquet's lure. Thou the example, saved Miraculously by this poor skin! Thereat let the Purse be waved: The snake -slough sick of the snaky sin: A devil, if devil as devil behaved Ever, thou knowest, look thou but in, Where he shivers, a culprit fettered and shaved; a bird stripped of feather, a fish clipped of fin ! And commend for a washing the torrents of wrath, Which hurl at the foe of the dearest men prize, Rough-rolling boulders and froth. Gigantical enginery they can command, For the crushing of enemies not of great size: But hold to thy desperate stand. Men's right of bequeathing their all to their own (With little regard for the creatures they squeezed); Their mill and mill-water and nether mill-stone •2s •1<>L' A BEADING OF i;ai;i ii Tied fast to their infant; lo, this is the last Of their hungers, by prudent devices appeased. The law they decree is their ultimate slave j Wherein we perceive old Voracity glassed. It works from their dust, and it reeks of their grave. Point them to greener, though Journals be guns; To brotherly fields under fatherly skies; Where the savage still primitive learns of a debt . [e lias owed since he drummed on his belly for war; And how for his giving, the more will he get; For trusting his fellows, leave friends round his sons. Till they see, with the gape of a startled surprise, Their adored tyrant-monster a brute to abhor, The sun of their system a father of flies! 80, for such good hope, take their scourge unashamed; 'T is the portion of them who civilize, Who speak the word novel and true : How the brutish antique of our springs may be tamed, Without loss of the strength that should push us to flower; How the God of old time will act Satan of new, ! I we keep him not straight at the higher God aimed; For whose habitation within us we scour This house of our life; where our bitterest pains Are those to eject the Infernal, who heaps Mire on the soul. Take stripes or chains; Grip at thy standard reviled. And what if our body be dashed from the steeps? Our spoken in protest remains. A young generation reaps. A READING OF EARTH 403 The young generation ! ah, there is the child Of our souls down the Ages ! to bleed for it, proof That souls we have, with our senses filed, Our shuttles at thread of the woof. May it be braver than ours, To encounter the rattle of hostile bolts, To look on the rising of Stranger Powers. May it know how the mind in expansion revolts From a nursery Past with dead letters aloof, And the piping to stupor of Precedents shun, In a field where the forefather print of the hoof Is not yet overgrassed by the watering hours, And should prompt us to Change, as to promise of sun, - Till brain-rule splendidly towers. For that large light we have laboured and tramped Thorough forest and bogland, still to perceive Our animate morning stamped With the lines of a sombre eve. A timorous thing ran the innocent hind, When the wolf was the hypocrite fang under hood, The snake a lithe lurker up sleeve. And the lion effulgently ramped. Then our forefather hoof did its work in the wood, By right of the better in kind. But now will it breed yon bestial brood Three-fold thrice over, if bent to bind, As the healthy in chains with the sick, Unto despot usage our issuing mind. It signifies battle or death's dull knell. 40 I A BEADING OF EABTH Precedents icily written on high, Challenge the Tentatives hot to rebel. Our Mother, who speeds her bloom ful quick For the march, reads which the impediment well. She smiles when of sapience is their boast. O loose of the tug between blood run dry And blood running flame may our offspring run! May brain democratic be king of the host! Less then shall the volumes of History tell Of the step in progression, the slip in relapse, That counts us a sand-slack inch hard won, Beneath an oppressive incumbent perhaps. Let the senile lords in a parchment sky, And the generous turbulents drunken of morn, Their battle of instincts put by, A moment examine this field : On a Eoman street cast thoughtful eye, Along to the mounts from the bog-forest weald. It merits a glance at our history's maps, To see across Britain's old shaggy unshorn, Through the Parties in strife internecine, foot The ruler's close-reckoned direct to the mark. From the head ran the vanquisher's orderly route, In the stride of his forts through the tangle and dark. From the head runs the paved firm way for advance, And we shoulder, we wrangle! The light on us shed, Shows dense beetle blackness in swarm, lurid Chance, The Goddess of gamblers, above From the head, Then when it worked for the birth of a star Fraternal with heaven's in beauty and ray, A BEADING OF EARTH 405 Sprang the Acropolis. Ask what crown Comes of our tides of the blood at war, For men to bequeath generations down! And ask what thou wast when the Purse was brimmed: What high-bounding ball for the Gods at play : A Conservative youth ! who the cream-bowl skimmed, Desiring affairs to be left as they are. So, thou takest Youth's natural place in the fray, As a Tentative, combating Peace, Our lullaby word for decay. — There will come an immediate decree In thy mind for the opposite party's decease, If he bends not an instant knee. Expunge it : extinguishing counts poor gain. And accept a mild word of police : — Be mannerly, measured; refrain From the puffings of him of the bagpipe cheeks. Our political, even as the merchant main, A temperate gale requires For the ship that haven seeks ; Neither God of the winds nor his bellowsy squires. Then observe the antagonist, con His reasons for rocking the lullaby word. You stand on a different stage of the stairs. He fought certain battles, yon senile lord. In the strength of thee, feel his bequest to his heirs. We are now on his inches of ground hard won, For a perch to a flight o'er his resting fence. 40G A BEADING OF EABTH Does it knock too hard at thy head if I say, That Time is both father and son? Tough lesson, when Bense.8 are floods over sense! — Discern the paternal of Now As the Then of thy present tense. Ybu may null as you will either way, Sou ran never be other than one. So, be filial. Giants to slay, Demand knowing eyes in their Jack. There are those whom we push from the path with respect Bow to that elder, though seeing him bow To the backward as well, for a thunderous back Upon thee. In his day he was not all wrong. Unto some foundered zenith he strove, and was wrecked. He scrambled to shore with a worship of shore. The Future he sees as the slippery murk; The Past as his doctrinal library lore. He stands now the rock to the wave's wild wash. Yet thy lumpish antagonist once did work 1 1.roical, one of our strong. II is gold to retain and his dross reject, ;age him, but humour, not aiming to quash. Detest the dead squat of the Turk, And suffice it to move him along. Drink of faith in the brains a full draught Before the oration: beware Lest rhetoric moonily waft Whither horrid activities snare. Rhetoric, juice for the moh Despising more luminous grape, A HEADING OP EARTH 407 Oft at its fount has it laughed In the cataracts rolling for rape Of a Reason left single to sob! *t> j 'T is known how the permanent never is writ In blood of the passions : mercurial they, Shifty their issue : stir not that pit To the game our brutes best play. But with rhetoric loose, can we check man's brute? Assemblies of men on their legs invoke Excitement for wholesome diversion : there shoot Electrical sparks between their dry thatch And thy waved torch, more to kindle than light. 'T is instant between you : the trick of a catch (To match a Batrachian croak) Will thump them a frenzy or fun in their veins. Then may it be rather the well-worn joke Thou repeatest, to stop conflagration, and write Penance for rhetoric. Strange will it seem, When thou readest that form of thy homage to brains! For the secret why demagogues fail, Though they carry hot mobs to the red extreme, And knock out or knock in the nail (We will rank them as flatly sincere, Devoutly detesting a wrong, Engines o'ercharged with our human steam), Question thee, seething amid the throng. And ask, whether Wisdom is born of blood-heat; Or of other than Wisdom comes victory here; — Aught more than the banquet and roundelay, 408 A BEADING OP BABTH That is closed with a terrible terminal wail, A retributive Mick ding-dong? And ask of thyself: This furious Yea of a Bpeech I thump to repeat, In the cause I would have prevail, For seed of a nourishing wheat, Is it accepted of Song? Does it sound t.> the mind through the ear, Eight sober, pure sane? has it disciplined feet? Thou wilt find it a test severe; Unerring whatever the theme. I lings it for Reason a melody clear, We have hidden old Chaos retreat; We have called on Creation to hear; All forces that make us are one full stream. Simple islander! thus may the spirit in verse, Showing its practical value and weight, 1'ipe to thee clear from the Empty Purse. Lead thee aloft to that high estate. — The test is conclusive, I deem: It emhraces or mortally hites. We have then the key-note for debate: A Senate that sits on the heights I ».. i discords, to shape and amend. And no singer is needed to serve The musical Grod, my friend. Needs only his law on a sensible nerve: A law that to Measure invil Forbidding the passions contend. A READING OF EARTH 409 Is it accepted of Song ? And if then the blunt answer be Nay, Dislink thee sharp from the ramping horde, Slaves of the Goddess of hoar-old sway, The Queen of delirous rites, Queen of those issueless mobs, that rend For frenzy the strings of a fruitful accord, Pursuing insensate, seething in throng, Their wild idea to its ashen end. Off to their Phrygia, shriek and gong, Shorn from their fellows, behold them wend! But thou, should the answer ring Ay, Hast warrant of seed for thy word: The musical God is nigh To inspirit and temper, tune it, and steer Through the shoals : is it worthy of Song, There are souls all woman to hear, Woman to bear and renew. For he is the Master of Measure, and weighs, Broad as the arms of his blue, Pine as the web of his rays, Justice, whose voice is a melody clear, The one sure life for the numbered long. Prom him are the brutal and vain, The vile, the excessive, out-thrust: He points to the God on the upmost throne: He is the saver of grain, The sifter of spirit from dust. He, Harmony, tells how to Measure pertain The virilities : Measure alone Has votaries rich in the male: 1 1" A BEADING OF EABTH Fathers embracing no cloud, Bowing do harvestlesa main; Alike by the flesh and the spirit endowed To create, to perpetuate; woo, win, wed; Send progeny streaming, have earth for their own, Over-run the insensates, disperse with a puff Simulacra, though solid they sail, And serin such imperial stuff: Yes, the living divide off the dead. Then thou with thy furies outgrown, Not as Cybele's beast will thy head lash tail So prseter-determinedly thermonous, Nor thy cause be an Attis far fled. Thou under stress of the strife, Shalt hear for sustainment supreme, The cry of the conscience of Life: Kei'p the young generations in hail, And bequeath them no tumbled house! There hast thou the sacred theme, Therein the inveterate spur, Of the Innermost. See her one blink In vision past eyeballs. Not thee She cares for, but us. Follow her. Follow her, and thou wilt not sink. With thy soul the Life espouse: This Life of the visible, audible, ring With thy love tight about; and no death will be; The name be an empty tiling, And woe a forgotten old trick: And battle will conic as a challenge to drink; A READING OF EARTH 411 As a warrior's wound each transient sting. She leads to the Uppermost link by link; Exacts but vision, desires not vows. Above us the singular number to see; The plural warm round us ; ourself in the thick, A dot or a stop: that is our task; Her lesson in figured arithmetic, For the letters of Life behind its mask ; Her flower-like look under fearful brows. As for thy special case, my friend, one must think Massilia's victim, who held the carouse For the length of a carnival year, Knew worse : but the wretch had his opening choice. For thee, by our law, no alternatives were : Thy fall was assured ere thou earnest to a voice. He cancelled the ravaging Plague, With the roll of his fat off the cliff. Do thou with thy lean as the weapon of ink, Though they call thee an angler who fishes the vague And catches the not too pink, Attack one as murderous, knowiug thy cause Is the cause of community. Iterate, Iterate, iterate, harp on the trite : Our preacher to win is the supple in stiff: Yet always in measure, with bearing polite: The manner of one that would expiate His share in grandmotherly Laws, Which do the dark thing to destroy, Under aspect of water so guilelessly white For the general use, by the devils befouled. •I 12 A READING OF BARTH Enough, poor prodigal bo; Thou hast listened with patience; another had 1k.w1.m1. Repentance is proved, forgiveness is earned. And 't is bony: denied thee thy Buoculent half of the parable's blessing to Bwineherd returned: A Bermon thy slice of the Scriptural calf! By my faith, there is feasting to come, Not the less, when our Earth we have seen Beneath and on surface, her deeds and designs: Wlio gives ns the man-loving Nazarene, The martyrs, the poets, the corn and the -vines. By my faith in the head, she has wonders in loom; Revelations, delights. I can hear a faint crow Of the cock of fresh mornings, far, far, yet distinct; As down the new shafting of mines, A cry of the metally gnome. When our Earth we have seen, and have linked With the home of the Spirit to whom we unfold, Imprisoned humanity open will throw Its fortress gates, and the rivers of gold For the congregate friendliness flow. Then the meaning of Earth in her children behold: (Had eyes, frank hands, and a fellowship real: And laughter on lips, as the birds' outburst At the Hooding of light. No robbery then Tlif feast, nor a robber's abode the home, For a furnished model of our first den! Nor Life a I i1 ioned wheel; Nor History written in blood or in foam, For vendetta of Parties in cursing accursed. A READING OF EARTH 413 The God in the conscience of multitudes feel, And we feel deep to Earth at her heart, We have her communion with men, New ground, new skies for appeal. Yield into harness thy best and thy worst; Away on the trot of thy servitude start, Through the rigours and joys and sustainments of air. If courage should falter, 't is wholesome to kneel. Remember that well, for the secret with some, Who pray for no gift, but have cleansing in prayer, And free from impurities tower-like stand. I promise not more, save that feasting will come To a mind and a body no longer inversed : The sense of large charity over the land, Earth's wheaten of wisdom dispensed in the rough, And a bell ringing thanks for a sustenance meal Through the active machine: lean fare, But it carries a sparkle ! And now enough, And part we as comrades part, To meet again never or some day or soon. Our season of drought is reminder rude: — No later than yestemoon, I looked on the horse of a cart, By the wayside water-trough. How at every draught of his bride of thirst His nostrils widened! The sight was good: Food for us, food, such as first Drew our thoughts to earth's lowly for food, JUMP-TO-GLORY JANE A revelation came on Jane, The widow of a labouring swain: And first her body trembled sharp, Then all the woman was a harp With winds along the strings; she heard, Though there was neither tone nor word. ii For past our hearing was the air, Beyond our speaking what it bare, And she within herself had sight Of heaven at work to cleanse outright, To make of her a mansion fit For angel hosts inside to sit. in They entered, and forthwith entranced, Her body braced, her members danced; Surprisingly the woman leapt; And countenance composed she kept; As gossip neighbours in the lane Declared, who saw and pitied Jane. A HEADING OF EARTH 415 IV These knew she had been reading books, The which was witnessed by her looks Of late : she had a mania For mad folk in America, And said for sure they led the way, But meat and beer were meant to stay. That she had visited a fair, Had seen a gauzy lady there, Alive with tricks on legs alone, As good as wings, was also known : And longwhiles in a sullen mood, Before her jumping, Jane would brood. VI A good knee's height, they say, she sprang; Her arms and feet like those who hang: As if afire the body sped, And neither pair contributed. She jumped in silence : she was thought A corpse to resurrection caught. 4 Hi A READING OF KAkTU VII The villagers were mostly dazed; They jeered, they wondered, and they praiseA. 'T was guessed by some she was inspired, And BOme would have it sin- had hired An engine in her pettico To turn their wits and win their votes. VIII Her first was Winny Barnes, a kind Of woman not to dance inclined; But she went up, entirely won, Ere Jump-to-glory Jane had done ; And once a vixen wild for speech, She found the better way to preach. IX No long time after, Jane was seen Directing jumps at Daddy Green; And that old man, to watch her fly, Had eyebrows made of arches high ; Till homeward he likewise did hop, Oft calling on himself to stop ! A READING OF EARTH 417 It was a scene when man and maid, Abandoning all other trade, And careless of the call to meals, Went jumping at the woman's heels. By dozens they were counted soon, Without a sound to tell their tune. XI Along the roads they came, and crossed The fields, and o'er the hills were lost, And in the evening reappeared ; Then short like hobbled horses reared, And down upon the grass they plumped: Alone their Jane to glory jumped. XII At morn they rose, to see her spring All going as an engine thing ; And lighter than the gossamer She led the bobbers following her, Past old acquaintances, and where They made the stranger stupid stare. 418 A KEAD1NG OF EABTH XIII When turnips wore a filling crop, In scorn they jumped a butcher's shop: Or, spite of threats to Hog and souse, They jumped for shame u public-house : And much their legs were seized with rage If passing by the vicarage. xrv The tightness of a hempen rope Their bodies got ; but laundry soap Not handsomer can rub the skin For token of the washed within. Occasionally coughers cast A leg aloft and coughed their last. xv The weaker maids and some old men, Requiring rafters for the pen On rainy nights, were those who fell. The rest were quite a miracle, Refreshed as you may search all round On Club-feast days and cry, Not found! A READING OF EAliTH 419 XVI For these poor innocents, that slept Against the sky, soft women wept : For never did they any theft ; 'T was known when they their camping left, And jumped the cold out of their rags ; In spirit rich as money-bags. XVII They jumped the question, jumped reply ; And whether to insist, deny, Eeprove, persuade, they jumped in ranks Or singly, straight the arms to flanks, And straight the legs, with just a knee For bending in a mild degree. XVIII The villagers might call them mad; An endless holiday they had, Of pleasure in a serious work : They taught by leaps where perils lurk, And with the lambkins practised sports For 'scaping Satan's pounds and quarts. 420 A BEADING OF EARTH XIX It really Beemed <") certain days, When they bobbed up their Lord t<> praise, And bobbing up they caught the glance i it Light, oui Becret is to dance, And lmld the tongue from hindering peace; To dance out preacher and police. XX Those flies of boys disturbed them sore On Sundays and when daylight wore: With withies cut from hedge or copse, They treated them as whipping-tops, And Hung big stones with cruel aim; Yet all the flock jumped on the same. XXI For what could persecution do To worry such a blessed crew, On whom it was as wind to fire, Which Bet them always jumping higher ? The parson and the lawyer tried, By meek persistency defied. A READING OF EARTH 421 XXII But if they bore, they could pursue As well., and this the Bishop too; When inner warnings proved him plain The chase for Jump-to-glory Jane. She knew it by his being sent To bless the feasting in the tent. XXIII Not less than fifty years on end, The Squire had been the Bishop's friend: And his poor tenants, harmless ones, With souls to save ! fed not on buns, But angry meats : she took her place Outside to show the way to grace. XXIV In apron suit the Bishop stood; The crowding people kindly viewed. A gaunt grey woman he saw rise On air, with most beseeching eyes: And evident as light in dark It was, she set to him for mark. 422 A BEADING OF BASTH XXV Her highest leap had come: with ease She jumped to reach the Bishop's knees: Compressing tight her arms and lips, She sought to jump the Bishop's hips: Ber aim flew at his apron-band. That lie might see and understand. XXVI The mild inquiry of his gaze Was altered to a peaked amaze, At sight of thirty in ascent; To gain his notice clearly bent: And greatly Jane at heart was vexed By his ploughed look of mind perplexed. XXVII In jumps that said, Beware the pit ! More eloquent than speaking it — That said, Avoid the boiled, the roast; The heated nose on face of ghost, Which comes of drinking: up and o'er The flesh with me! did Jane implore. A READING OF EARTH 423 XXVIII She jumped him high as huntsmen go Across the gate; she jumped him low, To coax him to begin and feel His infant steps returning, peel His mortal pride, exposing fruit, And off with hat and apron suit. XXIX We need much patience, well she knew, And out and out, and through and through, When we would gentlefolk address, However we may seek to bless : At times they hide them like the beasts From sacred beams ; and mostly priests. XXX He gave no sign of making bare, Nor she of faintness or despair. Inflamed with hope that she might win, If she but coaxed him to begin, She used all arts for making fain ; The mother with her babe was Jane, 424 A BEADING OF EAETH X.\M Now stamped the Squirt', and knowing not II. r business, waved her from the spot. Encircled by the men of might, The head of Jane, like flickering light, \ in a charger, they beheld Ere she was from the park expelled. XXX II Her grief, in jumps of earthly weight, Did Jane around communicate: For that the moment when began The holy but mistaken man, In view of light, to take his lift, They cut him from her charm adriftl xxxm And ho was lost: a banished face For ever from the ways of grace, Unless pinched hard by dreams in fright. They saw the Bishop's wavering sprite Within her look, at come and L, r <>, Long after he had caused her woe. A READING OF EARTH 425 XXXIV Her greying eyes (until she sank At Fredshain on the wayside bank, Like cinder heaps that whitened lie From coals that shot the flame to sky) Had glassy vacancies, which yearned For one in memory discerned. XXXV May those who ply the tongue that cheats And those who rush to beer and meats, And those whose mean ambition aims At palaces and titled names, Depart in such a cheerful strain As did our Jump-to-glory Jane ! > XXXVI Her end was beautiful : one sigh. She jumped a foot when it was nigh. A lily in a linen clout She looked when they had laid her out. It is a lily-light she bears For England up the ladder-stairs. ODES TO THE COMIC SPIEIT Sword of Common Sense! — Our surest gift : the sacred chain Of man to man: firm earth for trust In structures vowed to permanence : — Thou guardian issue of the harvest brain ! Implacable perforce of just; With that good treasure in defence, Which is our gold crushed out of joy and pain Since first men planted foot and hand was king: Bright, nimble of the marrow-nerve To wield thy double edge, retort Or hold the deadlier reserve, And through thy victim's weapon sting: Thine is the service, thine the sport This shifty heart of ours to hunt Across its webs and round the many a ring Where fox it is, or snake, or mingled seeds Occasion heats to shape, or the poor smoke Struck from a puff-ball, or the troughster's grunt; Once lion of our desert's trodden weeds; And but for thy straight finger at the yoke, 428 oi » i - Again to be the lordly paw, Naming his appetites his needs, Behind a decoral Lve cloak: Thou, of the highest, the unwritten Law We read upon that building's architrave In the mind's firmament, by men upraised With Bweal of blood when they had quitted cave I r fellowship, and rearward looked amazed, Where the prime motive gapes a lurid jaw, Thou, soul of wakened beads, art armed to warn, Restrain, lest we backslide on whence we Bprang, Scarce better than our dwarf beginning shoot, Of every gathered pearl and blossom shorn; Through thee, in novel wiles to win disguise. Seen are the pits of the disruptor, seen His rebel agitation at our root : Thou hast him out of hawking eyes*, Nor ever morning of the clang Young Echo sped on hill from horn In forest blown when scent was keen < )ft' earthy dews besprinkling blades (>t covert grass more merrily rang The yelp of chase down alleys green, Forth of the headlong-pouring glades, er the dappled fallows wild away, Than thy fine unaccented scorn At sight of man's old secret brute, Devout for pasture on Ids prey, Advancing, yawning to devour; With Btep of deer, with voice of flute, Haply with visage of the lily flower. odes 429 Let the cock crow and ruddy morn His handmaiden appear! Youth claims his hour. The generously ludicrous Espouses it. But see we sons of day, On whom Life leans for guidance in our fight, Accept the throb for lord of us; For lord, for the main central light That gives direction, not the eclipse; — Or dost thou look where niggard Age, Demanding reverence for wrinkles, whips A tumbled top to grind a wolf's worn tooth; — Hoar despot on our final stage, In dotage of a stunted Youth ; — Or it may be some venerable sage, Not having thee awake in him, compact Of wisdom else, the breast's old tempter trips; Or see we ceremonial state, Eobing the gilded beast, exact Abjection, while the crackskull name of Fate Is used to stamp and hallow printed fact; A cruel corner lengthens up thy lips ; These are thy game wherever men engage: These and, majestic in a borrowed shape, The major and the minor potentate, Creative of their various ape; — The tiptoe mortals triumphing to write Upon a perishable page An inch above their fellows' height; — The criers of foregone wisdom, who impose Its slough on live conditions, much for the greed Of our first hungry figure wide agape; — 430 od] Call up thy hounds of laughter to their run. These, that would have men still of men be foes, Eternal Eox to prowl and pike to feed; Would keep our life the wrhirly pool Of turbid stuff dishonouring History; The herd the drover's herd, the i'ool the fool, Ourself our slavish self's infernal sun; These are the children of the heart untaught By thy quirk founts to beat abroad, b\ thee Untamed to tone its passions under thought, The rich humaneness reading in thy fun. Of them a world of coltish heels for school, We have; a world with driving wrecks bestrewn. 'T is written of the Gods of human mould, Those Nectar Gods, of glorious stature hewn To quicken hymns, that they did hear incensed, Satiric comments overbold, From one whose part was by decree The jester's; but they boiled to feel him bite. Better lor them had the}- with Reason fenced Or smiled corrected! They in the great Gods' might, Their prober crushed, as fingers flea. Crumbled Olympus when the sovereign sire His fatal kick to Momus gave, albeit Men could behold the sacred Mount aspire, The Satirist pass by on limping feet. Those Gods who saw the ejected laugh alight Below, had then their last of airy gli They in the cup sought Laughter's drowned sprite, ODES 431 Fed to dire fatness off uncurbed conceit. Eyes under saw them waddle on their Mount, And drew thern down ; to flattest earth they rolled. This know we veritable. Sage of Mirth! Can it be true, the story men recount Of the fall'n plight of the great Gods on earth? How they being deathless, though of human mould, With human cravings, undecaying frames, Must labour for subsistence ; are a band Whom a loose-cheeked, wide-lipped gay cripple leads At haunts of holiday on summer sand: And lightly he will hint to one that heeds, Names in pained designation of them, names Ensphered on blue skies and on black, which twirl Our hearing madly from our seeing dazed, Add Bacchus unto both; and he entreats (His baby dimples in maternal chaps Running wild labyrinths of line and curl) Compassion for his masterful Trombone, Whose thunder is the brass of how he blazed Of old: for him of the mountain-muscle feats, Who guts a drum to fetch a snappish groan: Eor his fierce bugler horning onset, whom A truncheon-battered helmet caps. . . . The creature is of earnest mien To plead a sorrow darker than the tomb. His Harp and Triangle, in tone subdued, He names; they are a ray less red and white; The dawn-hued libertine, the gibbous prude. And, if we recognize his Tambourine, He asks; exhausted names her: she has become 432 odks A globe in cupolas; the blowsiest queen Of overflowing dome on dome; Redundancy contending with the tight, Leaping the dam! He fondly calls, his girl, The buxom tripper with the goblet-smile, Kefreshful. but now his brows are dun, Bunched are his lips, as when distilling guile, To drop his venomous: the Dame of dames, Blower of the world, that honey one, She of the earthly rose in the Bea-pearl, To whom the world ran ocean for her kiss; He names her, as a worshipper he names, And indicates with a contemptuous thumb. The lady meanwhile lures the mob, alike Ogles the bursters of the horn and drum. Curtain her close! her open arms Have suckers for beholders : she to this ? For that she could not, save in fury, hear A sharp corrective utterance flick Her idle manners, for the laugh to strike Beauty so breeding beauty, without peer Above the snows, among the flowers? She reaps This mouldy garner of the fatal kick? Gross with the sacrifice of Circe-swarms, Astarte of vile sweets that slay, malign, From Greek resplendent to Phoenician foul, The trader in attractions sinks, all brine To thoughts of taste; is 't love? — bark, dog! hoot, owl! And she is blushless: ancient worship weeps. Suicide Graces dangle down the charms Sprawling like gourds on outer garden-heaps. ODES 43o She stands in her unholy oily leer A statue losing feature, weather-sick Mid draggled creepers of twined ivy sere. The curtain cried for magnifies to see! — We cannot quench our one corrupting glance : The vision of the rumour will not flee. Doth the Boy own such Mother? — shoot his dart To bring her, countless as the crested deeps, Her subjects of the uncorrected heart? False is that vision, shrieks the devotee; Incredible, we echo; and anew Like a far growling lightning-cloud it leaps. Low humourist this leader seems ; perchance Pitched from his University career, Adept at classic fooling. Yet of mould Human those Gods were : deathless too : On high they not as meditatives paced : Prodigiously they did the deeds of flesh : Descending, they would touch the lowest here: And she, that lighted form of blue and gold, Whom the seas gave, all earth, all earth embraced; Exulting in the great hauls of her mesh; Desired and hated, desperately dear; Most human of them was. No more pursue! Enough that the black story can be told. It preaches to the eminently placed: Eor whom disastrous wreckage is nigh due, Paints omen. Truly they our throbber had; The passions plumping, passions playing leech, Cunning to trick us for the day's good cheer. Our uncorrected human heart will swell To notions monstrous, doings mad As billows on a foam-lashed beach; Borne on the tidea of alternating heats, Will drug the brain, will doom the soul as well; Call the clos.. 1 mouth of that harsh final Tower To speak in judgement: Nemesis^ the fell: Of those bright Gods assembled, offspring sour; 'I'lic last surviving on the upper seats; As with men Reason when their hearts rebel. Ah, what a fruitless breeder is this heart, Full of the mingled seeds, each eating each. Not wiser of our mark than at the start, It surges like the wrath-faced father Sea To countering winds; a force blind-eyed, On endless rounds of aimless reach; Emotion for the source of pride, The grounds of faith in fixity Above our flesh; its cravings urging speech, Inspiring prayer; by turns a lump Swung on a time-piece, and by turns A quivering energy to jump For seats angelical: it shrinks, it yearns, Loves, loathes; is flame or cinders; lastly cloud C pping a sullen crater: ami mankind We Bee cloud-capped, an army of the dark, of thy straight leadership declined; At heels of this or that delusive spark: Now when the multitudinous races press Elbow to elbow hourly more, odes 435 A thickened host; when now we hear aloud Life for the very life implore A signal of a visioned mark; Light of the mind, the mind's discourse, The rational in graciousness, Thee by acknowledgement enthroned, To tame and lead that blind-eyed force In harmony of harness with the crowd, For payment of their dues ; as yet disowned, Save where some dutiful lone creature, vowed To holy work, deems it the heart's intent; Or where a silken circle views it cowled, The seeming figure of concordance, bent On satiating tyrant lust Or barren fits of sentiment. Thou wilt not have our paths befouled By simulation; are we vile to view, The heavens shall see us clean of our own dust, Beneath thy breezy flitting wing: They make their mirror upon faces true; And where they win reflection, lucid heave The under tides of this hot heart seen through. Beneficently wilt thou clip All oversteppings of the plumed, The puffed, and bid the masker strip, And into the crowned windbag thrust, Tearing the mortal from the vital thing, A lightning o'er the half-illumed, Who to base brute-dominion cleave, ■iutJ ODES Fet mark effects, and slum the flash, Till their drowsed writs a beam conceive, To spy a wound without a gash, The magic in a turn of wrist, And how are wedded heart and head regaled When Wit o'er Folly blows the mort, And theii high note of union spreads Wide from the fcimi ly word with conquest charged; Victorious laughter, of no loud report, If heard; derision as divinely veiled As terrible Immortals in rose-mist, Given to the vision of arrested men : Whereat they feel within them weave Community its closer threads, And are to our fraternal state enlarged ; Like warm fresh blood is their enlivened ken i They learn that thou art not of alien sort, Speaking the tongue by vipers hissed, Or of the frosty heights unsealed, Or of the vain who simple speech distort, Or of the vapours pointing on to nought Along cold skies ; though sharp ami high thy pitch: As when sole homeward the belated treads, And hears aloft a clamour wailed, That once had seemed the broomstick witch Horridly violating cloud for drought: He from the rub of minds dispersing fears, Hears migrants marshalling their midnight train; Homeliest order in black sky appears, Not less than in the lighted village steads. So do those half-illumed wax clear to share odes 437 A cry that is our common voice ; the note Of fellowship upon a loftier plane, Above embattled castle-wall and moat ; And toning drops as from pure heaven it sheds. So thou for washing a phantasmal air, For thy sweet singing keynote of the wise, Laughter — the joy of Reason seeing fade Obstruction into Earth's renewing beds, Beneath the stroke of her good servant's blade — Thenceforth art as their earth-star hailed ; Gain of the years, conjunction's prize. The greater heart in thy appeal to heads, They see, thou Captain of our civil Fort ! By more elusive savages assailed On each ascending stage ; untired Both inner foe and outer to cut short, And blow to chaff pretenders void of grist : Showing old tiger's claws, old crocodile's Yard-grin of eager grinders, slim to sight, Like forms in running water, oft when smiles, When pearly tears, when fluent lips delight : But never with the slayer's malice fired : As little as informs an infant's fist Clenched at the sneeze ! Thou would'st but have us be Good sons of mother soil, whereby to grow Branching on fairer skies, one stately tree ; Broad of the tilth for flowering at the Court: "Which is the tree bound fast to wave its tress ; Of strength controlled sheer beauty to bestow. Ambrosial heights of possible acquist, Where souls of men with soul of man consort, 438 odes And all look higher to new loveliness Begotten of the look: thy mark is there; While I'll our temporal ground alive, Rightly though fearfully thou wieldest sword, Of finer temper now a numbered learn That they resisting thee themselves resist; A id not thy bigger joy to smite and drive, Prompl the dense herd to butt, and set the snare Witching them into pitfalls for hoarse shouts. More now, and hourly more, and of the Lord Thou lead'st to, doth this rebel heart discern, When pinched ascetic and red sensualist Alternately recurrent freeze or burn, And of its old religions it has doubts. It fears thee less when thou hast shown it bare ; Less hates, part understands, nor much resents, When the prized objects it has raised for prayer, For fitful prayer ; — repentance dreading fire, Impelled by aches; the blindness which repents Like the poor trampled worm that writhes in mire;' Are sounded by thee, and thou darest probe Old Institutions and Establishments, Once fortresses against the floods of sin, For what their worth ; and questioningly prod For why they stand upon a racing globe, Impeding blocks, less useful than the clod ; Their angel out of them, a demon in. This half-enlightened heart, still doomed to fret, To hurl at vanities, to drift in shame Of gain or loss, bewailing the sure rod, odes • 439 Shall of predestination wed thee yet. Something it gathers of what things should drop At entrance on new times ; of how thrice broad The world of minds communicative ; how A straggling Nature classed in school, and scored "With stripes admonishing, may yield to plough Eruitfullest furrows, nor for waxing tame Be feeble on an Earth whose gentler crop Is its most living, in the mind that steers, By Reason led, her way of tree and flame, Beyond the genuflexions and the tears ; Upon an Earth that cannot stop, Where upward is the visible aim, And ever we espy the greater God, For simple pointing at a good adored: Proof of the closer neighbourhood. Head on, Sword of the many, light of the few ! untwist Or cut our tangles till fair space is won Beyond a briared wood of austere brow, Believed of discord by thy timely word At intervals refreshing life : for thou Art verily Keeper of the Muse's Key ; Thyself no vacant melodist; On lower land elective even as she ; Holding, as she, all dissonance abhorred: Advising to her measured steps in flow ; And teaching how for being subjected free Past thought of freedom we may come to know The music of the meaning of Accord. YOUTH IN MEMORY Days, when the ball of our vision Had eagles that flew unabashed to sun ; When the grasp on the bow was decision, And arrow and hand and eye were one ; When the Pleasures, like waves to a swimmer, Came heaving for rapture ahead ! — Invoke them, they dwindle, they glimmer As lights over mounds of the dead. Behold the winged Olympus, off the mead, With thunder of wide pinions, lightning speed, Wafting the shepherd-boy through ether clear, To bear the golden nectar-cup. So flies desire at view of its delight, When the young heart is tiptoe perched on sight We meanwhile who in hues of the sick year, The Spring-time paint to prick us for our lost, Mount but the fatal half way up, Whereon shut eyes! This is decreed, For Age that would to youthful heavens ascend, By passion for the arms' possession tossed, ODES 441 It falls the way of sighs and hath their end ; A spark gone out to more sepulchral night. Good if the arrowy eagle of the height, Be then the little bird that hops to feed. Lame falls the cry to kindle days Of radiant orb and daring gaze. It does but clank our mortal chain. For Earth reads through her felon old, The many-numbered of her fold, Who forward tottering backward strain, And would be thieves of treasure spent, With their grey season soured. She could write out their history in their thirst To have again the much devoured, And be the bud at burst ; In honey fancy join the flow, Where Youth swims on as once they went, All choiric for spontaneous glee Of active eager lungs and thews ; They now bared roots beside the river bent ; Whose privilege themselves to see ; Their place in yonder tideway know ; The current glass peruse ; The depths intently sound ; And sapped by each returning flood, Accept for monitory nourishment, Those worn roped features under crust of mud, Reflected in the silvery smooth around : Not less the branching and high singing tree, A home of nests, a landmark and a tent, 442 odes Until their hour for losing hold on ground. Even such good harvest of the things that flee, Earth offers her subjected, and they choose Bather of Baechio Youth one beam to drink, And warm slow marrow with the sensual wink. So block they at her source the Mother of the Muse. Who cheerfully the little bird becomes, Without ii fall, and pipes for peck at crumbs, May have her doliugs to the lightest touch; As where some cripple muses by his crutch, Unwitting that the spirit in him sings: 1 When I had legs, then had I wings, As good as any born of eggs, To feed on all aerial things, When I had legs ! ' And if not to embrace he sighs, She gives him breath of Youth awhile, Perspective of a breezy mile, Companionable hedgeways, lifting skies; Scenes where his nested dreams upon their hoard Brooded, or up to empyrean soared : Enough to link him with a dotted line. But cravings for an eagle's flight, To top white peaks and serve wild wine Among the rosy undecayed, Bring only flash of shade From her full throbbing breast of day in night. By what they crave arc they betrayed: And cavernous is that young dragon's jaw, Crimson for all the fiery reptile saw odes 443 In time now coveted, for teeth to flay, ■ Once more consume, were Life recurrent May. They to their moment of drawn breath, Which is the life that makes the death, The death that makes ethereal life would bind : The death that breeds the spectre do they find. Darkness is wedded and the waste regrets Beating as dead leaves on a fitful gust, By souls no longer dowered to climb Beneath their pack of dust, Whom envy of a lustrous prime, Eclipsed while yet invoked, besets, And dooms to sink and water sable flowers, That never gladdened eye or loaded bee. Strain we the arms for Memory's hours, We are the seized Persephone. Responsive never to the soft desire For one prized tune is this our chord of life. 'T is clipped to deadness with a wanton knife, In wishes that for ecstasies aspire. Yet have we glad companionship of Youth, Elysian meadows for the mind, Dare we to face deeds done, and in our tomb Filled with the parti-coloured bloom Of loved and hated, grasp all human truth Sowed by us down the mazy paths behind. To feel that heaven must we that hell sound through : Whence comes a line of continuity, That brings our middle station into view, Between those poles ; a novel Earth we see, Ill ODES Id likeness of us, made of banned and blest; The Bower's bed, but Dot the reaper's rest: An Earth alive with meanings, wherein meet Buried, and breathing, and to be. Then of the junction of the three, Even as a heart in brain, full sweet May sense of soul, the sum of music, beat. Only the soul can walk the dusty track Where hangs our flowering under vapours black, And bear to see how these pervade, obscure, Quench recollection of a spacious pure. They take phantasmal forms, divide, convolve, Hard at each other point and gape, Horrible ghosts ! in agony dissolve, To reappear with one they drape For criminal, and, Father! shrieking name, "Who such distorted issue did beget. Accept them, them and him, though hiss thy sweat Off brow on breast, whose furnace flame 1 1 3 eaten, and old Self consumes. Out of the purification will they leap, Thee renovating while new light illumes The dusky web of evil, known as pain, That heavily up healthward mounts the steep; ( »ur fleshly road to beacon-fire of brain : Midway the tameless oceanic brute ow, whose heave is topped with foam for fruit, And the fair heaveu reflecting inner peace On righteous warfare, that asks not to cease. odes 445 Forth of such passage through black fire we win Clear hearing of the simple lute, Whereon, and not on other, Memory plays For them who can in quietness receive Her restorative airs : a ditty thin As note of hedgerow bird in ear of eve, Or wave at ebb, the shallow catching rays On a transparent sheet, where curves a glass To truer heavens than when the breaker neighs Loud at the plunge for bubbly wreck in roar. Solidity and bulk and martial brass, Once tyrants of the senses, faintly score A mark on pebbled sand or fluid slime, While present in the spirit, vital there, Are things that seemed the phantoms of their time; Eternal as the recurrent cloud, as air Imperative, refreshful as dawn-dew. Some evanescent hand on vapour scrawled Historic of the soul, and heats anew Its coloured lines where deeds of flesh stand bald. True of the man, and of mankind 't is true. Did we stout battle with the Shade, Despair, Our cowardice, it blooms ; or haply warred Against the primal beast in us, and flung ; Or cleaving mists of Sorrow, left it starred Above self-pity slain : or it was Prayer First taken for Life's cleanser ; or the tongue Spake for the world against this heart ; or rings Old laughter, from the founts of wisdom sprung ; Or clap of wing of joy, that was a throb From breast of Earth, and did no creature rob : 446 0DE8 These quickening live. Bnt deepest at her springs, Bloat filial, is an eye to love her young. And had we it, still see with it, alive Is our lost garden, flower, bird and hive. Blood of her blood, aim of her aim, are then Tin' green-robed and grey-crested sons of men: She tributary to her aged restores The living in the dead ; she will inspire Faith homelier than on the Yonder shores, Abhorring these as mire, Uncertain steps, in dimness gropes, With mortal tremours pricking hopes, And, by the final Bacchic of the lusts Propelled, the Bacchic of the spirit trusts : A fervour drunk from mystic hierophants ; Not utterly misled, though blindly led, Led round fermenting eddies. Faith she plants In her own firmness as our midway road : Which rightly Youth has read, though blindly read; Her essence reading in her toothsome goad; Spur of bright dreams experience disenchants. But love we well the young, her road midway Tin' darknesses runs consecrated clay. 1 1 spite our feeble hold on this green home, And the vast outer strangeness void of dome, Shall we be with them, of them, taught to feel, Up to the moment of our prostrate fall, The life they deem voluptuously real, Is more than empty echo of a call, Or shadow of a shade, or swing of tides; As brooding upon age, when veins congeal, odes 447 Grey palsy nods to think. With us for guides, Another step above the animal, To views in Alpine thought are they helped on. Good if so far we live in them when gone ! And there the arrowy eagle of the height, Becomes the little bird that hops to feed, Glad of a crumb, for tempered appetite To make it wholesome blood and fruitful seed. Then Memory strikes on no slack string, Nor sectional will varied Life appear : Perforce of soul discerned in mind, we hear Earth with her Onward chime, with Winter Spring. And ours the mellow note, while sharing joys No more subjecting mortals who have learnt To build for happiness on equipoise, The Pleasures read in sparks of substance burnt; Know in our seasons an integral wheel, That rolls us to a mark may yet be willed. This, the truistic rubbish under heel Of all the world, we peck at and are rilled. VERSES penetration and trust I rfLEEK as a lizard at round of a stone, The look of her heart slipped out and in. Sweet on her lord her soft eyes shone, As innocents clear of a shade of sin. ii He laid a finger under her chin, His arm for her girdle at waist was thrown : Now, what will happen and who will win, "With rne in the fight and my lady lone ? in He clasped her, clasping a shape of stone ', Was fire on her eyes till they let him in. Her breast to a God of the day beams shone, And never a corner for serpent sin. IV Tranced she stood, with a chattering chin ; Her shrunken form at his feet was thrown : At home to the death my lord shall win, When it is no tyrant who leaves me lone ! NIGHT OF FEOST IX MAY With splendour of a silver day, A frosted night had opened May: And on that plumed and armoured night, As one close temple hove our wood, Its border leafage virgin white. Remote down air an owl hallooed. The black twig dropped without a twirl; The bud in jewelled grasp was nipped; The brown leaf cracked a scorching curl ; A crystal off the green leaf slipped. Across the tracks of rimy tan, Some busy thread at whiles would shoot; A limping minnow-rillet ran, To hang upon an icy foot. In this shrill hush of quietude, The ear conceived a severing cry. Almost it let the sound elude, When chuckles three, a warble shy, im hazels of the garden came, Near by the crimson-windowed farm. They laid the trance on breath and frame, A prelude of the passion-charm. VERSES 451 Then soon was heard : not sooner heard Than answered, doubled, trebled, more, Voice of an Eden in the bird Renewing with his pipe of four The sob : a troubled Eden, rich In throb of heart : unnumbered throats Elung upward at a fountain's pitch, The fervour of the four long notes, That on the fountain's pool subside, Exult and ruffle aud upspring : Endless the crossing multiplied Of silver and of golden string. There chimed a bubbled underbrew With witch-wild spray of vocal dew. It seemed a single harper swept Our wild wood's inner chords and waked A spirit that for yearning ached Ere men desired and joyed or wept. Or now a legion ravishing Musician rivals did unite In love of sweetness high to sing The subtle song that rivals light ; From breast of earth to breast of sky : And they were secret, they were nigh : A hand the magic might disperse ; The magic swung my universe. Yet sharpened breath forbade to dream, "Where all was visionary gleam ; "Where Seasons, as with cymbals, clashed ; And feelings, passing joy and woe, 452 VERSES Churned, gurgled, spouted, Intel-flashed, Nor either was the one we know: Nor pregnant of the heart contained In us were they, that griefless plained, That plaining soared ; and through the heart Struck' to one note the wide apart: — A passion Burgent from despair; A paining bliss in fervid cold; ( Iff the last vital edge of air, Leap heavenward of the lofty-souled, For rapture of a wine of tears ; As had a star among the spheres Caught up our earth to some mid-height Of double life to ear and sight, She giving voice to thought that shines Keen-brilliant of her deepest mines ; While steely drips the rillet clinked, And hoar with crust the cowslip swelled. Then was the lyre of earth beheld, Then heard by me: it holds me linked; Across the years to dead-ebb shores I stand on, my blood — thrill restores. But would I conjure into me Those issue notes, I must review What serious breath the woodland drew; The low throb of expectancy; How the white mother-muteness pressed On leaf and meadow-herb; how shook, Nigh speech of mouth, the sparkle-crest Seen spinning on the bracken-crook. THE TEACHING OF THE NUDE A Satyr spied a Goddess iu her bath, Unseen of her attendant nymphs ; none knew. Forthwith the creature to his fellows drew, And looking backward on the curtained path, He strove to tell ; he could but heave a breast Too full, and point to mouth, with failing leers : Vainly he danced for speech, he giggled tears, Made as if torn in two, as if tight pressed, As if cast prone; then fetching whimpered tunes For words, flung heel and set his hairy flight Through forest-hollows, over rocky height. The green leaves buried him three rounds of moons. A senatorial Satyr named what herb Had hurried him outrunning reason's curb. II 'T is told how when that hieaway unchecked, To dell returned, he seemed of tempered mood : Even as the valley of the torrent rude, The torrent now a brook, the valley wrecked. In him, to hale him high or hurl aheap, Goddess and Goatfoot hourly wrestled sore ; Hourly the immortal prevailing more : [54 VERSES Till one hot noon saw Mclil us poop From thicket-sprays to where his lull-blown dame, In circle by tbe lusty friskers gripped, Laughed the showered rose-leaves while her limbs were stripped. She beckoned to our Satyr, and he came. Then twirled she mounds of ripeness, wreath of arms. His hoof kicked up the clothing for such charms. BEEATH OF THE BEIAR O briar-scents, on yon wet wing Of warm South-west wind brushing by, You mind me of the sweetest thing That ever mingled frank and shy : When she and I, by love enticed, Beneath the orchard-apples met, In equal halves a ripe one sliced, And smelt the juices ere we ate. ii That apple of the briar-scent, Among our lost in Britain now, Was green of rind, and redolent Of sweetness as a milking cow. The briar gives it back, well nigh The damsel with her teeth on it; Her twinkle between frank and shy, My thirst to bite where she had bit. EMPEDOCLES TTk leaped. With none to hinder, Of Aetna's fiery scoriae In the next vomit-shower, made he A more peculiar cinder. And this great Doctor, can it be, He left no saner recipe For men at issue with despair? Admiring, even his poet owns, While noting his fine lyric tones, The last of him was heels in air! ii Comes Reverence, her features Amazed to see high Wisdom hear, With glimmer of a faunish leer, One mock her pride of creatures. Shall such sad incident degrade A stature casting sunniest shade ? Reverence ! let Reason swim; Each life its critic deed reveals ; And him reads Reason at his heels, If heels in air the last of him ! TO COLONEL CHAELES (Dying General C.B.B.) An English heart, my commandant, A soldier's eye you have, awake To right and left ; with looks askant On bulwarks not of adamant, Where white our Channel waters break. ii Where Grisnez winks at Dungeness Across the ruffled strip of salt, You look, and like the prospect less. On men and guns would you lay stress, To bid the Island's foemen halt. in While loud the Year is raising cry At birth to know if it must bear In history the bloody dye, An English heart, a soldier's eye, Eor the old country first will care. VERSES IV And how stands she, artillerist, Among tlif vapours waxing dense, With cannon charged '■' 'Tis hist! and hist! And now she screws a gouty list, And now she counts to clutch her pence. With shudders chill as aconite, The couchant chewer of the cud "Will start at times in pussy fright Before the dogs, when reads her sprite The streaks predicting streams of blood. VI She thinks they may mean something ; thinks They may mean nothing : haply both. "Where darkness all her daylight drinks, She fain would find a leader lynx, Not too much taxing mental sloth. VII Cleft like the fated house in twain, One half is, Arm ! and one, Retrench! Gambetta's word on dull MacMahon: 'The cow that sees a passing train : ' So spies she Russian, German, French. vekses 459 VIII She ? no, her weakness : she unbraced Among those athletes fronting storms I The muscles less of steel than paste, Why, they of nature feel distaste For flash, much more for push, of arms. IX The poet sings, and well know we, That ' iron draws men after it.' But towering wealth may seem the tree Which bears the fruit Indemnity, And draw as fast as battle's fit, If feeble be the hand on guard, Alas, alas ! And nations are Still the mad forces, though the scarred. Should they once deem our emblem Pard Wagger of tail for all save war ; — XI Mechanically screwed to flail His flanks by Presses conjuring fear;' A money-bag with head and tail ; — Too late may valour then avail ! As you beheld, my cannonier, -WO ykkses xii When with the staff of Benedek, On the plateau of Koniggratz, You saw below that wedgeing speck; Foresaw proud Austria rammed to wreck, Where Chlum drove deep in smoky jets. February 1887. ENGLAND BEFORE THE STOEM The day that is the night of days, "With cannon-fire for sun ablaze, We spy from any billow's lift ; And England still this tidal drift ! Would she to sainted forethought vow A space before the thunders flood, That martyr of its hour might now Spare her the tears of blood. II Asleep upon her ancient deeds, She hugs the vision plethora breeds, And counts her manifold increase Of treasure in the fruits of peace. What curse on earth's improvident, When the dread trumpet shatters rest, Is wreaked, she knows, yet smiles content As cradle rocked from breast. lo- VERSES III She, impious to the Lord of Hosts, The valour of her offspring boasts, Mindless that now on laud and main His heeded prayer is active brain. IS'o more great heart may guard the home, Save eyed and armed and skilled to cleave Yon swallower wave with shroud of foam, We see not distant heave. IV They stand to be her sacrifice, The sons this mother flings like dice, To face the odds and brave the Fates ; As in those days of starry dates, When cannon cannon's counterblast Awakened, muzzle muzzle bowled, And high in swathe of smoke the mast Its fighting rag outrolled. TARDY SPRING Now the North wind ceases, The warm South-west awakes ; Swift fly the fleeces, Thick the blossom-flakes. Now hill to hill has made the stride, And distance waves the without end : Now in the breast a door flings wide ; Our farthest smiles, our next is friend. And song of England's rush of flowers Is this full breeze with mellow stops, That spins the lark for shine, for showers ; He drinks his hurried flight, and drops. The stir in memory seem these things, Which out of moistened turf and clay, Astrain for light push patient rings, Or leap to find the waterway. 'T is equal to a wonder done, Whatever simple lives renew Their tricks beneath the father sun, As though they caught a broken clue : So hard was earth an eyewink back ; But now the common life has come, The blotting cloud a dappled pack, The grasses one vast underhum. 464 VBB8E8 A City clothed in snow and soot, With lamps lor day in ghostly rows, Breaks to the scene of hosts afoot, The river that reflective flows : And there did fog down crypts of street Play spectre upon eye and mouth : — Their faces are a glass to greet This magic of the whirl for South. A burly joy each creature swells With sound of its own hungry quest ; Earth has to fill her empty wells, And speed the service of the nest ; The phantom of the snow-wreath melt, That haunts the farmer's look abroad, Who sees what tomb a white night built, Where flocks now bleat and sprouts the clod. For iron Winter held her firm ; Across her sky he laid his hand ; And bird he starved, he stiffened worm ; A sightless heaven, a shaven land. Her shivering Spring feigned fast asleep, The bitten buds dared not unfold : We raced on roads and ice to keep Thought of the girl we love from cold. But now the North wind ceases, The warm South-west awakes, The heavens are out in fleeces, And earth's green banner shakes. EPITAPHS M. M. Who call her Mother and who calls her Wife Look on her grave and see not Death but Life. THE LADY C. M. To them that knew her, there is vital flame In these the simple letters of her name. To them that knew her not, be it but said, So strong a spirit is not of the dead. J. C. M. A fountain of our sweetest, quick to spring In fellowship abounding, here subsides : And never passage of a cloud on wing To gladden blue forgets him ; near he hides. 4GG uriTAriis ISLET THE DACHS Our Islet out of Helgoland, dismissed From his quaint tenement, quits hates and loves. There lived with us a wagging humourist In that hound's arch dwarf -legged on boxing-gloves. GORDON OF KHARTOUM Of men he would have raised to light he fell : In soul he conquered with those nerveless hands. His country's pride and her abasement knell The Man of England circled by the sands. THE EMPEROR FREDERICK OF OUR TIME With Alfred and St. Louis he doth win Grander than crowned head's mortuary dome : His gentle heroic manhood enters in The ever-flowering common heart for home. EPITAPHS 467 THE YEAE'S SHEDDINGS The varied colours are a fitful heap : They pass in constant service though they sleep ; The self gone out of them, therewith the pain : Read that, who still to spell our earth remain. NOTES THEODOLINDA The legend of the Iron Crown of Lombardy, formed of a nail of the true Cross by order of the devout Queen Theodolinda, is well known. In this dramatic song she is seen passing through one of the higher temptations of the believing Christian. PHAETHON The Galliambic Measure Hermann (Elementa Doctrinae Melricae), after citing lines from the Tragic poet Phrynichus and from the Comic, observes : Dixi supra, Phrvnichorum versus videri puros Ionicos esse. Id si verum est, Galliambi non alia re ab his differunt, quam quod ana- clasin, contractionesque et solutiones recipiunt. Itaque versus Gal- liambicus ex duobus versibus Anacreonteis constat, quorum secundus catalecticus est, hac forma : \J^/ r I t 1 f ww 1 1 WW w Ca3 i t 1 w WW w 1 t ww W 1 I w*^ w w The wonderful Attis of Catullus is the one classic example. A few lines have been gathered elsewhere. Lord Tennyson's Boadict a rides over many difficulties and is a noble poem. Catullus makes general use of the variant second of the above metrical forms : Mihi januae frequentes, mihi limina tepida: With stress on the emotion ; Jam, jam dolet quod egi, jam jamque poenitet. A perfect conquest of the measure is not possible in our tongue. For the sake of an occasional success in the velocity, sweep, volume of the line, it seems worth an effort ; and, if to some degree service- able for narrative verse, it is one of the exercises of a writer which readers may be invited to share. University of California, Los Angeles L 005 830 915 4 ^SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY AA 000 376 257