JC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY Ex Libris C. K. OGDEN ' THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES PRAETERITA. PRAETERITA. WI LLI AM LAN CAST ER . imb Cambribqi ; MAC MILL AN AND CO. (f ambrxbne : PR 4540 "P88 CONTENTS. Page A Renunciation . . . . . i Kneel not and leave me .... 3 Retrospect . . ... 5 Aurora ...... 8 He may who can . . . . .n Sigh, heart, break not .... 13 Too fair to last . . . . .14 The Prodigal . . . . . 16 The isolation of selfish prosperity . . .17 The cheerful age . . . . . 19 Echo, cloud, and breeze . . . .22 A frosty day .... 24 At last ...... 26 The power of interval . . . 27 Hyperbole ...... 28 An Invocation ..... 29 Dithyramb ...... 30 A Ballad . An Evening by the fire vi CONTEXTS. Page Philoctete- ..... 39 Semele . . . . . .44 Saul ...... 49 Minos .... 54 A Wisp of Epic. .... 59 A Farewell .... .72 The Answer ..... 75 SuNNl-irs : The crocus, .snow-drop, primrose, violet . 79 Is it because the Summer is so nigh . So Why should we loiter on this wavering sand . Si Rosy delight that changest day by day . 82 When the day glooms my passion is at rest . 83 I look'd across the rivet for the morn 84 I questioned with the amber daffodils . . 85 If ever, in the waste of time unborn . 86 My heart is vcxt with this fantastic fear . 87 O tliou rich vision, thou ha.-t plunged thi> da\ Sweet, thou art gone and I must write a won! 89 Record is nothing, and the hero great . 90 Raise thro' the tempest thine immortal eyes . 91 She came, the fire of heaven upon her brow Lives that are patch 'd of trifles with no thread Ti in the mental man, as with his growth . The Wounded King ..... A Future . . ... lie wise in time CONTENTS. vii Page At Evening . 102 A Lament . . ... 103 Stanzas ...... 104 Allowance ...... 105 A Song ...... 107 A Sketch at Evening .... 108 Fragment of an Allegory . . . iio The Old Warrior . . . . .114 The Arcadian Shepherd . . . . 119 > ; . A RENUNCIATION. T IGHT of love and cold of brain, Shall I trust thy tears, Linking hand on hand again I In untutor'd years Ah, but this was sweet. Ripe lips are not venom-free, Gentle eyes, nor virgin zone. Thy snow-tint that dazzled me, Snows that cover stone. Peace, have done, 'tis well. r, A RENUNCIATION. Light elsewhere thy marsh-wisp's flame, There are fools will drown : Wrong is proud : lure other game ; T have sat me down. Let the times roll round. Wearied of thy glossy smile, Patching faith from flaw, Cancel false and warrant guile : Bonds are lath and straw ! I have done with thee. Plough the rock and reap the sand, Wear thy sickly smiles for gain, Blight the lips that touch thy hand, Till thy withered lips in vain Lisp unheeded lies. KNEEL NOT AND LEAVE ME. T/^ NEEL not and leave me : mirth is in its grave. True friend, sweet words were ours, sweet words decay. Believe, the perfume once this violet gave Lives lives no more though mute tears answer "nay." Break off delay ! Dead, Love is dead ! Ay, cancelled all his due. We say he mocks repose we cannot tell Close up his eyes and crown his head with rue, Say in his ear, Sweet Love, farewell ! farewell ! A last, low knell. 4 KNEEL NOT AND LEA VE ME. Forbear to move him. Peace, why should we stay] Go back no more to listen for his tread. Resume our old calm face of every day : Not all our kneeling turns that sacred head Long dear, long dead ! And go thou forth without one thought before : Loss to remain and wisdom to begone So make this wise heart stranger and still more To teach us severed ways and dull our moan. Go forth alone ! RETROSPECT. T F in yonder simple time We have pondered on a face, Draining out a poison'd wine From the lips of first embrace ; If with hot cheek and low breath We have coined a mint of vows, Binding for an amaranth wreath, Half-shed roses on our brows ; Till the cunning time's recoil All the sacred dream destroys, And resuming self must soil Vengeful its memorial joys. Holding light our richer hour, Half in envy, half in craft ; Sullen-weary at the flower Withered on its autumn shaft. Dribbling o'er the fleeted time, Fancied rapture, fancied woes,- Drawling like a ribald rhyme In a ballad-monger's nose, Tell the boys, and make disdain Where the canker'd thought has trod Crushing in with tainted feet Veil and shrine of that still (Jod Loved of youth, and seal'd with fear In the secret-warded breast, Haled with mock or shallow jeer From the haven of its rest. RETROSPECT. Better hoard our hearts from love Narrow'd in from burning tears At its taste a noisy drove, Traitors in the after-years. AURORA. T)Y the primrose bank and meadow, Rippling curls, rare feet in shadow. Whither, sweet, away ? Listen, rise and follow lightly, Wind the fluttering fingers tightly ; Greet thee, love, to-day. Young and lonely keep no measure. Mint of youth is current treasure, Age but dross and scorn. Many sweet mouths are not tasted, Sweetest kisses won and wasted, Hour and year foresworn. A URORA. When the ripe hour whispers ' reap,' Turning towards that loveless sleep Who would sourly say, ' Fresh cheeks wear not weeping stain. Love is spoil, and wedded pain Taint their rose away.' Answer, love, "though love's best sweet, Like an angel's glorious feet, Flash and pass no more,' Answer, sweet, " love may not last, But the perfume of its past Lives in riper store." Wavering sets the longest noon : Winter crowns the fiercest June, Summer melts the snow. Eyes can answer, hands as well, Rusting years unlearn their spell : Answer, dearest, so ) AURORA. Fortune plays not twice the giver : Leave it once and lose it ever. As we speak 'tis flown. Grasp it with no palsied hand, Bend the years at thy command, Now and thrice thine own. HE MAY WHO CAN. AX TE are wise, the world is old, Antic changes shift and hold, Boys will swear and maids will weep, Weej) and smile again. Songs are for an April breast, Feathers for a gleaming crest, They may wake that need no sleep, Sing, that feel no pain. In the race youth's limbs are fleetest, And a boy's mouth kisses sweetest ; Rusty-tooth and iron-grey, Mope beside thy fire. HE MA Y WHO CAN. Changes push us on our grave ; Can we keep the orts we have 1 ? Ours is but a waning day, What should we desire ? SIGH, HEART, BREAK NOT. OIGH, heart, break not. Sky-lark, wake not, Till my love be wakened and away, Till his kisses, fresh as summer, Wake ere the roses wake at opening day. Stay thy warm gleam, amber morn-beam, While his warm mouth on my cheek will stay. Calm seas, breathe not sweet clay-April : Calm eyes, sleep not, till ye must away. My fleet new love, my sweet true dove, Art thou gone for ever or a day 1 111 wind blow not, ill change grow not : Go thy gate, but be not long away. TOO FAIR TO LAST. T OVE of love, and light of light, Love has limit of delight, Dream and dream, sweet child, again, Here is no unrest. Love hath set our moist lips fast, Kiss one kiss, the longest last. What tho' weeping -ripe, my girl, Smile thro' rainy eyes. Summer from the bough has past, And the shreds of autumn cast : What, dear heart, if love be low Under foot as soon > TOO FAIR TO LAST. 15 We have had a tender suit, Lovely words are breath and mute, Still'd with tears in richest noon. Gathered to the dead. Kiss and touch my hand, and part : Sighs are farewell of the heart. Dream a moment in thy joy, Wake a world of years. THE PRODIGAL. HPHE scath of sin is on my brow like lead. The draff of swine is on my lips for bread. Father, I know thy glory is not dead. I will arise. The servants in thy house are cloth'd and fed Full and to spare. I perish here for bread. My sin hath cloth'd thy presence with such dread, I may not rise. Mine, mine the guilt, all trespass deep and red : Thine, thine the mercy on this fallen head. Naked I come, yet thou shall give me bread. 1 will arise. THE ISOLATION OF SELFISH PROSPERITY. r ~PO strive is something, yet to win is more. The crowned angels from their state declined ; And traitor pride shall make the nations blind In days to come as in the days of yore. To win is something, but content is more. The brooks, the fountains, and the crystal meres Are things forbidden in the restless ears Of Care ; he tastes no beauty in the shore Hung with the morning, for his dreams are sere : And, though he seat him on a throne of gold, He cannot hear the birds sing as of old ; And all his earlier self is grown a fear. THE ISOLATION OF SELFISH PROSPERITY. His eyes are on the forward region spent : The past let fools repair, and girls regret, And first-love dreams leave dotards' eyelids wet ; Such things are gone. He cares not how they went. Canker' d with self and his false Mammon -King, He boasts at large, " I am not as my race, With me men's petty loves, dreams, ends give place To high indifference ; hours can never ring Love changes, matter for a neighbour's sneer, On my mail'd breast : let boys and girls go whine The shed rose-leaves of passion deem'd divine. I am not of their weakness, shall I fear ( THE CHEERFUL AGE. A /TORE wrinkles score my brow than frowns, Uncheck'd my merry vein, For age, that gives us balder crowns, Makes ripe the under brain. Of something yet they rob us still These years that make us wise, For maids grow fair as then they were, But we look with other eyes. And what was music to our youth Is discord to our age : The songs we loved as vivid truth Are tinsell'd verbiage. 20 THE CHEERFUL AGE. We cannot mend the race of things That jostles towards solution : 'Twill see us out thro' falls and springs, One stride more near conclusion. There's sorrow if we earth it out, But ease if we prefer it. Then leave the thorn and pluck the rose, And next thy bosom wear it. O'er leagues of coast the rough foam flings There still are quiet havens ; If o'er our head one sky-lark sings We heed not twenty ravens. This world is in a slippery state, And men are fools to grumble, If, like a boy who learns to skate, They marvel at a tumble. THE CHEERFUL AGE. But wisdom this and wisdom that, And every man her master, While only hearts of season'd proof Can weather life's disaster. Can find youth sped and bid him speed, Nor question out the reason ; Then cheerly raise the latch to age, A quest, tho' sour, in season. ECHO, CLOUD, AND BREEZE. CHO, hast thou heard my love go by, Hath her sweet breath touch'd in ecstasy Thine old voice to answer silverly ? Streamlets tinkle at her rosy feet, Fountains dimple back her glancing sweet, Daisies whisper, 'take us, dove, with thee.' Idle cloudlet brooding near the sun, Float and touch the hill-crowns one by one, Tell me, is she here or is she there I Bend thy melting eyes on slope and rock. Seek her thro' the heaths, the climbing ilock : Never hast thou sought a thing so fair. ECHO, CLOUD, AND BREEZE. Breeze, that falling catchest on the mere, Swallow-like to ruffle there and here Freckling silver o'er the smooth dark creek, Hast them felt the flutter of her gown, Caught aside one little ringlet brown, Tasted, passing, at the dainty cheek < Reedy echoes from the ambling rill, Sleepy cloud, come faster. Voices chill Whisper rainless thro' the fresh-lipp'd wind. Echo, cloud, and breeze, by down or dale, Aid my restless eyes ; for, find or fail, Seek the harder and the soonest find. A FROSTY DAY. T^ROST-flowers pattern round the latch, Cloud nor breeze dissolves the clime. Field-grass wears a silver thatch, Every paling edged with rime, When the waves are solid floor, And the clods are iron-bound, And the boughs are crystall'd hoar, And the red leaf nail'd a-ground. When the fieldfare's flight is slow, And a rosy vapour rim. Now the sun is small and low, Belts along the region dim. A FROSTY DAY. 25 When the ice-crack flies and flaws, Shore to shore, with thunder shock, Deeper than the evening daws, Clearer than the village clock. When the rusty blackbird strips, Bunch by bunch, the coral thorn, And the pale day-crescent dips New to heaven a slender horn. AT LAST. ~\ \ TE toss and twist upon a restless bed ; Sleep comes at last. Our Love denies, and yet denies again, But yields at last. The apple grows and ripens many days, But falls at last. And we are riped with joy, and marr'd with tears, But end at last .' THE POWER OF INTERVAL. A FAIR girl tripping out to meet her love Trimm'd in her best, fresh as a clover-bud An old crone leaning at an ember' d fire, Short-breath'd in sighs and mumblings to herself- And all the interval of stealing years To make that this, and one by one detach Some excellent condition, till Despair Faint at the vision, sadly, fiercely blinds Her burning eyes on her forgetful hands. HYPERBOLE. "D IPE on the eyelids as a precious dream, Soft on the lip as lips of coral seam, Sweet on the ear as an imagined stream Threading between the full woods and the moon. Mellow as harvest song at steamy noon, Lovely as cuckoo's voice that cometh soon, Drowsy as music of the branch in June, And tremulous linnet-pipe by broom or thorn. Or shall I search the silver rose of morn. The royal fisher's wing, the fleecy lawn Of mountain lamb, all hues in nature born, To find my Love's compare or deck her grace 1 ? DITHYRAMB. 31 Merry sets his mellow life Who, where rusty shocks are rife, Whistles off his weary load Wearing to each year. Sours he not with friendship's treason. Or some sweet love strange in season, Ripe in manhood, ripe in heart, Whole and sound and clear. A BALLAD. T KNOW not how I loved at all ; Your presence in surprise Came on me like a trumpet call, And in a bright disguise ; O o A soldier in a burnish'd sheen Of scale and listed blue, With jangling armour and a mien Of conquest as your due. The rose of youth upon your face, My name upon your lips, The rippling trees, the lonely place. The sails of harbour ships, A BALLAD. The time and all so fairy-sweet, - That at each word we did say, I felt the time for love so meet That love I gave away. How fair the trailer's ruddy pride Blazed out on cottage eaves, How sweet when all the country-side Shows like a wood of sheaves. How dear in middle harvesting The reapers roundel clear, Where shakes the field-lark out its \virn From threaded gossamere. Sweet fickle Love, you grow for some, And grip them to their grief, As sudden as the red-wings come At the full fall of the leaf. 34 A BALLAD. And sudden as the swallows go That muster for the sea, You pass away before we know, And wounded hearts are we. "Pis not that, love, in sentence trim You reel off loving talk, When pensive by the river brim With hand on hand we walk. It is not that you press my arm, Or soften voice and eyes, Or rivet hand, and glibly warm The fervour of your sighs. Who tells true heart from feigning deep, How crafty-wise were he, He knows the hill -side sheep from sheep The mountain -bee from bee. A BALLAD. 35 We take on trust, forsooth we must, And reckon as we see ; But, O my love, if false thou prove, What recks all else to me ! AN EVENING BY THE FIRE. frogs pipe out in dripping dykes, And autumn wolds are sallow : When pigeons leave the stubble spikes, And homeward oxen bellow : And singing under greying blue, The ditcher and his fellow Come drenched knee-deep from pasture-dew, And foot -clogged from the fallow : The black frost in the white frost's wake May nip the marsh-buds yellow, And kindling under branch and brake The raying sunset mellow : AN EVENING BY THE FIRE. Thro' branch and towards the trysting style Where skims each mustering swallow ; As sits the lass to rest awhile, Strolls up some sheepish fellow. Our sun-track draws tonight as this That floods the level fallow : Yon maiden's cheek is ripe to kiss, But ours are lank and hollow. Our youth is gone, like this fair day, Our rusty bones shall follow, And rest they say, for heads of gray. Comes on a churchyard pillow. So runs it well, so runs it ill, What must be we must swallow. We'll keep a merry heart up still, Unsered, fresh, young, and callow. 38 AN EVENING BY THE FIRE. Draw closer to the blaze, old friend, Our ale is stiff and mellow. We have not much more light to spend, Two guttered ends of tallow. But I will grasp thee by the hand, What tho' thy cheek be yellow, I'll swear that thro' the whole broad land Ne'er walked a better fellow. PHILOCTETES. OILENCE on silence treads at each low mom. Pain and new pain, some glimpse of painless sleep, And waking to old anguish and new day : Blasted of glory, sundered from my kind : My hearth, my realm, the lips that love me, lost : So runs it. 'Tis some courage to keep life Where life is worthless, and on feeble stay To dwell in hope of better till we die. I hate this island steep, this seam of beach. This ample desolation of gray rock Man tills not : and man reaps not, woe is me ! No voices, save stress-landed mariners Leaning in ring with eyebrow -level wrists 40 PHILOCTE TES. To watch the scummy rack and buzzing waves, Toss me a word in pity : stare and pass Grinding a clumsy jest or surly sneer. Yet in their talk I gather waifs and strays Of that great Trojan battle how it goes ; Of beardless youths who gain down heaven with deeds, And all the noise and turmoil of the thing, Deed quenching deed, and echo's swollen boast, While I am rotting here and touch no praise. Ye have done well to leave me. 'Tis most wise, And friendly too, expedient, generous : Why this is bounty's crown ; I have deserved No less than a sick hound : full thanks for all. My kings and comrades, ye are wise and brave, As wise as brave, and brave your chiefest voice Of foxy Ithaca : 'twas nobly said, " Pack out the carrion on this leeward Isle. We need no wounded leaders, no, nor fear. His men and ships are needed ; they sail on : PIHLOCTETES. 41 They cannot heal him, and our need is great." Why, man, this is true valour and no theft : I could not quit thee, and kings cannot steal. But if I meet thy foxship afterdays, With half an arm to raise and half a spear, I'll mar that serpent face and false gray smile, And leave thy surgy rock without a king. Alas, alas, how mean a thing am I To rail and threat and bluster like a God. The old pain trembles thro' me marrow -deep, A quivering mass of earth, than earth no more, Earth gifted with a cunning power of pain, Full knowledge of its fall and loathsomeness, Craving for enterprize in impotence, Some little sleep and all the rest a pain Shall such a thing have pride or hoard revenge \ I loathe the glancing sameness of this brine, Its hissing suck of waves, its equal face. [ loathe the toss of sails, the pass of clouds, 42 PHIL O C TE TES. The white wings curving on the tawny rocks, The evening and the dawning and the day. We thrive by action, I am chained from all, And I forget the pleasure of this earth, Of all but pain and slow time dispossess'd. Yet is there hope ; slow hope yet comfort sure, I had forgot it in my wrath and pain. Is there no oracle 1 ? Troy cannot fall. I guard thine arrows, Heracles divine, And Troy falls not without them year on year. I hoard them as the marrow of my bones, Sweet nurses to revenge. Oh, fate is just. Ye reap, my kings, wound-harvest and much dead, Thinn'd troops, and kingdoms waned to wrack at home, And gloomy faces by a gloomy sea, And firm-braced Troy before, the sponge of toil, And all your warring as an idle dream. I can abide my hour it is so sure, PHILOCTETES. 4 I lean on this unstumbling oracle, And nourish hope, till worn with many woes The haught Kings fall in thinking on the wreck They left by Lemnos and the archer hand Once fellowless in Hellas. They shall come, By Zeus I swear it, they shall come in shame, And stand in shame before the man they wrong'd And weeded out as refuse. See, they bend, Pestilent faces crusted in meek smiles, And supple eyes and all the fawn of need : And one mouths out on justice, gratitude, The cause of Hellas. Then another smooths My name with praise, and all the worthy ring Lisp sympathy with dew on glassy cheeks. Sweet oracle, thou climax of revenge, I will wear out my painful coil in joy, Voiceless of all complaining, firm and sure The Gods are just, and compensation comes. SEMELE. ]\/T Y sense is dull. The tremulous evening glows : The weeds of night coast round her lucid edge, Yoked under bulks of tributary cloud. The leaves are shaken on the forest flowers, And silent as the silence of a shrine Lies a great power of sunset on the groves. Grayly the fingered shadows dwell between The reaching chestnut branches. Gray the mask Of twilight, and the bleak unmellow speed Of blindness on the visage of fresh hills. My soul is melted in pale aching dreams, I feign some nearing issue in new time, On which I wait, for which I think and move : A haunting drift that guides me by a glimpse To lovely things and meteor affluence. SEMELE. 45 I wander in my silence, incomplete. My lonely feet are dew'd in chilly flowers, And I am full of fever and alone The cup without its acorn, the brook bed Dry of its stream, the chalice ebb'd of wine, The deep night listening for its rising morn, The droughty plain that sees the rain-cloud pause, And hears the falling drift sing towards its breast. The voice of dreams is sweet upon my brain, Has fed me on thin comfort many a day, Since all my mind was tender, and a child Rich in the girlish impulse of ripe dreams I threw my song upon the wind, or pored On all this glorious nature and its blaze Ineffable, enormous. I could guess The thriving summer toward, as the globe That metes the still year's process, and the edge Of March-days sweetened in warm April's tread Levied the wavering clouds to do him praise, And all their folds were bright against his head. 46 SEMELE. I pondered out the wonder-veiling years, And still I dwelt on light in all my dreams, Some strange great yearning : dim on forest-waves The large eye-blinding radiance sheeted out, And withered up the film of hooded peaks To set their dinted vales with faltering fires : As cloudy hollows claspt in buoyant green Took savour of wood-incense from the drench Of lime-boughs limp with perfume-searching rains, Methought at times the wildered spirit paused In blindness on an edge of glory, faint And trembling. Milky shiverings of cloud Crept in meridian smoothly towards a sea Where evening held in bright her western bars, And all the full blue level glow'd again Under a glowing sky. I speak my soul With words and sign and symbols of weak sound. I cannot clasp the meaning as it lies, I cannot blend with shallow speech my dream. I, reeling from the level of my brain, SEMELE. 47 Would mix with flowery essence, or exchange Life with an amaranth, so look heaven in face A summer thro', and draw the zenith dews Drizzled between the twilights, ere the streak Of morning touch celestial thro' the halls Of Nature, with the echo of a bird, A startled leaflet, and an opening flower. And thus I read the sacred loveliness Of Heaven's clear face, unseen as stars by day, But there no less tho' weak eyes reach them not Till on the vagueness of thin thought there came Substantial impress : on the dreamy mist A presence and a deity behind Concentred yet pervasive. Silent eyes Gave greeting, and, in wordless promise, sign Of imminent revealment, and great lights, Deep harmony and thunders, as the voice Of breakers breaking on low-margin'd seas. Thou all-enfolding ether, thou clear God, Shall I profane thy fair immensity. 48 SEMELE. Or bound thy boundless essence in a name Spoken as men can speak it between lips That tell but half their thought, whose thought is weak ? Thou whom I only guess thro' my desire, A far attainment, inmost prophecy. An instinct and a voiceless oracle, To enter where we would be, and be one ; There, face to face, to touch and be complete, And shed our craving from us like old leaves That grate beside the crowded knots of spring. Come, thou great bliss, I have been patient long. My lonely arms entreat thee from thy state. Come, thro' the vaulted blue a burning sun. Come, as the night comes, fielded round with stars ! My soul is throbbing, as a moonless sea, Flood out thy rich beams full upon her breast ! SAUL. ]\/["Y son, my son, there is no stir of hope. These days are rough, and ere my latest fight The graying twilight blinds the morning's eyes. Deep have I tasted those accursed wells Of disobedience : deeply wasted rule, And made my throne a haven for the deed. Come, come, the proudest soul that ever trod Is pillage merely for some crushing hour, And that is stored for all. I cannot mend, And will not shrink. Fear mends not chance or change. Perchance my doom is ripe and I must fa]]. I murmur not, for I have much endur'd. Nor prosper'd in my sin or in my pride, E 50 SAUL. But fever' d out my heart from shame to shame : Shame is as praise where all is set to fall. I that have dared 10 tamper with the dead. To break the ancient prophet from his sleep, Deliberate in election to foreknow The drift of evil, and made firm my face Beyond the scale of horror, to untear Death and their secrets from the denizens Of his oblivious city, shall I shrink Or bate one inch off purpose till the end ? I stand between the oracles of doom. The wild wind passes on the cloudy banks And raises out an interval of light. This is the day, my soul. This is the day. Shall I sit down and weep ? What help to wee]), What harm to die ? Small profit this my rule : A tiling of custom merely that outgrows The will to move it from us, which removed There lives bevond no comfort in the liyht : S.-l UL. 5 1 But craving, that in realmless abstinence Rivets the ache of loss, where loss is gain To limit old confusions, which of old Raught from my helm the garland of its praise And set my face to this perpetual rest. Could I unlive my trespass, and the doom Of this day's fight, to tread again the ways Of earthly custom, taste smooth hope once more, Be man with men, talk trifles, wake and sleep : Should I be changed ? Small change till I be dead. What years have grained and ringed into the tree Falls not for one night's shaking. I am proud, I cannot take meek eyes and smile upon My shepherd rival. He or I must cease. My realm is narrow for a second King. He prospers as I perish, for his hands Are strengthened and some demon works me down, Else had I crushed this stripling at his sheep. 1 never sought this ruling curse of rule. 52 SAUL. Who shall convince me that I sought to rule? I sinn'd not as T was and sought no higher. How then is this my guilt to fail beneath Unwilling burden ? I have done some wrong. But royal trespass this, and such as Kings Could only sin. The wrong is theirs that chose. They huddled on my rule and I was King. They cannot twit me with an ounce of fear Whenas I led their armies. That at least Is something is this waning of my name. What else is left ? To arm and surely die. It shall be done. 'Tis easier passage straight Where there is turning none and no retreat. Perchance the spirit mock'd me to my doom. It is a lying spirit from its lord Of lies and fire, who steals a holy shape : My sick brain cannot sunder false and true Nay, for I heard his voice and heard my doom, And he that sleeps at Ramah will not lie. SAUL. 53 Give me my sword. Philistia, lo I come ! Glut all your spears upon me. 'Tis more brave To wrestle with a certainty of doom Than to be still in apathy and die. I know the issue. I am set to fall. What need to redden eyes with slavish tears '< I feel the end. I front it and it comes. MINOS. T HAVE framed ray life to ruling, ruling men. This is the next prerogative to Zeus, Who wears the cope of Kingship over Gods, Who metes me out a little lording nook Beside his spacious glory for a time, Until the tale of years disorb my hand, And set a graveward darkness on my brain Decreed to earth, and make my voice a dream. So thou rule on, no wrinkle in thy crown, Zeus, and thy full lips fade not thro' the years. What is more noble in our cloudy day Of shift and error than to nourish peace, And hold the sacred justice of a king With marble purpose firm from day to year, MSA'OS. 55 Wedding the strength of order to our realm : Not less the King shall watch and wait he may Unroot confusion, the blind mole that mines The seat of princes from their solid stay. This is my mark of purpose slowly won. Most slowly : year on year the long years went And won me something nearer. In firm eyes 1 held the wavering beacon. And men came, My councillors, and laughed against my dreams Of truth and right. They said the world was young, Too young to cramp her steps by shackled rule, And crush out man's fierce nature by the square. To portion with one justice friend and slave, Amercing equal penalties between The hands that tugged our battles and the hind Of capture, strangled empire in its germ ; This led a rlush'd sedition at its heels, This rent the key-stone arch of policy, This palsied friendly nerve, this moved the feet 56 MINOS. Of rival armies, numb ingratitude, This made shrewd fighters deal with lazy strokes. But I nor fail'd nor wander'd from my drift, And king it still, unseated by the storm, Calm in the wreck on neighbour thrones, secure, Where others crack'd to core whose root was Wrong. Obedience, Reason, Discipline, Reserve, On these I founded empire as strong hills, That warp not nor are shaken thro' the years. I slept and waken'd till their seed was grown. I watch'd them as the Sun doth watch the Sea, Stretching an arm of glory from the verge To shield her all the morning of his beams. Much have I done : that much is but a brand From that remainder forest which shall fall Before their sturdy pioneers lead on Freedom and Justice and the Golden Age. MINOS. 57 The white sea glimmers thro' the palace shafts. My galleys beat to mainland rich in store, Rich in the wealth that smooths the lives of men And gives them higher natures. Out at sea A scarf of air-mist wavers on the moon. The torrents hold their music, and I scent A riping vintage from the Cretan hills, And harvest on illimitable plains. My people turn to rest secure of wrong, And not one lip but loves me for its sleep. I have lived to great result, have seen my wish Ripen to deed, sole attribute of Gods : Gods only choose the means and grasp the end. For, as in dreams that on some purpose verge We waken ere that purpose, so our ears Shall seldom hear the wind among the boughs Whose seed was ours. I am a man with men. This is unstable glory. I am old, And I, that love my work, must leave my work. 58 MLYOS. The eldest moving life between the suns. I, that have wrestled doom aside to glance An hour upon completion, glance and die. The grave has had full patience. Yet I wee]) To leave my solid toil and this fair land To weaker keeping. Shall this icy thought Comfort my bones, that all my work is wind, This Isle a cry of pirates 1 O my heart ! I hunger not this life as fools desire A selfish dream of food and sleep and lust. I am content. The corner of a mound Is room enough, if I could find a hand Wherein to trust my sceptre, so to sleep. A WISP OF EPIC. /v \ ND the gray King strode fiercely from the board, And wrench'd away and trampled on his crown : But she, the princess, arm'd his neck and clung With quivering lips and dreamy staring eyes. And down the board the level feasters, each And all, one impulse, rose like that long wave When tide-flood takes a river. Vassal peers Enring'd their muttering knots ; but, midmost, knell A knight who bled between his shattered mails. He, reeling from his saddle, sick and blind, Scared thro' the courts with missive, blank as death- Had burst their feast like Pestilence, and cried 60 A WISP OF EPIC. Their frontier army broken, back and edge, In ambush : all its bravest mown away : And, woe the while, their prince the rumour gave Lost in the trammell'd tangle of the slain, Or wounded yet unfound but likelier slain. So all that night the gray King and his child Clomb a high chamber o'er the woods, and watch'd That way their army went by mountains based In shelves of ilex went, but when should come? And, ere heaven's stubborn bar and sable screen Crumbled in purple chains of sailing shower And bared the captive morning in her cell, Their lean hope wasted on the watchers' eyes And fleeted from the impenetrable mask Dead, as the new light lingered. That wan king Leant to each palm a hoary cheek, and sate, His owl-white hairs shed out, his reedy beard Held what he wept and thro' its woof each moan Trembled in vapour, and his lids were set. A WISP OF EPIC. 6 1 But she, an eloquent presence of despair, Drew, regal, all her height : her lordly eyes, Robed in the morning that she sought in vain Beyond the casement, rested on the void Gazing thro' distance : horn and hoof were dumb Between the sightless woods, but darkness held Blind as her soul was darkened. Last, she turned And found the old King moaning in a trance, o o Not wholly wakeful, drowsy in his pain, Mowing and whispering ; and she said, " My Liege, I cannot taste thin morning from the downs. A grieving wind is on the troubled cloud, But here it comes not thro' the woolly mist. A false red dawn hath yonder ridge bestrid To cheat the midnight of her dotard hours : Watch' d morning loiters from the watchers' eyes. No throbbing clarion melts against the wall Of this cool dark : the gray night round is dumb, And ear and eyeball tingle with the strain 62 A WISP OF EPIC. Of void and silence : from the inmost heart Of woodland fails all motion : calm the hills As flaky tossings frozen in nebulous seas. I will not cheat thy comfort that they come. She shook her accents from her as she stood With raised and lucent elbows ; here declined Her rich and languid head against her palms ; Tight fingers counter-knit behind the black And banded hair, convulsive in their close, So strained it in her passion and her pain. Not less the wild expectance in her eyes Refrained their tears, as mute the smooth pure lips Tighten'd in restless workings on the pearl, Barrier of their lost music. So they twain Spake nothing, yet in gloom the old King's eyes Glittered with beaded anguish, for his age Was as an infant's with an honest face Denying not its weakness : and the nails Of his lean fingers grated on his robe A WISP OF EPIC. 63 Crackling the furry velvets, fold on fold, And his vein'd wrists were palsied as they strove Among the foldings, till his voice came low As a weak wind is scared and faint among The heavy clusters of primeval woods, And crisps but never lifts them till the rain Utterly stamp it dead, ' Dissolve and die, My withered brain : the tide is set ; the dust Is on my temples. Empire of dumb Sleep, Thine I am owed and thine I come. The change Is terrorless, my rule a crumbled dream. Look in my face, () daughter, search it well, I live to speak a blind and horrible word, Ay so, as you to hear it : lo ! 'tis said He will return no more and yet no more ! Why so it is, the silent hand takes all. There is no mercy that the flower is fail- But speedier scythes of ambush. What revenge Is there against the inevitable 1 Lift Thy prophet eyes, usurp the right to see 64 A WISP OF EPIC. Harvest of curses on the harmless dead, The vermin dregs of war's encrimson'd cup Spilling confusions on our wholesome land All in this bitter word ' my son is dead !" She moved not as he ended in her calm, She would not weep, she could not comfort him, But at her eyes the chamber spun, and fierce, Fierce as a scathe, the wrestle at her heart Tightens and throbs, or subtler shudders rive The disunited, desolated hands Listless of use and nervelessly disspread, At length she labour d tremulous reply, Passionate answer, and her lips were pale. ' Die not, great heart, unfinish'd ere thy noon Fail not firm star of glory from thy seat Aerial, rapt above our shallow dreams. So many barren things grow fat and thrive And taste no evil all their barren days, That this, our love, can never quench so soon, Whose course was on the shoreless seas of fame. A WISP OF EPIC. 65 His wake one tremulous glory, and full stars Leapt in the rolling amber at his prow. Die and we die : our breath is nothing worth ; We are but shadows moving in Thy will, Thine intercepted radiance makes us be. The empire of thy worship is not dead, But prospers glowing rich in fruit and sign.' And now the broad and sunless vapour- clowns Shook their sloped limbs from coiling haze : behind From cloud to cloud the purple caught, one star Crept to the void before it : ragged lights Struck in the crowded peaks and cloudy zones, And then the full round splendour of the day. Till there was warning mutter d thro' the stems Of storied pines, and trailing drips of yews, Drench'd moistures of all fragrance, where the sound Clung deadened as it leapt from armed feet. They heard it and they started with fierce eves 66 A IVISP OF EPIC. Father and maiden as irresolute, Wearily, scared to face the thing they knew. Wail was there none, and barely any moan ; They on each other gazed, touch'd hands, and went With pause from stair to stair on shivering limbs. And, issuing thro' the column'd archway, stood, Pale in great light and paler from its power. Then from the leaves there wended shield and helm : It seemed the flower of knights with some great wrong Concluded, for no pride was in their tread ; But they crept on like walkers from their sleep, Staring and thronging, knot by knot, they came : And in the midmost core of that dumb band A something propt in slumber on a bier, Or, slumber's sequel, death ; where paced besides Sorrowful lords in frequence with fixt gaze Sward-rooted, shapes of still dismay ; not all The crowded twitters of the tender year. A WISP OF EPIC. 67 The moving vapour lights, the tremulous sheaths Of ardent petals, the glazed under- shades, The free divine excess of such a morn, Could lift one careless eyelid, or give pulse And burnish to their miserable brows. Fast by the portals of that ancient pile They laid their burden down, and bared the face And bared the breast-plate where the spear-head lay Broken, the truncheon on an inch of stave. But all the face seem'd noble, for the Knight Lay with the shadow of an earthly smile Between his severed lips ; the high brow calm, And passing calm the frozen cheek of death. Then the old King cried out and turn'd and sank, Prone reeling all his bulk across the bier. And wildly fmger'd at the dead man's wound, Or cherish'd, vainly pleading, the limp hands : Moaning and whispering out his soul ; and fast 68 // WISP OF EPIC. His moving pupils wandered in a gloom Of eyebrow : Then he bow'cl himself and ceased, Stifled in silence with his wrinkled face And craving touch yet stedfast on the dead. But she his daughter in her glistering hair Moved up and dropt no tears and made to speak, Bound in the calm that shows excessive pain Most awful, and her accents faltered not : ' Come ye thus laden from the shock of spears, Mute faces once heroic, and moist eyes That coped with fame in the fierce sun and glare Of danger blenching nothing. Is this all Ye warrior hands to bring me ? Some far time Shall chronicle upon you full dispraise Deep, bitter, unforgotten in this word " These came unwounded home, but brought their Lord Dead, and forgot due vengeance for the slain." Ye are anorv now : 'tis something ; I would hurl A \VISP OF EPIC. 69 Your recreant footsteps to old fields, and tear The victory from the victors, as Remorse Should stand a flaming demon in your rear Flame-sworded, barring off retreat, till blood Be paid in kind, and this perpetual shame Transfigured to a trophied sign, which bays And myrtle wreath for ever. I have said My bitterness : forgive me. Ye are brave : Your vengeance will not loiter, is most sure. This is my grief that speaks, and not my heart. And now, O brother, thou that hearest not What love I murmur o'er thee, nor the lips Which tell it, but, if thou couldst hear, no sense Could word my inmost sorrow : chilly sleep Hath bound thee as the lichen clasps the rock : Desolate sleep that holds us from the lips We most desire ; the long hour fades the tree, But hard when cruel April plays the game Of autumn in the tender starry green. 70 A WISP OF EPIC. Brother, the full deep look of love is thine, Clouding, and, ere it cloud, the tranquil flower Shall move above thee to the sun, and cup Mirrors of dew, and roof about thy head With whispering undulation. We remain For lonely winters and our hearth is bare ; And homeless home is strangered with a shade, That moves us weeping from familiar doors. Pale brow, pale hand, and sweet unlustrous eyes, Farewell : hereafter, when this memory lives How once you were, be gentle, my great grief, Upon the retrospect, let me endure To tell new days some dwarfish chronicle Of thy triumphal honour, and hold bright The burnish of thy deeds in alien times. Now, once his comrades, raise this fallen length Of all we loved, your leader, ere it fade. And thou, old King, have comfort and arise. ' )i feign some mock of comfort till thih grave A WISP OF EPIC. 71 Close in with rite and ritual of the dead, Then then weep out your measure, frail old eyes.' She said, and raised her trembling father ; they Bent to their burden with no voice and feet Of solemn pacing, two on two they wound Thro' that domed archway, till the place \vas void And very still, save when a hoarse black bell Croak'd out a raven requiem on the slain. A FAREWELL. /~\UR love is dust: the rainbow mist is torn: The old pulse beats, the old eye sees the true : The mirage withers and the sand remains. Our love is worn, and strange thy languid lips, Thy cold arm burns not on my neck, and smooth Those very accents as a frozen marge Whereby the dead flower blackens into dust. Come, we have loved ; 'tis something : let it pass. Shall this endure in man whose breath is change To build itself a careless citadel Safe in the teeth of years, when all things fail Before them ? It is something to enjoy And own the power to taste this sweet of change Xor curse its fading, faded. I accept A FAREWELL. 73 The limit of the illusion with no tear, And, freely gone, I close the door, nor stir One beck to lure it backwards. Strange and sweet Its coming breathed of distant fields : its voice Thro' tremulous meadows with a child's soft hand Led where the crowded Iris of their floor Burst out in burning spring : a mist, a touch, My sense in deep blooms melted out to sleep ; And there I dream 1 d thee lovely and this love Eternal. Till the windy seeds of hail Flapt me awake ; I shuddered : a black wind Search' d bitter clouds for tempest, greenless flats Whence the last herb had starved in blistering shale, A jumbled quarry where the very dust Held frozen-caked in shelf and cups of crag. Come, we have much to breathe for : deed and days Have music still, and life yet moves our veins : 74 A FAKE WELL. And though the garland rose hereafter hang Dishonoured and dispetalled : if our touch Be not to any hand, no lip to ours, This world will turn although we say farewell. THE ANSWER. T^REE, thou art free, rask changeling of the hour : Why then farewell, and all at once farewell : Pass from the hearth of this still breast for aye. What should I speak 1 ? Thou know'st thyself, and I Am darken'd by some fuller birth of smiles. In her sweet hour I dwindle and recede : There, if some thought of our once love intrude. Stray dissonance, between the shrine and heart Of long melodious concords, may it thrill The honey'd sequel to a richer close. If this be well that \\e should greet no more. Hereafter passing with incurious eyes. 76 THE ANSWER. Who held such state of our eternal love, And deem'd, weak fools, that these our hearts were set As near as bud to flower, as babe to breast ; And finish as we finished, fools of change, To shake asunder meanly, at one touch, For always, as an angry balsam seed Leaps from its parent stem on alien winds. I have had some wrong and I shall shed some tears. I speak not of myself: let that go by. We chide not on this melted light that rode In arrogant pitch, soon overborne : new rays Quench' d it like mist and all its heaven was bare. Have I the heart to crush this dream and smile, Nor let one errant thought's memorial flow And shape the stream of what we might have been ? Have I the soul to shield my soul with scorn, THE ANSWER. 77 Like braggart men, the broken dupes of time, Once reaching stars and lords of incident 1 The dark road bends before me where I tread, The arm that stay'd my spring, deserts my fall, And I am lonely in the leafy winds, And very lonely in the wasted year, Grinding November wrecks on gusty skies, And strengthless save one purpose to begone. I rail not on the veering tyrant man, Ape of all change, whose fierce inabstinence Gulps at illusion, as with eager jaw The barr'd fish loves the glitter of a rag. Who, since most changeful of all breathing things, Would rail against the unenduring rocks And make their weather' d constancy his own. Say you we part henceforward, and farewell ? The dumb slow days teach much and may teach thee. Thrive on thy fill and rule the flowering time, 78 THE ANSWER. In stately roses under crowded bloom, Wear down the mutinous echo of this wrong ! I turn, I raise towards fuller heights my eyes, Farewell since thou wilt have it and farewell SOXNE TS. 79 T^HE crocus, snow-drop, primrose, violet, Outrun their tardy brethren to foretell The icy tyrant's limit, and the swell Of buds, the green dilation sudden-set Between the forest arch an arching net, Voiced with the eloquence of secret throats, Vocal by long suspense, in tremulous notes Calling electric Spring. She, nebulous yet, Steams up, a sleepy vapour, from the rills Soughing their ice like broken glass aside Under the warm wind's mouth. Not less her craft Strives at the heart of frozen loams, and fills The pores of nature with her plastic tide From the alp blossom to the miner's shaft. So SONNETS. II. TS it because the summer is so nigh That thou, crush'd heart, hast caught some mystic glow ? Why, numb in tears, dost thou disdain reply, Changed from the level empire of thy woe ? As some poor moth with languid creeping wings, How faded-torn the burnish of thy prime, How mean thy future yoked with meanest things, An heir of desolation to all time. All gentle things with use grow false and sour, The heart is sour when years the cheek deform, The wavering planet of the lovers' bower Burns out the constellation of the storm, And yet one year of kindness from those eyes Would cancel all the wrong time multiplies. SOAWETS. 8 1 III. T "X THY should we loiter on this wavering sand, Training the world at last to hear our will : Why should we thrust our foreheads to its brand And kneel and burn our abject incense still, Serving to rule, dissembling to fulfil ? Let this world-idol grin with idiot shape : Let the wise crowd, in wrestling fervour shrill, Pray to the measured shadow of this ape, And strangle Hope with each accursed prayer. Then, to their wish, like birds that concourse flows, One, a spring thrush, the upmost twig has bent And cracks his heart with piping to the air : Some, for worm banquet stalk as strutting crows Behind the furrows of world government. SONJVE TS. IV. "D OSY delight that changest clay by day From dearest growing to a dearer favour, Whom Thought and Sinew bondsmen to obey, Slave out thy least command and may not waver. My recompense and zenith of reward, Bourn of all effort, thought behind all thinking, Regent of sleep and centre of regard Whereon the wakeful soul will pore unshrinking. I cannot count the phases of this love, Measure its growth or vindicate its reason. I cannot doubt ; the very smile that wove My soul with love withholds me from love's treason. I only know thou art my best delight, Food of sweet thoughts and sum of all things bright. V. A \ THEN the day glooms my passion is at rest, For thou hast nothing of the gloomy hour. But when the face of day is gaudy dressed, I trace thee imaged in each summer flower. I think the earth is glorious, and I know We twain might pace it under glorious stars : To miss this crown of joy, my chiefest woe New rankles sickly thought's half-healing scars. Is the sky soft, and does the resting sun Glow from the undercloud till wood and sky Are glory-mantled 1 Am I not alone ? Let her be near and let the world go by, Pass on with curious ears, and scornful eyes, Or listless looks, a cankered heart's disguise. SONNETS. VI. T LOOK'D across the river for the morn. The clouds came not, the air was very slow, Till on the region past an underglow And scorch' d the glimmering mantle of the dawn. Then one clear star set in a branch of rose Drew in before the river of bold light Foiling the ragged clouds to left and right, To sort a crystal lake of raying glows. I could not rest ; a wilderness of mind Was strong within me ; love and shame and thought Of days behind, at that one instant caught To reason from the mental store-house blind. Last tliou, fair lily head, beyond night's fall Steep'd in warm sleep, sweet central wish of all ! SONNE 7.\. 85 VII. T QUESTION'!} with the amber daffodils, Sheeting the floors of April, how she fared ; Where king-cup buds glowed out between the rills And celandine in wide gold beadlets glared. By pastured brows and swelling hedge-row bowers From crumpled leaves the primrose bunches slip, My hot face roll'd in their faint-scented flowers, I dreamt her rich cheek rested on my lip. All weird sensations of the fervent prime Were like great harmonies, whose touch could move The glow of gracious impulse : thought and time Renewing love with life and life with love. When this old world new-born puts glories on, I cannot think thou never wilt be won. 86 SONNE TS. VIII. TF ever, in the waste of time unborn, An hour shall come when thou shalt curse our meeting ; When ruin'd Love in ashes of self-scorn Smiles a hard smile his own confusion greeting ; An hour when Faith is broken on the wheel, And Hope, self-strangled in her own despair, Sees Memory grinding down with iron heel The small flower-faces that would spring elsewhere ; If then, perchance, with dull and altered eyes, Thou comest to me and sayest "lo thy deed, The temple thou hast shaken how it lies Wasted and bare and broken round with weed"- Ah Love one fault was ours, the fault of change ; The rest is pure ; this poison left us strange. SONNE 7'S. 87 IX. 1\ /TY heart is vext with this fantastic fear, Had I been born too soon or far away. Then had I never known thy beauty, dear, And thou hadst spent on others all thy May. The idle thought can freeze an idle brain Faint at imagined loss of such dear prize ; 1 pore upon the slender chance again, That taught me all the meaning of those eyes. But creeps a whisper with a treason tongue Had'st never sunn'd beneath this maiden's glance Another Love thou hadst as madly sung, For Love is certain but the loved one chance. Deject and doubtful thus I forge quaint fear, But question little, Love, when thou art near. SONNETS. X. f~\ THOU rich vision, thou hast plunged this day After thy dreaming upon discontent, Yearnings that search a rack of dreams, or pray For clouds, or track sweet music where it went. For even if she would stoop, as in the dream Whose sweetness leaves an odour round my brain, Would I accept the offering, though a beam Of heaven disclosed to flood my sense again 1 Nay; for the close of that tumultuous joy, Slain with itself, should make me love her less, Cankering the perfect bloom with mean employ, Finding a sequel of unworthiness, In that which cannot taint and cannot sin, Purer than aught beside this old world in. XL O WEET, thou art gone and I must write a word To tell how I have loved thee, and how clear The memory of thy presence shall record Thy dearest eyes thro' many a lapsing year, The sweetest face that ever maiden wore, The kind true heart, the nameless sympathy, Perfect of flaw rich youth in all its store Dear little thing, I love thee fixedly. Fair little form, how precious every fold Of thy grey dress : each glancing shade how sweet Of movement, from the ringlet-woof of gold To those dear steps and tiny-printed feet. Ah, love, I love thee so, yet my weak praise Thinks with full heart, but speaks in old love-lays. oo SONNE TS. XII. ~O ECORD is nothing, and the hero great Without it ; the vitality of fame Is more than monument or fading state That leaves us but the echo of a name. Rumour, imperial mistress of the time, Is slandered where she feigns no specious lies, Caters no reticence of cringing rhyme, To blow her dust-cloud full on unborn eyes The glory of the shows of gilded shields, Wild music, fluttering blazons, and 'tis all. Lonely the dead men stare on battlefields, Can glory reach them now tho' clarions call ? Some shadow of their onset's broken gleam May yet outlast the pageant and the dream. SONNETS. 91 XIII. T~) AISE thro' the tempest thine immortal eyes, When the sere earth is shaken like a wave ; When the sick racking trees with anguish sighs Tear up their spurry fastenings, as they rave, Branches all wild for aidance. Gird the cloud, Child of the equinox ! unfold thy wings ; Thy brows are moist, and thy fierce hands are loud Snapping the crowns of ancient forest-kings. The pines upon the pine-ridge crash and slide, The cataract has caught them, in a smoke Of rain and mountain -waters : near and wide The double mountain -voice in terror woke. Crash on, frail planet, sad for aye to me ; Sad as my faltering life Avhiri'd on with thee. 92 SOAWETS. XIV. O HE came, the fire of heaven upon her brow, And dared not glance upon the face of day With her meek eyes, as shrinking from the glow Of this rough world, a maiden pure alway. And I who held this miracle of shadows, This pearl of fancy, precious as the dreams Of angels rested in their violet meadows Have known her smiles for lying mirage gleams : And I who saw no taint in this pure snow Too white to harbour near the alien ground, Have touched the surface veil and bared below The poisoned lees of all dishonour found And, trustless where I trusted, flaunt in scorn For trustful men my broken wings forlorn. SOA T NETS. 93 XV. T IVES that are patch'd of trifles with no thread Of purpose, aimless as the days of birds, Spending in no prevision deed and words, Weaklings of chance ; as troops without a head That pause and fear and vanish, when instead These same had crush'd the phalanx in its war Or torn the bastion'd rampant rock and bar And forc'd the very cope of hardihead The paltriness of lives with no beyond, Days roll to months and months result in years, The man no inch the nobler as he nears His problem's end, that puts him from his bond With nature, and no reverence on his wane, His grave forgetful silence or disdain. 94 SONA T ETS. XVI. TF in the mental man, as with his growth, Time alters and repairs with silent feet, And we are fools of Circumstance the cheat, Or drugg'd beneath the hemlock wine of Sloth. We give the fickle years a slavish troth, Withholding not the soul's stability Ring'd round and fenced from mutability. One stream takes all the willing and the loth. Go barren plea perpetual to despair; Inaction numbs the freshness of the powers, Leaves the disease and taints the remedy; Better to dare and fail than not to dare ; Rest is unrest that drowzes jostling hours, Poison sweet sleep that lets occasion by. THE WOUNDED KING. A FRAGMENT. T T E rests and moves not with the moving woods. The sleet-winds cannot bite him from his dream, Nor region thunder tho' it grind the hills Command an eyelash tremble. Rest and dream More awful than the clench of maniac hands, Here in the sweeping hiss that shreds the pines, Here by the driven mere's wild suck and foam, That soughs in shudder under pendulous lips Of turfy rivage, tearing. Not the voice Of the sweet year moving her buds at noon, Nor that full fervour of the spring's desire, Fluttering the foliaged quires, could half unsea! The trancing darkness of those muffled eyes. 96 THE WOUNDED KING. Where is that army now, the pageant war, Whereat the vaulted hills, in cope and crag Seeming to shake, drew clamour like a fear On many a chiding echo? Where are these That seem'd so calm, so strong in their array 1 Wide on the downs by wrinkled tarn and edge Of ghastly moon-light, each in shatter' d mail, The dead men lie, clench' d hands and earnest eyes, Out under night, they have forgot their fame. And fall by fall the mountain crystal sheds A tainted glimmer on from rill to mere. The rainy winds flap past and cease again. The stain'd moon rolls and ceases. Shelterless The raven screaming reels upon the night. It seems the sacred dawn should come no more, No more should clothe the desecrated hills, Serenest, on their crests with timid haze Or rosy glory from the secret sun. Dead are his heroes all, but not their King : THE lVOUi\DED KING. 97 His burning wound yet holds him from the seat Of heroes and the precincts of their rest. His soul on shadows of unresting thought Flits to his bride in anguish where is she 1 There is a palace builded on a mere, And mere-waves sound about it, sweet or shrill As lends the season impulse : and old trees Are sequel to the voices of the waves Behind it : and beyond it heaven is clomb Of some aerial glacier, native rest To pausing thunders when the vale is spread Trembling in trembling vapour fed with sun. A nest for ancient kings to take repose Between the mountains, musing dreams of power. Her lattice gave across the restless floor Of nightly waters paved with faintest gales In shaken lines of splendour and sweet gleam. The moon was very sweet between the trees. H 9>S THE WOUNDED KING. r riie island sedges whisper' d idle dreams, And wakeful fountains wrestled deep in flowers. Whereon she gazed ambrosial from her rest, In parted lawns and samite canopies, Tangled in moonlight, Danae-like, a queen. There is no guess of sorrow in her eyes, As leaning radiant towards the mellow night She hears a bugle throb A FUTURE. r ~PHY lore may be the vocal memories Of idols overthrown, imperial hours : Thy lute may moan perpetual monodies Of desecrated bowers. Thy creed may be to move in solemn shade, With drooping head, a dream upon an earth Of careless creatures proudly disarray'd Of any masking mirth. Thy rest may be a rest we cannot know Beyond sleek envy's scorn and cant of sneers- Pervaded with the secret strength of woe, Yet consecrate to tears. BE WISE IN TIME. T^\ISPOSE thy loves in realms of mellow flowers : Truth is not fooled to make his stay with thee. Thy faith is but the burnish of the hours, And freedom is a nobler thing than love. So let me be Free as the cloud or river to remove. Rosebud, thou art to judge thee by the eyes. Time now thy slave shall be thy master soon To quench of light those oracles of lies, Twin-curtain'd shrines, and jar to barren string The tender tune Thy lips could murmur like the gales of spring. BE WISE IN TIME. 101 Leave leave these restless hours whose spice is dust. So use delight and so command desire ; Exchange thy tinsel oaths for honest trust, Ere twilight mar the fulness of thy day, And shades attire The glowing fields of love in altered gray. AT EVENING. r I "HE pilgrim cranes are moving to their south. The clouds are herded pale and moving slow. One flower is wither' d in the warm wind's mouth, Whereby the gentle waters always flow. O thou pervasive thought of glorious pain, Release me yet at seasons from thy power: Thou other self investing sense and brain, Renew me, or I perish hour by hour. A LAMENT. GENTLE clay and milky cloud, () faint and flowing sea, More fair than human estimate I read the story of your state If you could comfort me ! O gloom of clouds and rocking boughs, Thou fierce and furrow'd sea, Boom round yon isles of dreamy glow, And strow the rose with driven snow, That cannot comfort me. STANZAS. A 17" A IT ay the hours bring night and night brings morn, The old wheel forces on the waning day : Wait, till the pale tomorrow shall be born As little gracious, and in turn decay. Rest is a cloud above the evening sun That sees him set, nor fails in steadfast sphere : Peace is a moon that when the stars are done Without a twinkle sleeps upon a mere : But still to pause, and pausing taste no rest, And still to drowse and droop and know no peace, Is this thy portion, life, thy sense unblest, Tn storm to dote on calm, in pain on ease 1 ALLOWANCE. " ~\ 1 TILT thou be true, God's comfort guide thy brain ; If false, high grace bereave thine after-rest, As sunset anchor'd in the beaming west Is over-dulled to leaden taint again." False is as fate shall choose, not men ordain. True, oft untried, where false is vanquish'd truth. Cold blood is fixt, where fickle heated youth ; Praise one, blame either, or blame both and twain. Shall one assume the scales and judgment-throne, Touching my outward merely with blear eyes, Measure the trespass, hug himself for wise, Tell me the world demands T should atone ! io6 ALLOWANCE. Grave world of flawless virtue, lift the stone. Brave world of mincing honour, dole and deal, And fidget shame out with thy mouth of meal, But let the polish'd reprobate alone. A SONG. r\ FAIREST thou, Tearing the silk-leaved blooms in waywardness, Thy pretty feet upon the smooth-faced flowers, Can I forget To crown thee with the worship of a song'? O fair and sweet, Thou movest in thine harmony among The lavish spring and all her twinkling bowers, Why should I set Thy lyric loveliness to harsher song ' A SKETCH AT EVENING. r I ^HE whip cracks on the plough -team's flank, The thresher's flail beats duller. The round of clay has warm'd a bank Of clouds to primrose colour. And dairy-girls cry home the kine, The kine in answer lowing, And rough-haired louts with sleepy shouts Keep crows, where seed is growing. The creaking wain, brush'd thro' the lane, Hangs straws on hedges narrow; And smoothly cleaves the soughing plough, And harsher grinds the harrow. A SA'E TCH A T E VENIXG. 109 Or, from the road-side inn caught up, A brawl of crowded laughter, Thro' falling brooks and cawing rooks, And a fiddle scrambling after. FRAGMENT OF AN ALLEGORY. 1\ /TY tale is but a shadow and a sign. Between the column'd summits broadly strown, The billowy light converged to blood-red zone. Lovely, and waning as a thing divine, Came eve, as even never came before, With red-gray rush to stagger to their core Eternal steeps, mysterious ; by whose crest The floated vapour shattering over-bore The bleak-eyed raven in his glacier nest. Not less, when all the naked summits wore An echo-warmth against their iris west, Failed out the silken melancholy gleam Celestial, failing under spectral ways, All blindness, whence the sky-prevailing rays fiRA GMENT OF AN ALLEGOR Y. in Are lost, as some great thought that threads a dream, And lost the crimson wreaths that ring'd the burn- ing stream. There sat the glittering heights immoveable, Roofd with the sun and stair'd in ridgey seams, Holding the folded azure's vapour streams ; And from those heights a level dull and grey, Dull as its sand and pale as pale decay, Dispread perpetual towards a shining sea That was but mirage cloud, which blent away And to the skies glow'd vast and mightily. There an old man was seated on a bulk Of salt, that beasts had lick'd in pits and jags, With great knees huddled towards his chin, and shrunk His lean ring'd throat which fell in flesh less bags. Above him spread illimitable crags, And gray lights trembled from them : and his arm Trembled from wrist to elbow where his face ii2 FRA GHENT OF AN ALLEGOR Y. Rested ; the other moved not from its place Saving to screen his eyes, when over-warm A chance gleam wounding bit their weak white scums : And then he mumbled groans and stirr'd his mouth To show one wolf-tooth hung in rusty gums ; Nodding with ague, if the whispering south Breathed but to puff a thistle seed along, And the woods bloom' d beneath it : yet his limbs Were palsied, and a wrinkling shiver strong Winning fierce way from foot to forehead climbs. For wizard he had been of knowledge ripe, But that a stronger weird had chain' d him there In this perpetual solitude. The gripe Of age was on him, and a lean despair Of impotence that held him from his share In those delights his stronger years had fed : They, blasted as the scalp of his foul head In seamy gaps or slimy mats of hair, Had perish'd inch-meal, but the ache lived on FRA GMENT OF AN ALLEGOR Y. 1 13 In that great mesh of ruin, made its lair By all corruption ; as the fire-worm's glow Among the rotting leaves. There, woe-begone, He sate, and on the furthest peaky snow He lifted melancholy eye-balls, rolling slow. Ay, on the limit of eternal rock, Or on the upper limitless expanse, Or where lake mirrors crossing clouds bemock, Painting as sharp below their plumed advance, As one that sees such prospect in a trance, He gazed, and gazing doubted all he saw For phantom mist or mirage : and he loathed The stately hills past loathing, glory-clothed, And found in fairest thing a falsehood and a flaw, Doubting himself besides and loathing nature's law. THE OLD WARRIOR. /^\NCE more on rock and chasm the gilded eve Sets into flying lights of pale-rayed fire, And yet again the retinue of clouds, Above the sun-fall, veined with rushing gleams, Drag out their chain of crumbling island crags, Lovely to all but these my leaden eyes. The blind and barren life-lamp of my brain Fails out unkindled at this certain round Of visible beauty, and I hunger change Nor earthward find it, if not this slow orb Divides his rest some hand-breadths to the north, And crimsons icier summits fall by fall. Thy tune is old, old elm-tree, as the wind THE OLD WARRIOR. 115 Shakes out thy leafy sails ; hast been my rest These many changeless years. Perchance thy voice Shall float between the bells, when I am laid Beside the kirk-tower yonder in their ranks, O'er whom the voices of the bells peal prayer, And rolling organs, yet they will not come. I am forgotten from the files of war. At times I fancy that old self of mine Has faded out and left a nerveless hull. Ay me, that I am fallen from my praise, This is the bitter sequel of our time ; Thus he the human demigod to-day Shook off, mere bruised lumber, on the next, Pines out in dreamy memories what has been, Blurr'd with the silence of the things to come : An ancient watch-tower that has served its turn, A rampart on the pathless blasts, a fire To watch and cheat the shrill waves of their prey, Now stain'd and patch'd with ruin and disuse, Rots stagnant in time's shadow stone by stone. ii6 THE OLD WARRIOR. Why should man live declined 1 the noble years Perish, and quavering dotage, garrulous, Unsays his own renown with witless prate, Self-wounding calumny. The glowing eye Is faded ; shrunken arms and trembling hands Unmeet for wars. The measure of his time Has numb'd his drooping manhood lock'd in calm. rusted harness, dost thou speak reproach ? 1 shall not wear thee, for my veins are slow, Until thou case my unremembered dust. Old brand, art shamed with my unsinew'd gripe? Old gauntlet spacious for the wasted hand, 'Tis long since maiden fingers touch'd thy palm. Long, since bright ringlets pillow' d on my mail, For some deliverance wrought, some dread o'er- thrown. Lo, as a dead and stranger'd thing I rust, Out-lived into an age I cannot reap, And sunder'd from the vigour of my time. THE OLD WARRIOR. 117 Unlink'd from current action and renown. I see them sometimes, the new blood, fair knights, Come plumed and spurr'd and glistering down the vale. I crane from this rock edge with misty eyes ; Or, when the tilts are toward, down I crawl As far as yonder road-bend to the town, My utmost limit ; deemed in age as far As my youth held the miles to Palestine. I cheat the grave too long with bloodless days, Ripe tribute to the pale and iron sleep. I cheat my weary heirs of heritage, Greying their locks and warping all their youth, I shall not vex them long. The waste is set Before me and the darkness. I shall pass Upon it with a firm old heart, and turn To nameless sleep undaunted as forgot. The accident of record cannot change The man to lesser, or contract the soul That has been, shadow'd outwardly to men n8 THE OLD WARRIOR. In functions and in purposes achieved, Tho' crusting years have blurr'd its name away. That flash of glory, the majestic deed Has still its greatness in oblivion Great then, and now, and always. Its reward Vital within its doing, self-sustain'd, Recks not the voices of the after-years. THE ARCADIAN SHEPHERD. T OVE of the rosy neck, the restless hair, The vales are breezeless, and the ring-dove's voice Sweetens or ebbs her patient aching pipe, Delicious throes of one old monody, Told and retold, immortal, to the hours. The footsteps of the sunlight, steam'd in blue, Melt from the veiled portals of the flowers A cloudiness of dews, like trembling dust Behind the wayfarer : the onward lengths Fall bevill'd, seas of leaves and branching plains, Whereon the high noon striking, draws beneath In films of glimmering azure, zone by zone. And all the broad and creeping splendour-Hakes Hover or wane their ripple woofs of floor. 120 THE ARCADIAN SHEPHERD. The swan, who by the sacred courses feeds, Beam-caught has made one star-point of his down. Thy shepherd in the shadows of the hills, I teach the forest lawns my trembling notes And brooding modulation of my loves, Where ripe noon sows the lazy woods with flowers, Moss-hyacinth and wind blooms and the rings Of purple vetches dazzling some sere pine With intertissued bravery as it dies With love that comes too late in narrow time : We love a little here and fall asleep In earth : the fresh woods mix not with our dreams. The dead are past our grieving ; not for these The tamarisk thickets waver, or the Hours Teach music to the branch, nor fountain-head Wakefully pulses out ambrosial sleep, With wave-drift, rainbows, and far-silvered heights Breaking along its changes towards the dawn. Deny not, love, for love is short in prime. THE ARCADIAX SHEPHERD. 121 So short, the fruit scarce ripe, the bloom-down fades ; Reap in these fluttering moments ere they change, Loved or unloved the rough wind strips the tree. Nay, rather come and rest beside me here, The martens titter round the silver rock, The wood-bee hoarding in a wealth of combs ; Nay come, I wait thee elbow-deep in flowers. The deep woods swoon with solitude divine; Grape clusters, ivy, poppies, tumbled pears, The gush of streams, and vistas of the Sun Leaning his sacred forehead towards the waves. Come, ere one sterile leaf of autumn sways, Come, ere one crisp bough sickens to the doom Of winter : ere the coronal I laid Breathless beneath the lintel of thy bower Has pined its crumpling petals with delay Sick for thy spicy tresses. Dearest, come, Where under umbrage of delicious coves The dusty cygnets watch their gleaming sires, 122 THE ARCADIAN SHEPHERD. And sedge-hair brushes the rosed filbert's cheek, And bunch and reed shake pictured in the wave. There, halcyons crown the under-gliding calm, There, the kid, blinking in the sweet-flag net, Butts thro' the osier-thick narcissus fringe ; His eager nostrils dwell in leaning thirst, And sailing fishes watch him, golden-eyed. Cruel ! I waste my piping and my heart ; The rocks have answer'd, but thy voice is dumb. The nightingales change music with the doves ; The thrush remurmurs, emulous of song. Thou speakest not, and, widowed of thy voice, The solitudes of pine are tranced with fear. Thy proud limbs move not in the tangled fern. Silent art thou, as some snow-freighted cloud, Robed in a frigid glory, cold and calm ; With cruel lips and very noble eyes. And thou hast filled my heart, as some first dove Possesses with one song the early woods. Scornful and fair, in time relent return ! THE ARCADIAN SHEPHERD. 123 Where ripe days flout the gracious dues of love, Sere Age in sequel deals self-hating hours Of solitary wrinkles unbeloved. So thou relent, and reap the barren years. Arise, and Love shall guide thee thro' the meads, By rooted lilies, wonders of the spring, By vermeil-curtain' d poppies deep in grain, And all the fair ripe summer thro' the land ; Until his finger on my threshold rest, My home is yonder and my home is thine. FINIS. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. no id 1975 NON-RENEWABL E DUE 2 WKS FROM DATE RECEIVED Form L9-50m-4,'61(B8994s4)444 L 005 414 829 1