Ex Libris 
 C. K. OGDEN 
 
 In the dedication, introduction, and 
 prologues to the various sections into 
 wnich this book is divided there is some 
 very charming versifying. 
 
 THOMAS HUTCHINSON. 
 
 TWO LIVES : a Poem. By Reginald 
 
 FANSHAWB. Printed at the Chiswick Press, with 
 binding designed by Gleeson White. 
 
 " No reader of this small volume, whether he be perplexed 
 or delighted, can lay it down without a feeling of profound 
 respect for the writer ; no critic can read it without seeing 
 that Mr. Fanshawe, so far from being the ' idle singer of an 
 idle lay,' has endeavoured, through a record of his own 
 experience of suffering, to teach in song a lesson worthy of 
 the poet." Spectator. 
 
 " ' Two Lives : a Poem,' by Reginald Fanshawe, is a book 
 
 which arrests attention One cannot read it without 
 
 recognizing its genuine poetic quality. The whole is 
 
 pervaded by a lofty spirit of tenderness and strength We 
 
 shall look forward to another volume from the pen of this 
 writer." Scottish. Leader. 
 
 " In conception, form, and expression this is an original 
 
 poem Mr. Fanshawe owns no master in the poetic art, 
 
 and, though amply acknowledging the fascination of Tenny- 
 son's muse, he claims, like Swift, that what he writes is all 
 
 his own A singularly bold and stimulating poem." 
 
 Journal of Education.
 
 * 
 
 /* fa 
 
 * 

 
 f r f-f F P 
 
 TWO LIVES.
 
 TWO LIVES 
 
 A POEM BY 
 REGINALD FANSHAWE 
 
 LONDON 
 GEORGE BELL AND SONS 
 
 AND NEW YORK 
 1894
 
 CHISWICK PRESS: c. WHITTINGHAM AND co., TOOKS COURT, 
 
 CHANCERY LANE.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PREFACE vii 
 
 DEDICATION xv 
 
 INTRODUCTION xxiii 
 
 CANTO I. DEATH. NATURE. SONG. 
 
 Winter 3 
 
 Spirit of Spring 13 
 
 Summer .22 
 
 Autumn 33 
 
 Song's Dream 46 
 
 Love and Song 60 
 
 Life and Song 74 
 
 Second Spring 83 
 
 CANTO II. DREAM. DOUBT. NATURE. 
 
 Twilight 89 
 
 Respice 98 
 
 Dream and Doubt . . . . . . 110 
 
 Song and Life . . . _ . . . . . 121 
 
 Growth . . 135 
 
 Cui Bono 153 
 
 Song's Season 173 
 
 Something White 177
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 A COMPLETED poem should need neither preface 
 nor apology. A fragment, perhaps, may qualify its 
 
 imperfections, at least nrovisinnnllv K 
 
 TK ..... 
 
 ERRATA. 
 
 Page xviii, stanza 2, line 5, for " leave " read " give." 
 Page 175, stanza I, line 3, for " month's " read " months."
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 A COMPLETED poem should need neither preface 
 nor apology. A fragment, perhaps, may qualify its 
 imperfections, at least provisionally, by both. The sub- 
 ject of this song might best be described as a spiritual 
 pilgrimage from nothingness and denial to hope and ful- 
 filment; as a vision of the progress of life through the 
 experience of nature, self and history, to God. 
 
 The note of the poem is primarily personal. It presents 
 an authentic record of real individual growth, revised in 
 the light of a later reading, and only so far idealized as 
 the issues attained and the temper portrayed are ideal 
 themselves. But the personal note is enlarged in the 
 process to one fuller and more universal. As the develop- 
 ment and redemption of a single soul are followed along 
 the lines of the more permanent historic movements, and 
 under the pressure of the manifold forces of modern life, 
 the limits of individual vision must pass in a sense into a 
 panorama of time, and the confessions of a private spirit 
 become the reflection of an age. 
 
 The note, again, of the poem is to be essentially modern. 
 I say essentially, for much that seems modern, in life and
 
 Vlll PREFACE. 
 
 literature, is apt to be an expression or echo of something 
 secondary, superficial, distorted. But to be contemporary 
 in tone and scope with a time as a whole, to divine and 
 perhaps in part to develop, consciously or unconsciously, 
 whatever in its nature has vitality, energy and persistence, 
 is a lawful dream, nay, an imperative ideal for that form of 
 song of which I would be minister. As one who has 
 lived and striven with many of those spirits which seek 
 to baptize, each into the narrowness of its own name, the 
 abounding life of a whole humanity ; as one who at last 
 and hardly has found peace and issue, I cannot but 
 believe that our season is ripe for a new and creative 
 fruitfulness ; it may be, for a song to glorify and shape its 
 coming. 
 
 Complex, shifting and subtle as are the forces and 
 fashions of our life ; deep as are its divisions, its core of 
 revelation can no longer be hidden. The spirit of the 
 century which dawned in revolution and dream, to pass 
 under the powers of reaction and revival, has become at 
 its close critical, self-conscious, scientific, historical. Evo- 
 lution is the sum and motto of its achievement. No doubt 
 the unhistorical negations of the radical temper, and the 
 unhistoric affirmations of the reactionary, are still operant. 
 But they are as much survivals as the merely mechanical 
 methods of undeveloped science. To-day life has become 
 the supreme category ; growth the central conception ; 
 unity the dominant ideal. Life, growth, unity these are 
 the faces which the spirit of the age presents to such as 
 question at its oracles, and from these must be read its 
 answer of desolation or comfort. Whether the voice be 
 prophetic of denial or affirmation, its interpretation hence-
 
 PREFACE. ix 
 
 forth can only be historic. To many, indeed, criticism 
 would seem no more than a solvent ; self-consciousness 
 a gospel of disease and contradiction ; science an unveil- 
 ing of the nakedness of nature ; history a long disproof of 
 its own aspirations. To these life must appear illusion or 
 disillusion ; growth an increasing sense of the depths of 
 dualism ; and unity only a mocking vision or a violent 
 disendowment. But such mistake a partial and temporary 
 denial for a permanent response, whereby the spirit of a 
 time, which they but half envisage, becomes the burden 
 and echo of their own limitations. But for those who face 
 that spirit with the fullness of insight ; who, approaching 
 its presence in its own temper, have tried and sifted its 
 manifold expressions ; who have pierced to the heart of 
 its positive meaning ; who have learnt that it carries with 
 it its own correction ; who can divine the range of its 
 deeper possibilities ; who will allow for its growth and 
 wait upon its fulfilment for such, I say, its oracles at the 
 last are clear and reassuring. For them evolution has the 
 secret and revealing of a new confidence. Taken in its 
 breadth as a method alike of fulfilment and redemption, 
 it rebaptizes the past and preforms the future. In the 
 light and faith of its large historic reason, nature, self and 
 time put on a new glory and hope of growth. Nature 
 has been reconsecrated by science as a fuller and freer 
 shrine of true divinity. Self is seen to have been shattered 
 by criticism, subtilized and saddened by inwardness for a 
 deeper reconciliation. Time has been recovered and 
 vitalized by regressive historical sympathy as a condi- 
 tion and prophecy of fresh development. Indeed to 
 preach and effectualize a more real and deliberate return
 
 X PREFACE. 
 
 to nature, self, and history, has been the spiritual work of 
 the century which is ending. The task which now looms 
 upon the energies of the next, is to appropriate from 
 movements, which have often been propagated with excess, 
 partiality, or exclusiveness, their deeper and more positive 
 issues; to transcend the limits of their several revela- 
 tions, and to fuse and reconcile their results in a living 
 and organic whole. By it will be built a new period of 
 creation on the basis of criticism. By it the depths of 
 inward division, with which the spirit is troubled, will be 
 spanned by another and subtler bridge. By it the sum 
 of science will be hallowed and humanized with a larger 
 and more imaginative sympathy, the vision of nature and 
 law transfused with the light of a diviner prophecy. By 
 it the inheritance of the past will be resumed in a spirit 
 both of expiation and fulfilment. A fresh and fuller unity 
 in life and thought, in society and religion, is ready to 
 grow from the deepened and sifted soil, with a confidence 
 more serene, because its consciousness is scientific and 
 sober. That life will grow effectually to a whole and noble 
 accomplishment in proportion as it finds itself anew, freed, 
 fulfilled and reconciled in God. On us it is laid to recover 
 the Divine, as at once process and perfection, in self, in 
 nature, in time ; and to realize again the personal unity 
 which overlooks and rounds our oppositions, with a 
 breadth of consecration superseding all contrast of sacred 
 and secular, and with a fullness of fusion which shall har- 
 monize the whole man in a higher aspiration. Those who 
 have felt most patiently, and with the prophecy of insight, 
 the pulse of our time, know that it is already awaking to 
 light and health. For them the brooding dreams of deca-
 
 PREFACE. XI 
 
 dence, exhaustion and denial, which some have welcomed 
 and glorified as a morbid revelation, and others have 
 watched and deplored as the proof of dissolution, are 
 nearing their term. 
 
 Whoever believes in the nearness and reality of such a 
 renascence, a renascence broader, more conscious, more 
 conciliatory because it is one and historical, must confess 
 that art and song will find their account in its coming. 
 Perhaps song must wait yet for the full hour, when it 
 shall enter on the inheritance of this fresh inspiration ; 
 must wait till it can move under the breath of the new 
 spirit with buoyancy and ease, over waters which are still 
 troubled and turbid from the storms of transition. Yet 
 even for those who have weathered hardly the stress of 
 that period, and have attained with loss and regret to the 
 hope of harbourage, there may be forthcoming a song 
 preparatory, transitional, and, in a measure, prophetic. 
 To me, at least, it has seemed that song may mediate 
 between these ages already blending. Criticism, whether 
 philosophic or literary, can breed, I believe, a music of its 
 own, at any rate as a prelude to more creative harmonies. 
 The broken and overstrung chords of inwardness may be 
 retuned and retouched to the tones of a freer and fuller 
 sanity. The face of nature, now lined with law, may be 
 shown to reveal a young and more spiritual loveliness. 
 The spirit of history may be shapen and transfigured into 
 visual forms for its own fulfilment. It will be said, I 
 know, that a song such as this, by assuming the functions 
 of philosophy and religion, is charging itself with an alien 
 load. Yet song, by inherent law, whether with instinct 
 or deliberation, in virtue of that ideal insight which is at
 
 Xll PREFACE. 
 
 once recovery, prophecy and realization, endeavours to 
 reconcile ; and so far must be already in principle and 
 spirit both reasonable and religious. Its specific privilege 
 is to idealize and unify more freely, in modes personal and 
 passionate, melodious and imaginative. 
 
 I said above that one note of this poem was to be 
 essentially modern. The drift of my meaning will now 
 be apparent. It is an attempt to embody, even in such 
 personal and imaginative forms, with directness and de- 
 liberation, the spirit of our age, in the phases of its denial 
 and in the fullness of its positive promise. One who has 
 lived through those phases, and realized that promise, can 
 read in himself the reflection of their life. To represent 
 such a life, personal and common, as a growth which has 
 reabsorbed a full organic sustenance from the roots of the 
 past, and which has been quickened thereby to push 
 forward a flower of faith and vision into the spring of the 
 future, is the sum of his purpose. What has been sung 
 has been lived, and it has been sung because it has been 
 lived. Whether such a life, which has found its impulses 
 of development and methods of redemption in the mani- 
 fold paths of criticism and history, of science and self- 
 consciousness, of philosophy and art, of love and religion, 
 can be a fit subject for song, is not my question. But if, 
 in being personal and modern, this poem has become 
 philosophic, religious, historic, remedial, I can only say 
 that such is the quality and intrinsic texture, and such the 
 true aspiration and need of life contemporary. 
 
 For a poem and subject thus conceived the title " Two 
 Lives " is not a misnomer. For me it covers a fullness of 
 meaning, some aspects of which I have sought to express
 
 PREFACE. Xlll 
 
 in a poetical preface. The dualism of life and its growth 
 to unity by many methods and opposing impulses, are 
 the deeper ideal issues which underlie the limited but 
 true and passionate experience of a private soul. From 
 this point of view the unity of the poem may be best en- 
 visaged. It has, or would have, that personal unity which 
 belongs to the genuine expression of living experience, 
 represented as a growth with definite limits and a true 
 satisfaction. It has the larger unity which is born of an 
 effort to realize and reflect the spirit of an epoch. It has 
 also the ideal unity which is derived from the pressure of 
 certain central and dominant beliefs, from the insistent 
 thought of a new fulfilment, and from a dream of fore- 
 showing and sharing in its remedial methods. 
 
 I have been thus long in apology for my purpose, 
 because much of its promise must lie beyond the present 
 margin of its fragmentary performance. Of the two cantos 
 here published, the first, beginning in the middle, shows 
 how that purpose, latent and repressed, but ripening for 
 expression, and for which other vehicles and forms of 
 vision seemed once more adequate, in the presence and 
 by the power of death took shape and inspiration as song. 
 The second develops the earlier growth of a nature in- 
 herently unhistorical and negative through its many phases 
 of unbelief and emptiness. The later cantos will trace its 
 progress where it is gradually touched and fertilized by 
 the more positive and fruitful influences of life and time, 
 and will strive to express the place and power of their 
 several spirits. 
 
 The poetical form in which this purpose has been 
 clothed, was adopted upon a distinct conviction of its
 
 XIV PREFACE. 
 
 fitness for the matter. A narrative of growth, whether 
 passing more calmly on the currents of individual and 
 inner life, or with a larger breath through periods of 
 time, may fairly be unfolded in a metre which, like the 
 Spenserian stanza, has a natural openness of movement 
 and a scope for passionate concentration ; and which, by 
 lightening the weight of reflection, and forcing upon it 
 a definite and organic melody, can effectually carry its 
 burden and correct its reluctance. On the other hand, 
 the personal factor has found a freer utterance in the 
 lyrics. These have been introduced at intervals more 
 or less regular, and are meant at the same time to break 
 the monotony of a long development, and to mark and 
 accentuate the main stages of the poem. Such a fusion 
 of Epic and Lyric elements is an admission, no doubt, of 
 a mixture of ideals. Yet fusion, in a sense, is the true 
 solution, spiritual and formal, of our present needs. And 
 so long as a fusion be natural, organic and fruitful, life 
 will be content to look no further for growth and origi- 
 nality.
 
 DEDICATION. 
 
 S~\ H love, I know not if this song 
 ^ Unblest of thee, my spirit's wife, 
 
 And nurtured in a lonely strife 
 With death, to whom I half belong, 
 Shall be hereafter heard among 
 
 The things that do inherit life. 
 
 But, if it quickened be to brave 
 
 My winter and the world's, and bloom 
 With something of a fresh perfume 
 Before time's sense, thy sweetness gave 
 The breath that shall embalm and save 
 Its nature from decay and doom.
 
 XVI DEDICATION. 
 
 And since my sorrow now hath wove 
 
 With solemn fingers, skilled by death, 
 Into a larger lyric wreath 
 Some scattered buds that earlier strove 
 To blossom on the lips of love, 
 
 And blend with thy still living breath ; 
 
 These flowers, unvital yet, but grown 
 On my deep suffering's soil and fed 
 Where only love and reverence tread, 
 Whose scent I would for thee were blown 
 Abroad, to make thee more mine own, 
 I lay beside my living dead. 
 
 To thee these flowers, although their worth 
 Should wither, now, one life too late, 
 With benedictions, I, who date 
 From thee my being's proper birth, 
 My spirit's children, born of dearth 
 And fullness, thus do dedicate.
 
 DEDICATION. xvii 
 
 Oh children of her flesh and mine, 
 Within whose tissue tireless skill 
 On life's long loom is weaving still 
 
 Her substance, and doth subtly twine 
 
 Our natures to some new design, 
 
 God's art shall work into your will ; 
 
 Across the broken thread of space 
 
 And time, to you I here bequeath 
 These verses, that perchance, beneath 
 
 Their fashion, ye may yet retrace 
 
 Her beating heart, her sad calm face, 
 
 And hold for me my love's last wreath ; 
 
 That, when, from her dead hand increased, 
 This creeper shall at length have clomb 
 The height of our half empty home, 
 
 And fronted with its flush the east, 
 
 When the free world to you is leased 
 By life, and ye afield must roam, 
 b
 
 XVlil DEDICATION. 
 
 While something yet of her shall make 
 Soft shelter for your memory's wall, 
 And by my nurture cling and fall 
 About your senses, I may wake, 
 By song's clear breath, for her sweet sake, 
 Your spirits to her spirit's call ; 
 
 And she, reborn in your young prime, 
 
 Shall flower above the world's dull dust, 
 Though autumn winds may warp and rust 
 
 The leaves of my far summer's rhyme, 
 
 give. 
 Which, for your spring, I leave to time, 
 
 A legacy of song in trust. 
 
 Oh brothers dead, whose testament 
 Hath freed my nonage to be heir 
 Of life, and but for whom I were 
 An empty thing, homeless, unblent, 
 Who else had missed my soul's ascent, 
 Or striven lonely up time's stair,
 
 DEDICATION. xix 
 
 If now my vision's new presage 
 
 Of private spring must surely draw 
 A being, loosened from the law 
 
 Of immemorial heritage, 
 
 To shape and clamber to an age, 
 Your seasons only half foresaw ; 
 
 If I, who face the future's sun, 
 
 For very growth must half forget 
 What time my nature's seed was set, 
 And how my spirit's tissue spun, 
 With you these lines still link me one, 
 And poorly pay my life's dear debt. 
 
 Oh brothers living, by whose hope 
 
 Convoyed, my spirit's bark, less frail, 
 Less lonely in its space doth sail 
 
 One grey sea widening to God's scope, 
 
 Now on a new world's sunward slope 
 Your spirits with my song I hail.
 
 xx DEDICATION. 
 
 Oh brothers living hopeless, whom 
 
 Doubt's heavy pole doth still incline 
 To one deep winter undivine, 
 If I, who circle from the gloom 
 By God's slow season, might illume 
 
 Your underworld, which else were mine, 
 
 If even I in song might serve 
 
 And touch again to time's control 
 The sickness of an age, whose soul 
 I felt with all my nature's nerve 
 From its sane issue start and swerve, 
 Or free for perfect vision's whole, 
 
 If song itself might half unloose 
 
 The law that plucks two lives apart, 
 Half bind one broadening nature's heart 
 I too were less a thing recluse, 
 By your free brotherhood's full use, 
 For whom I hold this human art.
 
 DEDICATION. XXI 
 
 Oh God, since life is but a lyre, 
 
 That seeketh to be strung and thrilled 
 By Thee ; a temple that should build 
 Itself deep-based to one pure spire, 
 Whence it might take Thy spirit's fire, 
 And pierce Thine infinite, fulfilled ; 
 
 Since unto Thee my nature's stream, 
 
 Stained in wild ways, from primal mist, 
 By Thy deep law idealist, 
 
 Must broaden back by reason, dream, 
 
 Loveliness, death and love supreme, 
 
 Through the full channels of Thy Christ ; 
 
 If I could compass or sustain 
 
 High notes on such a lyre, or lend 
 Pure lips of song, whereby should blend 
 Anew the passion and the pain 
 And bliss of worlds, where life is twain, 
 And in one breath to Thee ascend ;
 
 XXll DEDICATION. 
 
 If in such temple my quick sense 
 
 Might feel the very waft and wing 
 Of inspiration tune its string 
 To Thy full music ; if more tense, 
 Transfigured through such reverence, 
 
 My soul might listen there and sing : 
 
 If even I, in such full time, 
 
 Between Thy worlds might mediate 
 Briefly by song, or recreate 
 Some shadow of Thy thought, or climb 
 Some stair of prophecy sublime, 
 Myself to Thee I consecrate.
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 T 
 
 lives Her life and mine, 
 That half unconscious grew 
 Slowly together, till one love did twine 
 
 So close and true 
 Our several souls, that I had all forgot 
 
 The primal law 
 Of this our individual human lot, 
 
 When I awoke and saw, 
 In the dull dawn of sad surmise, 
 Death's cold and silent finger come to draw 
 
 The curtain from my darkened brain, 
 
 And briefly write his legend on my empty eyes- 
 
 " Love's life is twain."
 
 XXIV INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Two lives My life and hers, 
 Which yet shall grow apart, 
 Mine upward by the purer pulse that stirs 
 
 Its hidden heart, 
 From the deepest fibre of my memory's root, 
 
 On to the flower, 
 And the far prophecy of perfect fruit, 
 
 The hope of whose full hour 
 Doth quicken every secret seed 
 Of promise in my waiting will with power 
 
 To climb and ripen to the sun 
 Of her transfigured face, till in its light I read, 
 Love's life is one 
 
 Two lives The old, the new ; 
 That earlier dream of doubt, 
 Whose wildness as a rank weed overgrew 
 
 Within, without, 
 The troubled years of my untempered youth, 
 
 And even wrought 
 In her bright spirit, travailing for truth,
 
 INTRODUCTION. XXV 
 
 By sorrow overtaught, 
 Such shadows as did haunt our feet, 
 While, from the twilight level of dead thought, 
 
 Sunward we clambered up life's slope, 
 And all fulfilled and free our vision rose to greet 
 Clear heights of hope. 
 
 Two lives The new, the old, 
 When blending ages meet 
 On the great bar, where time has ever rolled, 
 
 With restless beat, 
 Out of the bosom of a boundless change, 
 
 And souls are tossed, 
 Till some upon the sands and shallows strange 
 
 Unpiloted are lost, 
 And some untravelled tremble back 
 Under the havens of an ancient coast, 
 
 Some ocean-bound confront the foam, 
 Divine the deepening tide, and take the starry track 
 To a free home.
 
 XXVI INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Two lives The brief bare cell 
 Wherein doth lonely brood 
 The barren nature that hath heard no spell 
 
 Of brotherhood, 
 Or love's enlargement ; and the broadening space 
 
 Beyond the bar, 
 Where the free currents lap and interlace, 
 
 And the full human star 
 Luminous looks upon the soul, 
 Which fareth from a dead self insular 
 Outward, where open love doth lose 
 In the true light and motion of one living whole, 
 To find and fuse. 
 
 Two lives The soul's pure peak, 
 Whose dawn and sunset fire 
 Droppeth reproof and dream of power to seek, 
 
 Till it inspire 
 Deep in our passion's plain the spirit's law, 
 
 And sense of fall, 
 Lifting a low world to its upward awe,
 
 INTRODUCTION. XXV11 
 
 Brooding, perpetual. 
 The petty truth of this clear ridge ; 
 That broader blue across the rift, whose call 
 
 Doth haunt and spur all footless art 
 To fling his airy shape and briefly seem to bridge 
 Two lives apart. 
 
 Two lives The gracious growth 
 Of sweet seeds, purely set 
 For consummation, climbing free, unloath, 
 
 From earth's deep debt 
 Sunward, as quickened by the spirit's wind, 
 
 And love's light faith ; 
 And things misgrown, unchosen, out of kind, 
 
 Begotten at the breath 
 Of strife, and shapen by its teem 
 And very travail, rebaptized in death, 
 
 Tears and regret, till nature wild, 
 By love's deep logic grown, who doubteth to redeem 
 Be reconciled.
 
 XXVlli INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Two lives The human woof, 
 The mystic warp divine, 
 Woven by God, who worketh not aloof 
 
 To his design 
 Intrinsic ; whither all things climb and cross, 
 
 Fulfilled, begun, 
 Through death and beauty, dream and love and loss, 
 
 So subtly pieced and spun 
 By His pure Spirit, He doth use 
 The whole world's service, sacramental, one, 
 
 Unto its form's full continent, 
 For high prophetic truth, and doth Himself infuse, 
 Till twain be blent. 
 
 Two lives whereby we grow, 
 Who else were unfulfilled, 
 Or dead things flawless ; in whose light we know : 
 
 Whereon we build 
 And see all fair shapes ; from whose shore we link 
 
 To love and time 
 The outward spirit's quest, or inly sink
 
 INTRODUCTION. XXIX 
 
 To deeper self; or climb 
 Blending and broadening ever ; whence 
 We clasp full future, one with simple prime ; 
 
 Whose ripening touch imperative 
 Shapeth one nature's whole through human transience 
 To die and live. 
 
 One life to be more large, 
 Fuller, more human, free, 
 If passion's wind sweep not o'er nature's marge ; 
 
 One mystery, 
 Method and dawn of vision more divine ; 
 
 One widening trail 
 Of truth more common, and one deepening line 
 
 Of beauty, whose pure hail 
 Calleth us to its purple shore, 
 Whither, one broadening brotherhood, we sail, 
 
 Linked subtly back by time's true bond, 
 Blown on by liberty, blending new nature's lore 
 With worlds beyond.
 
 CANTO I. 
 DEATH. NATURE. SONG.
 
 WINTER. 
 
 TWO winters wait upon the birth 
 Of this untimely child of song, 
 Begotten as I moved among 
 The seasons of a sunless earth. 
 
 One with a white prophetic pall 
 Lay brooding evermore above 
 The private depths of our dear love, 
 
 A dream of death perpetual. 
 
 What time the fibres of my life 
 
 Were loosened and my soul awoke, 
 About me only children spoke, 
 
 And only silence whispered " wife." 
 
 Between that winter's length and this 
 Less bitter, frozen lips of grief 
 Were half unsealed by song's relief 
 
 Half broken by remembered bliss.
 
 TWO LIVES. 
 
 But, as I stood and summed alone 
 
 The seasons of my year's long pain, 
 I saw death's shadow fall and stain 
 
 Love's vision underneath a throne. 
 
 I know not whether love unwed, 
 
 A crown unworn, a life uncrowned, 
 More hopeless were, or love that found 
 
 All its fulfilment in the dead. 
 
 That common garb and heart of woe 
 
 Was royal shroud for crownless king, 
 Their grief, I doubt not, was a thing 
 
 Less deep for such an overflow. 
 
 My sorrow I have told to song, 
 
 God knoweth, in a doubting hope 
 That it may win there truer scope, 
 
 And make at last my weakness strong. 
 
 And so, perchance, my love, unlost, 
 
 Shall pass to some more subtle power 
 Of formless heat ; my life shall flower 
 
 More fruitful for this deadly frost. 
 
 And I must deem my nature's nerve 
 By death himself was thus restrung, 
 That I should be as one who sung 
 
 How sorrow learnt from love to serve.
 
 TWO LIVES. 
 
 I 
 Dead, dead ! Who is it dreaming here alone, 
 
 Here on the very heart and lap of life, 
 Dreaming of death ? I know not. Were he known 
 
 To me, though inly worn by strain and strife, 
 
 And visited by doubtful visions, rife 
 With grave regret and longing, he could break, 
 
 At one light whisper of the dear word " wife," 
 The bondage of his nature and awake, 
 To clasp the living world with her, for her sweet sake. 
 
 2 
 Dead, dead ! He cannot wake. No whispers come. 
 
 That overbrooding ear is grown too dull 
 To catch such low and loving utterance. Dumb 
 
 Unto his spirit, which it once would lull 
 
 Or quicken, till it seemed to disannul 
 All sense of severance, is this fair day, fraught 
 
 With tempered melody and meaning full, 
 Half promised June, half April unforgot. 
 He cannot hear alone. Away ! I know him not.
 
 6 TWO LIVES. 
 
 3 
 
 Only the north-wind, now a whisper, stirs 
 The hawthorn blossom, which o'ershadoweth 
 
 His sorrow, while he listens but for hers. 
 And she is silent. Oh, if her sweet breath 
 Blent with the wind and voiceless, as beneath 
 
 He dreams, would touch his brow ! O God, her kiss, 
 Cold though he felt it from the lips of death, 
 
 Come back to him ! I'd say it was not his ; 
 But mine, mine, mine, and claim such sadness for my bliss. 
 
 4 
 Oh no ! Not mine. I am as one aloof, 
 
 Looking on sorrow's face ; my being whole, 
 Or broken but by thought, and passion-proof 
 
 My senses. Surely now some other soul, 
 
 Adept in suffering, hath unbidden stole 
 Into the secret places of my brain, 
 
 And there, upon its surface, as a scroll, 
 Writ dimly out, with one dull word's refrain, 
 The prophecy and burden of an alien pain.
 
 TWO LIVES. 
 
 5 
 Dead ! Shall I see it written on the wall 
 
 Of my dark spirit's chamber, as I rise, 
 In the grey dawn of grief perpetual, 
 
 To pore and ponder with mechanic eyes, 
 
 Watching the weary hours of sad surmise 
 Live slowly out, and hollow day succeed 
 
 This twilight mood of lingering mysteries, 
 Till in full vision and unveiled I read 
 The secret sense of death, and do accept his creed ? 
 
 6 
 
 What is yon phantom ? Oh my sense is sick 
 
 For very emptiness and lack of her. 
 It brings for sweet fulfilment's food some trick 
 
 Of fancy, as a false interpreter. 
 
 It moves to greet me through the mists that blur 
 The mirror of my future. On its brow 
 
 Is branded sorrow's seal. Strange lips, that stir 
 And speak not, seem to shape, " I leave thee now." 
 " I wait. Hereafter read my legend, ' This is thou ! ' "
 
 8 TWO LIVES. 
 
 7 
 
 Ay ! But there should have been another shape, 
 
 Not faint as this or unfamiliar ; 
 At whose bright rising I had found escape 
 
 From shadows of myself, which haunt and mar 
 
 The glass of my foreshowing. From afar 
 No motion now comes unto me, no gleam 
 
 Of loyal eyes, for mine have lost their star, 
 In driving mists of death and tears that stream. 
 I cannot see beyond. Leave me to-day to dream. 
 
 8 
 Ah me ! I dare not dream. I dreamt last night. 
 
 Methought that I was standing at her door, 
 And saw my sweet within, by the wan light, 
 
 Wearing the simple black that once she wore, 
 
 When, at our first full kiss, we learnt the lore 
 Of love made perfect. Pale she stood, a stone, 
 
 And cold, as she was never wont before, 
 And crying " come not " in a troubled tone, 
 Left me in outer darkness with my love alone.
 
 TWO LIVES. 9 
 
 9 
 
 There was a season sweet, when I could climb, 
 
 Above the breathless level of to-day, 
 To-morrow's height, a libertine of time ; 
 
 When my free spirit, swept with hers away, 
 
 In full presage and awe did seem to pray 
 Uplifted in wide worship ; or descend, 
 
 Time-travelled and content, as life grew grey, 
 To the dim world of dreams, where mine would blend 
 With hers, or in her warm and breathing presence end. 
 
 10 
 
 No dream, no dawn visits me here. I dwell, 
 
 If that this sleepless solitary mind 
 Be very I, within a brief bare cell 
 
 Of everlasting now. Before, behind, 
 
 Sorrow, as one who deeply hath divined 
 My unsubstantial self, which would be free, 
 
 Fronts my defiance, whilst I feel him bind 
 With silent hands, at sullen life's decree, 
 And rivet round my soul a hard reality.
 
 10 TWO LIVES. 
 
 II 
 
 Is there no window in the walls of fate 
 To draw my nature up, and bid me snatch 
 
 Some fragment of the warm world passionate, 
 And blend again with it ; with strange eyes watch 
 Life's long procession, or but hold a patch 
 
 Of bright infinity, which should beguile 
 My blank and brooding faculties to catch 
 
 And briefly fix one image of her smile ? 
 I will look out and lose myself a little while. 
 
 12 
 
 The sun hath sucked the breath of budding May, 
 And dreams upon the bosom of the down 
 
 In loving light. Around low branches sway 
 
 White with the blossoms born beneath the frown 
 Of overstaying March. Above the town 
 
 Far south and low doth linger on and brood 
 
 One solemn cloud ; and westward looms, to crown 
 
 This stolen noon of summer solitude, 
 Beyond the hollow gorge a soft and ghostly wood.
 
 TWO LIVES. II 
 
 13 
 Full odours from the hawthorn bloom distil, 
 
 Sealing all senses but their own, and keep 
 In outer courts of hearing, as they fill, 
 
 A world of waiting sounds, that slowly creep 
 
 Into my presence ; from the quarried steep 
 The ring of iron faint ; the mystic moan 
 
 Of hidden ships, which haunt the river's sleep ; 
 The beat of hooves in hollow monotone ; 
 Anon the cuckoo's note, and chimes of churches blown. 
 
 14 
 The power of spring is on me. Out of sound 
 
 And interwoven sweetness she has wrought 
 So rich a spell and subtle, it hath bound 
 
 My senses in a trance, though eager thought, 
 And the light spirit's motions answer not. 
 Only across my vision comes and goes 
 The face of nature as of one forgot, 
 The fashion of a loveliness, that knows 
 No inward soul of meaning deeper than repose.
 
 12 TWO LIVES. 
 
 15 
 Last year or was it in a dateless youth? 
 
 Not so this season o'er me seemed to drift 
 Like dreamy autumn. Then its deeper truth, 
 
 Touching me to a correspondence swift, 
 
 Did all my inmost force and feeling lift 
 To airy worlds of free imagining, 
 
 Where insight wrought with sound. Across the rift, 
 That rends my life, still there are lingering 
 Echoes of rhymes which felt the spirit of the spring.
 
 SPIRIT OF SPRING. 
 
 THERE'S a power at work in the sleeping wood ; 
 There's a secret swelling below in the earth ; 
 There's a subtle spirit that seems to brood 
 On the hidden presage of some new birth. 
 
 There's a faint warm presence I dimly feel 
 Creep into the pause of the cold, cold east ; 
 
 There's a strange cool fragrance beginning to steal 
 
 From the lap of the land, when the showers have ceased. 
 
 There's a dreamy promise that purely dwells 
 On the breast of the meadow in purple mist ; 
 
 There's a soft red flush on the tree, that tells 
 Of myriad buds sun-quickened and kissed. 
 
 There's a whisper abroad, and the west wind's breath 
 With a mystic and richer meaning is rife ; 
 
 There's a waking rumour of winter's death ; 
 There's a sigh in his heart for a coming life.
 
 14 TWO LIVES. 
 
 There's a flutter of joy in the bird's free mind, 
 There's a formless hope in his fuller song, 
 
 From a message he learnt at the lips of the wind, 
 From a vision he saw, as the light grew long. 
 
 There's an echo awake on the inmost chord 
 Of the soul that trembles and tries to sing, 
 
 Till into the music of one sweet word 
 
 The sense of thy mystery melts, O spring ! 
 
 16 
 Perchance it might have been my spirit's spring, 
 
 And, waste and fallow with six winters' cold, 
 My frozen faculties, that sought to sing 
 
 But sang not, might have woke and heard foretold 
 
 Fresh hopes of summer song, which should unfold 
 To fullness ; might have seen prevision melt 
 
 Into a free impassioned power to mould 
 For shapely life and utterance thoughts, that dwelt 
 Voiceless and void below, and fashion all I felt.
 
 TWO LIVES. 15 
 
 17 
 
 But now, O mocking May, thy forward look 
 I follow not. To me more welcome March, 
 
 Whose bitter mood and scornful surely took 
 The image of my own, and seemed to search 
 An empty world, under one low grey arch, 
 
 With hollow sighing. Now for me no shoot 
 Shall overlive the winds of death, which parch 
 
 And wither all the future of my fruit, 
 And bend me back upon the past's undying root. 
 
 18 
 This is a poorer nature than I knew, 
 
 And loved with other eyes. Once she was kind ; 
 And face to face our long communion grew 
 
 So close and secret, the prophetic wind 
 
 Breathed not to man her quintessential mind 
 More truly than to me. Then I could feel 
 
 The breadth of all her being intertwined 
 With mine, and in our meeting dear reveal 
 And consecrate our love with freedom's simple seal.
 
 1 6 TWO LIVES. 
 
 19 
 For she had learnt the seasons of my soul, 
 
 Moving within the unimagined room 
 Of her wide spirit's world ; and sometimes stole 
 
 Through golden gates from underneath the gloom, 
 
 That lifted late and seldom to illume 
 My evening with her light ; and from life's flower 
 
 Drew subtly forth a sudden rich perfume, 
 Holding all sense and passion, thought and power, 
 Fused in the solemn fullness of one sunset hour. 
 
 20 
 Anon her quickening spirit would unswathe 
 
 An all too speculative vision, dim 
 With days of listless doubt, and bid me bathe 
 
 In her deep sea of beauty. Eye and limb, 
 
 Made strong and buoyant by her love, would swim 
 Over her bosom, feel her splendour purge 
 
 All petty life, and, broadening to the rim 
 Of liberal space, with swift outgoing merge 
 An importuning self in pure emotion's surge.
 
 TWO LIVES. 17 
 
 21 
 Yet held she not my nature idly lapt 
 
 In still enchantment, no, nor wholly lost 
 To individual sense. For I was rapt 
 
 From inward musing, over waters crossed 
 
 By undercurrent sounds, to a high post 
 Prophetic, whence her light and gleaming wand 
 
 Pointed my motions to a nameless coast, 
 That led me ever forth by ways unconned, 
 Infinite and unbroken, of a world beyond. 
 
 22 
 
 So would I travel out, as one unfraught, 
 On exaltation's wave ; so wander back 
 Replenished with her riches, until thought, 
 Waiting for ever in emotion's track, 
 Awoke, and, as it felt the current slack 
 Of outward faring life and vision, pressed 
 Into the pause, to gather of the wrack, 
 And treasure up its fullness for my rest, 
 Then quicken once again free feeling on her quest. 
 
 c
 
 1 8 TWO LIVES. 
 
 23 
 
 O large and open unto me her love, 
 
 Whose free essential wind and common air, 
 Sweeping around me, for awhile unwove 
 
 Time's texture from my life, and raised it bare 
 
 To ecstasy ; or if I wandered there 
 Breathless as in a void, she drew me down, 
 
 To blend with all her loveliness, and wear 
 And win this law of beauty for my own, 
 " Fulfilment maketh free, and calm is passion's crown." 
 
 24 
 O close and dear our meeting. Yet aloof 
 
 Her spirit moved. From some far central shrine 
 Of privacy, she touched with pure reproof 
 
 My passion ; and I learnt the subtle sign, 
 
 Wherewith she slowly schooled me to divine, 
 Under the show and vesture of her change, 
 
 A viewless presence, rounding hers and mine, 
 And left me trembling on a threshold strange, 
 Still unfulfilled in her sweet revelation's range.
 
 TWO LIVES. 19 
 
 25 
 I gazed again, and found free nature's face 
 
 Transfigured, as of one that dared to climb 
 And lift my longing over bar? of space 
 
 To a world specular of life sublime, 
 
 Invisible. I felt her motions rhyme 
 With the long march of everlasting law ; 
 
 And fresh and full the purpose of her prime 
 Looked forth upon me, till it seemed to draw 
 My sight and spirit out into impassioned awe. 
 
 26 
 They say that nature showeth in a glass 
 
 To man, her offspring and a visitant 
 At her dim oracle, in shapes that pass, 
 
 Only a shadow of himself ; that want 
 
 Is to his eye a false hierophant, 
 Mocking with misconception ; that we find 
 
 Such images of comfort as we plant 
 Her ground withal ; that fancy, sowing blind, 
 Reaps for her sustenance an unsubstantial wind.
 
 20 TWO LIVES. 
 
 27 
 Not so her meaning took me. Deep and clear 
 
 Out of her sanctuary an answer stole 
 Upon my emptiness. And I could hear, 
 
 Around the quiet island of my soul, 
 
 That ocean world of hers harmonious roll. 
 I was an echo only, and I caught 
 
 From the full glory of her sphered whole 
 Only a gleam, as, under sound and thought, 
 I clasped a kindred life sublimer than I sought. 
 
 28 
 Ay, and her spirit looked beyond her speech, 
 
 Though full the utterance ; and its truth outran 
 Her pale of vision (as high prophets teach, 
 
 Shaping a wisdom wider than the span 
 
 Of private inspiration), broke the ban 
 Of self and circumstance, and overflowed 
 
 All barriers, broadening ever to the plan 
 Majestical of beauty's last abode, [of God. 
 
 Where wrought and moved the presence and the power
 
 TWO LIVES. 21 
 
 29 
 Such fellowship was mine with nature's heart, 
 
 Such privilege. But oh, there came a breath, 
 The keenness of whose edge had power to part 
 
 Our ancient bond, and blew a hollow wreath 
 
 Of formless mist out of the depths of death, 
 Which blurred the fair perfection of her face 
 
 With shadows of estrangement. Still beneath, 
 Though it be overblown, I may not trace 
 The passion and the prime of unforgotten grace. 
 
 30 
 There is no spot within that ample field, 
 
 Whence death has not withdrawn some primal dower 
 Of loveliness ; no hue that hath not sealed 
 
 Half of its revelation up ; no hour 
 
 Of all her seasons but has felt the power 
 Of strange infection ; not a shape but loses 
 
 Some share of proper sweetness ; not a flower 
 From all the company of June but closes 
 Her golden heart of meaning with the wild, wild roses.
 
 O 
 
 SUMMER. 
 
 THE roses wild ! 
 
 Do they grow 
 Still in that dim green mysterious lane ? 
 
 Climbing as they clomb 
 On the high hedge overhead, 
 Climbing where I once did roam 
 
 Long ago, 
 
 Like an all unvisionary child 
 Seeing, though I saw not, what would mine remain ? 
 
 I can never know. 
 Let them be disrooted, dead ; 
 
 They have found a home 
 In my heart, and there deep-domiciled, 
 
 And for ever fed 
 
 By my love, shall live and blossom in my brain. 
 O the roses wild ! 
 
 O the roses wild ! 
 White and red, 
 Faint as dying lips and fresh as foam, 
 
 On the verge they blow, 
 Where the mirrored cliffs do stain
 
 TWO LIVES. 23 
 
 Crimson all the flood below. 
 
 O the dread ! 
 
 Last year was it briefly once beguiled ? 
 Dread of deathly clouds that seemed to creep and come, 
 
 Closing overhead, 
 While for her I gathered twain, 
 
 By the river running low, 
 For my love, who looked at me and smiled ? 
 
 But the blurring rain 
 
 Down upon my heaven drew and swept across my home. 
 O the roses wild ! 
 
 O the roses wild ! x 
 
 And the rain ! 
 Children, hers and mine, around me grow, 
 
 But my rose is dead, , 
 And they gather, as they roam, 
 Roses white and red. 
 
 O the pain, 
 
 Mocking time that maketh all things mild, 
 With its thorn will pierce my empty spirit through, 
 
 Till I see again, 
 If, within my hollow home, 
 
 Looking overhead 
 Love with death be reconciled, 
 
 See the roses blow, 
 
 Under benedictions of God's open dome. 
 O the roses wild !
 
 24 TWO LIVES. 
 
 31 
 Speak to me, silent wind ! Oh, wherefore haste, 
 
 Alienate and inscrutable ? How long 
 Shall my heart listening only hear thee waste 
 
 The secret mission of thy lips among 
 
 The wild pines in low privacy of song ? 
 Speak to me, for me, wind ! Hast thou not heard ? 
 
 I am alone. Oh, be to me a tongue, 
 From death to life, for all that ever stirred 
 Of love or longing there, and bless me with a word. 
 
 32 
 
 Wilt thou not wait for me, oh careless cloud, 
 
 Winged prophet of the pure and free north-west, 
 That I may wander forth with thee, endowed 
 
 With the swift joy of motion, on thy quest, 
 
 And win beside thee, as thou visitest 
 All farthest forms, prevision clear ? Oh, sweep 
 
 Me from my memory loose, or let me rest 
 By thy light shadows as they pass and creep 
 From field to field, or linger where the low woods sleep.
 
 TWO LIVES. 25 
 
 33 
 Oh, red is still the heather, where we stood, 
 
 Only one August and a life ago, 
 And felt it flushing to our hearts. There's blood 
 
 Upon the blossom now. It could not grow, 
 
 Had not the grudging winds, that never blow 
 One seed of consolation into ken 
 
 Of my dull sense of craving, come to sow 
 Abroad the message of my sorrow. Then 
 It should have withered back to barren grey again ! 
 
 34 
 Red is the heather by the ring of firs, 
 
 That overpeering, dark and dominant, 
 Our purple ridge, can watch the sloping spurs 
 
 Creep out amid the corn. Their figures gaunt 
 
 Look giant-like upon the sun, but slant 
 Their grey and seamed foreheads from the frown 
 
 Of the besieging west, whose visits haunt 
 Their posted pride, and dim, beyond the brown 
 And broken moorland, see the dreaming southern down.
 
 26 TWO LIVES. 
 
 35 
 Oh, my thoughts travel out along that fringe 
 
 Of floating blue. It wins me westward, till, 
 Blent with the mist below, it takes the tinge 
 
 And fashion of a cloud. They follow still, 
 
 Where, far and low within the folded hill, 
 One readeth words, whose magic seems to move 
 
 By sweet life's promise and prophetic thrill 
 His spirit, with the sun and sea inwove, 
 To feel their simple sense, " She loves me and I love." 
 
 36 
 Back to me from behind the clearer south 
 
 The vision comes, more bitter and more sweet, 
 Of one that moveth to a trembling mouth 
 
 And heart, which cannot stay to breathe and beat, 
 
 And tender eyes, that wait not now to meet 
 In such full moment all the hope of his 
 
 With consummation's light, growing complete 
 Together, until all that was or is 
 Of sunshine gathered there in one untroubled kiss.
 
 tWO LIVES. 27 
 
 37 
 
 Oh, life and sunshine ! Could my vision cope 
 With faintness, and my fancy turn true seer, 
 
 East, in the hollow of that far grey slope, 
 
 Whose forehead breaketh seaward, white and sheer, 
 Two souls make love's last covenant. Oh hear, 
 
 Ye heavens, and listen earth ! Low words are said, 
 Sealing that sweet communion, new, more near, 
 
 Which loosens ancient links; and twain are wed, 
 And welded to one life and love and she is dead ! 
 
 38 
 Oh love, oh life behold me ! She was mine. 
 
 Come back to me ! Oh fix me there amid 
 The homes and hollows of that distant line, 
 
 My soul's horizon ! Hold my being hid 
 
 In those three years, whose sweet worth shall outbid 
 Time's competition ! Let their briefness last, 
 
 Immortal and aloof, for ever rid 
 Of hopeless memory's phantom word, " thou wast," 
 Under the purple light, which lingers on the past.
 
 28 TWO LIVES. 
 
 39 
 Oh death, dull realist, wouldst thou abridge 
 
 Such blessing ? Wouldst thou free me from all taint 
 Of dream and vision, that from ridge to ridge 
 
 Thou hast recalled me by thy cold restraint, 
 
 Slurring the land, that lies unpictured, faint, 
 Like to my after life, back to this knoll, 
 
 Where thou shalt show me to myself, and paint 
 Into the eye and centre of the whole, 
 Deep-shadowed on the past my solitary soul ? 
 
 40 
 Oh nature, hast thou dowered me with thy gift 
 
 Of free enlargement only to this end, 
 That I may watch with thee and see the rift 
 
 Widen upon my life, and only spend 
 
 Thy riches on my emptiness ? False friend, 
 Thou hast conspired with death himself to borrow 
 
 From me my love and yesterday, to lend 
 Nought to me but the image of my sorrow, 
 Which closes in to-day and overclouds to-morrow.
 
 TWO LIVES. 29 
 
 41 
 Oh love, oh wife, oh friend, thy death has bound, 
 
 For my dull scrutiny, and sealed the book 
 Of nature's benediction. She that crowned 
 
 With loveliness our ways, when I forsook 
 
 Her love for thine, and thy dear power shook 
 Her sleeping prophecies to life, and smote 
 
 Human and full upon me, mocks my look 
 Of longing, answering not to my sad note, 
 But moves mechanic by in law's unlovely rote. 
 
 42 
 Ye cold and quiet witnesses of death, 
 
 Were it not that your beauty still embalms 
 Deep in its heart a fragment and a breath 
 
 Of her true sweetness ; that my empty palms 
 
 Would catch and close upon the meagre alms 
 Of merest consolation, I could hate 
 
 Your pitiless core of power, which, though it calms 
 My thought and passion, dared to desecrate 
 The pale of her dear life, and clasp her in dull fate.
 
 30 TWO LIVES. 
 
 43 
 Nay, lawless rather, jarred and out of joint 
 
 Seems to me nature's system. Doubt has torn 
 The mask from off her fairness, and doth point 
 
 The lean and ghostly finger of his scorn 
 
 Full at her forehead, where she once had worn 
 The pageantry of life, and doth proclaim 
 
 Her hollow purpose, as of one forsworn, 
 And showeth in a bare unreverend frame 
 Death's own deep-riven flaw, the secret of her shame. 
 
 44 
 Ay She has nothing in me now. And yet, 
 
 Strange stealthy ministrations will intrude 
 On empty hours, when I would fain forget 
 
 Myself; and slowly will unlock my mood, 
 
 With quiet keys of memory, where I brood 
 Full face with sorrow ; ay, and half engross 
 
 The inward eye from sacred solitude, 
 And wait around my steps, and climb across 
 All my disrooted life and overgrow my loss.
 
 TWO LIVES. 31 
 
 45 
 Let them go by ! For how should I decline 
 
 On such low comfort, calm although it were ? 
 I who had wholly made a woman mine, 
 
 And climbed her height of love, and lingered there, 
 
 Seeing in nature but a broken stair 
 Of aspiration, whence my soul should win 
 
 A larger insight, over fields more fair, 
 Into the sweetness of a heart akin, 
 And all the secret places of the world within. 
 
 46 
 Or is there healing in the empty hand 
 
 Of death ? and did I all too lightly dream 
 That nature's face would meet mine, ever bland ? 
 
 And if with all my sadness she could seem 
 
 Sad, yet my heart divined not half the scheme 
 Of the mysterious love behind her smile 
 
 And tears, to raise hereafter and redeem 
 Out of the depths, where I must dwell awhile, 
 Till I confess and prove her power to reconcile ?
 
 32 TWO LIVES. 
 
 47 
 Doubtless to her at last I shall return, 
 
 In my full season, and her period 
 Of secular renewal ; shall discern, 
 
 But with a vision freer and more broad, 
 
 And purged in ways of womanhood and God, 
 How life and death by her low hidden path 
 
 Divinely blend in some sublimer road, 
 And, reaping what I may of aftermath, 
 Regather all she gave and deepen all she hath. 
 
 And doubtless she will come divinely back 
 For my refreshment, and will slowly wean 
 
 My feet from following only on the track 
 
 Of grudging death, where I may hardly glean 
 One ear, which to my sorrow shows not lean 
 
 And blighted, till she crown a far belief 
 
 With God's grain, subtly moulded out between 
 
 Death's chemistry and life's, and for my grief 
 Bring ripe into my heart a full and golden sheaf.
 
 AUTUMN. 
 
 AUTUMN held me as my soul's own season, 
 When my fancy freshly moved along 
 Time's procession. Yet I meant no treason 
 To proud summer's place, no wrong 
 Unto tender spring, or winter pure and strong. 
 Love was all my reason, 
 
 And the year was ripe for song. 
 
 Fairest was the face of soft October, 
 
 In the golden days, when she was kissed 
 
 By the sun of June, but joy was sober, 
 Mellowed in a dream of mist, 
 Joy of sweet transition, unto her that wist 
 
 Cold winds would unrobe her 
 For true winter, keeping tryst. 
 
 Oh, but this year's faith was early broken ; 
 
 Every hope was hollow ; not a breath 
 Of true autumn took me ; all unspoken,
 
 34 TWO LIVES. 
 
 Dropped her secret into death, 
 Leaving, of the beauty buried underneath, 
 On the earth, in token, 
 
 But a soiled and sodden wreath. 
 
 Out of all the ample heart of nature, 
 
 Once so human, to my soul confined 
 Here amid the ways of men, in stature 
 
 Dwarfed and shrunken, songless, blind, 
 
 No life cometh now, or dieth undivined, 
 Nothing but misfeature, 
 
 Falling leaf and barren wind. 
 
 Lonely, silent, there is one that paces, 
 
 Autumn overhead and at his feet, 
 Lost in some far season, where he traces, 
 
 Moving on from street to street, 
 
 Two ways, where the whole world once for him could meet, 
 Seeing but two faces, 
 
 Hearing but two hearts that beat. 
 
 Homeward, homeless, early, late, he goeth, 
 Where the gaunt and gnarled acacias loom 
 
 Leafless, where the cold laburnum showeth 
 Withered phantoms of her bloom, 
 Where the lilac shed her sweet life's faint perfume,
 
 TWO LIVES. 35 
 
 Where the white birch boweth 
 Ghostly in the autumn gloom. 
 
 Only at the window of a chamber, 
 
 Is it mine ? where love doth wake and call, 
 Autumn leaves are flushing still from amber 
 
 Into crimson. Let them fall ! 
 
 Let them cling and wither, or upon the wall 
 Peer awhile and clamber ! 
 
 Autumn, all is over, all. 
 
 Gold. But yesterday the world was golden. 
 
 Golden was the month our spirits met, 
 When, beneath time's soft wings briefly folden, 
 
 Lips were trembling to forget 
 
 In fulfilment's hour far longing's gathered debt. 
 Would that hour were holden, 
 
 Perfect in its passion, yet. 
 
 Brown is all the gold ; and now November, 
 
 Brooding on the silent year unseen, 
 Dulls with his dank breath life's last red ember, 
 
 Or, with frosty finger lean, 
 
 Plucks a meagre remnant of the host of green. 
 Year, wilt thou remember, 
 
 Fruit and fulness once have been ?
 
 36 TWO LIVES. 
 
 Fruit and fulness, autumn, all is over. 
 
 Life, and I have gathered what thou hast. 
 Mist and sunshine ; I was once a lover ; 
 
 Let me grow upon my past ! 
 
 Let me see thee, love, by some divine forecast, 
 Climb again and cover 
 
 My unsheltered home at last ! 
 
 49 
 Death came and dwelt with me. I looked without, 
 
 And thought, although I hardly seemed to think, 
 That nature, who had soothed an earlier doubt, 
 
 Could soften truth. I stood beside the brink 
 
 Of her sweet waters, and I longed to drink 
 Out of her cup of comfort, to peruse 
 
 The pure reflection of her love, or sink 
 Under life's surface for awhile, and lose 
 Myself in ministrations she might not refuse.
 
 TWO LIVES. 37 
 
 5 
 For I had loved and waited on her first, 
 
 With loyal service of the soul and eye ; 
 Nor looked not in my hour of lonely thirst 
 
 That she, my spirit's mistress, would belie 
 
 The bounty of her love, or meet me dry 
 And withered in life's drought. And lo ! among 
 
 The empty wells of her mirage, and by 
 The wilderness of death, she cooled my tongue, 
 Bidding my powers swell and blossom into song. 
 
 So deep her skill, so subtly had she dealt 
 With me and sorrow, that her very dearth 
 
 Of vision turned to sound. And, whilst I felt 
 The dead face of an unfamiliar earth 
 Decline to nothingness from dearest worth, 
 
 Under my straining ears I heard a string 
 Vibrating with the pangs of nobler birth, 
 
 And knew myself re-born by suffering, 
 Half found and half forgot, as one who strove to sing.
 
 38 TWO LIVES. 
 
 52 
 Surely there lives in nature's hand a touch 
 
 Deeper and more divine than any chord, 
 Whose echoes only ring in hearts of such 
 
 As suffer not, nor know the overlord 
 
 Of love and life true pain. For through the word 
 Of finest resonance it trembles till 
 
 It pierce the secret seat, where lieth stored 
 The potency of elemental will, 
 And life is loosened by the deep dissolving thrill. 
 
 53 
 Thus was she gracious to me. But indeed 
 
 I deem not that the boon was wholly hers, 
 But rather ripe fruition from a seed 
 
 Dropped on her lap by death, who ministers 
 
 To love, and by his very keenness spurs 
 And stings imagination to o'erleap 
 
 A low world's seeming, as his wild breath stirs 
 Fair life's unrippled face with wholesome sweep, 
 And shakes the heart where love has never learnt to weep.
 
 TWO LIVES. 39 
 
 54 
 Oh strange that, in the season of her prime, 
 
 All the ripe fulness of her breath would rush 
 Over my open bosom ; yet no rhyme 
 
 Returned the challenge, which could only flush 
 
 The fancy. Then mere sweetness seemed to crush 
 O'erladen sense. And now, though winter strip 
 
 Her grace and numb her motions, till they brush 
 But faintly my dull face, she bids me dip 
 Into deep thoughts that rise and tremble to the lip. 
 
 55 
 More strange that she, the woman who was queen 
 
 Of my poor world, unpeopled of all bliss 
 But her, who rose and briefly shone between 
 
 One starless night which knew her not, and this, 
 
 Whence she is fallen out, by dearest kiss 
 That purified my lips, never awoke 
 
 A word within them, but it seemed to miss 
 The authentic meaning of my love, and broke 
 The whole harmonious sound I heard but left unspoke.
 
 4O TWO LIVES. 
 
 56 
 
 God ! If thou wouldst give me back my dead 
 One briefest moment, that, although my breath 
 
 Were scant and laboured, as when her dear head 
 Dwelt on my bosom by the banks of death, 
 For loving ears I might at last unsheath 
 
 My heart of all the shame, wherewith I strove 
 Voiceless in vain, or lay this lyric wreath, 
 
 Which withers even as I write, above [move. 
 
 Her pale pure brow, and mark those faithful faint eyes 
 
 57 
 
 1 do remember love has writ the date 
 Over the ruined entrance of my life 
 
 Before I dreamed that she would dedicate 
 
 Her pureness to my power, and whisper " wife " 
 To my most secret self; when laughing strife 
 
 Of light words still betrayed not we were stealing, 
 Spirit to spirit nearer, mine o'er-rife 
 
 With all the labour of vain love's concealing, 
 And hers unruffled yet by coming love's forefeeling ;
 
 TWO LIVES. 41 
 
 58 
 I do remember how a phantom hope 
 
 Of formless song, which ever came to haunt 
 My sleeping spirit, caught a clearer scope 
 
 Of purpose, hovering as a visitant 
 
 In the lone world of love's impassioned want, 
 Wherein I sojourned, beckoning me to build 
 
 Myself into such music, she should grant 
 An ear of graciousness, and briefly stilled 
 Doubting desire, then fled hollow and unfulfilled. 
 
 59 
 And after, when so sweetly she came down 
 
 From her far heaven unsphered, and deigned to dwell 
 Amid my twilight, fair fulfilment's crown 
 
 Lay on my life. Her quiet eyes would quell 
 
 The unrest and fever of my own, and fell 
 With new enchantment on my sense, and wove 
 
 About my weakness and my strength a spell, 
 Whose subtle music overwhelmed and drove 
 My dream of song aloof by countercharm of love.
 
 42 TWO LIVES. 
 
 60 
 Love was enough ; and love alone was near. 
 
 And that no alien voice or hour might thwart 
 His own pure prophecy, which twain might hear, 
 
 He drew my silent soul with hers apart, 
 
 Where touched and tunable by nature's art 
 Divinely human, needing not a tongue, 
 
 All the tumultuous meaning of his heart, 
 Trembling as ours, beat softly out among 
 The secret chords of life, which love himself had strung. 
 
 61 
 Love was enough, love only. For he breathed, 
 
 Out of the precincts of his power and grace, 
 A full mysterious spirit forth, and wreathed 
 
 My being in essential life's embrace, 
 
 And closed my vision, whilst before my face 
 His benediction seemed to pass and steal 
 
 All limits from my soul, but the last space 
 Of individual fate ; then laid a seal 
 Of silence on my lips, till I had learnt to feel.
 
 TWO LIVES. 43 
 
 62 
 Love was enough. Upon my lonely earth 
 
 Looked down from all the night a single star. 
 But it was mine, born with my nature's birth, 
 
 And orbing on me, dear, familiar, 
 
 Over the low grey clouds that rose to bar 
 From its free scope and need of skyward range 
 
 A darkened vision, though she felt afar 
 The shadow of eclipse, by prescience strange, 
 Showed ever one fair face to all my spirit's change. 
 
 63 
 Oh it was plotted in the mind of fate, 
 
 Nature's astrologer, and known to God, 
 That the twin star of song should rise too late 
 
 For her discerning. Then alone love rode 
 
 And ruled my heaven for a period, 
 Unsung, unpublished ; so that her true height, 
 
 Sinking upon my sense, should find abode 
 In silent worship through my waiting night, 
 And draw my broken thoughts to her pure spirit's light ;
 
 44 TWO LIVES. 
 
 64 
 That life might round and polish the dull glass 
 
 Of my rough faculties with edge of pain, 
 Till the pure radiance of love's beam could pass, 
 
 Unbroken and unblurred by any stain 
 
 Of self or sense ; and that, in full refrain, 
 The essential music of his sphere should rhyme 
 
 With all the courses of my restless brain, 
 A sound so large and living it should climb 
 Up to the ears of death, and tremble into time. 
 
 65 
 
 So love was with me, in a soul unripe 
 
 For his full presence, till free passion stirred 
 
 New secret seeds to clamber to the type 
 And stature of himself ; and, as a bird, 
 Wandered from some far shore, with tones half heard, 
 
 Haunted my summer, a sweet antidote 
 To doubt and solitude, but lent no word, 
 
 Or but a poor and fragmentary note, 
 To lift a wingless thought, and ease a troubled throat.
 
 TWO LIVES. 45 
 
 66 
 
 Yet song lay waiting for his perfect season, 
 Deep-folded in my dreaming nature's core ; 
 
 And peeping out for spring, when winds of reason 
 Had swept the thought of all the world before 
 My loosened spirit, and had made the lore 
 
 Of labour mine, deemed that at last below 
 The surface of my soul, through every pore 
 
 Of life, would pierce the sun of love and glow, 
 And push a blossom forth and be its power to grow. 
 
 67 
 But it was winter still, and the dim shape 
 
 Of death loomed out of time, and stood above 
 The fragment of our life, seeming to drape 
 
 In white mist all the meaning of our love, 
 
 When for her hearing, though the words did move 
 In their high function, halting, low and weak, 
 
 Half in despair half prophecy I strove 
 To clasp afar song's pure untravelled peak, 
 And from its splendour win a path and power to speak.
 
 I 
 
 SONG'S DREAM. 
 
 WOULD that I might feel 
 
 One perfect hour, 
 When love's own passion-flower 
 Would blossom in my heart and briefly steal 
 My nature ; or with solemn power 
 
 A vesper-chime would peal 
 
 Of reverence on my mood, and bid me kneel, 
 
 Drawing all sense and vision up to their free tower, 
 
 So to unseal, 
 
 And show me flushed with awe and beauty's dower 
 The whole world and embower 
 My spirit there, and heal. 
 I would that I might feel 
 One perfect hour. 
 
 I would that I might think 
 
 One perfect thought, 
 So deep it should be sought 
 Through summer centuries for men to drink, 
 And dry not ; so full fraught 
 With truth too rare to sink
 
 TWO LIVES. 47 
 
 Under the tide that beats around time's brink ; 
 So purely firm, so rounded and so finely wrought 
 
 Into a link 
 
 Within the golden chain of knowledge caught, 
 That life could loosen not 
 Its clasp, nor fashion shrink ; 
 I would that I might think 
 One perfect thought. 
 
 I would that I might do 
 
 One perfect deed, 
 Whose deep root, wholly freed 
 From the low soil of self and passion, drew 
 Its nurture from high human need, 
 
 And, ripening to renew, 
 Dropped, in the fulness of a time o'erdue, 
 Into the lap of years a pure and vital seed, 
 
 Which, piercing through 
 Dead custom, flowered in a simple creed, 
 Dying itself to breed 
 A broader life as true ; 
 I would that I might do 
 One perfect deed. 
 
 I would that I might find 
 
 One perfect word, 
 Whose mirror took unblurred 
 The very soul of vision and the mind
 
 48 TWO LIVES. 
 
 Of melody ; and registered 
 
 The whispering spirit's wind, 
 And lightest print which fancy left behind ; 
 So quick, that if deep down some strange emotion stirred, 
 
 Dumb, undefined, 
 
 Or phantom of dead feeling, half interred, 
 Rose in a void, it heard 
 A voice, a shape divined ; 
 I would that I might find 
 A perfect word. 
 
 I would that I might sing 
 
 One perfect rhyme, 
 Whose ordered march might climb, 
 Calm as the proud procession of the spring, 
 And sweet and light as dewy prime, 
 
 Unbroken but to bring 
 The marshalled steps of its free following 
 By pleasant pause to solemn heights of sound sublime, 
 
 Where, listening 
 
 Unto the music of its full true chime, 
 The trembling heart of time 
 Might beat and swell and ring ; 
 I would that I might sing 
 One perfect rhyme. 
 
 I would that I might make 
 One perfect song,
 
 TWO LIVES. 49 
 
 So flawless, that among 
 The canonized few it still should take 
 
 The careful eye of praise ; so strong, 
 
 No breath of age should shake 
 The blossoms of its honour down, or break ; 
 So surely touched and true to the one human tongue, 
 
 It should awake 
 
 The drowsy ear of memory to prolong 
 Its echoes old and young, 
 For its own simple sake ; 
 I would that I might make 
 One perfect song. 
 
 68 
 
 So on life's surface, listening to a dream 
 Of distant south, lay my light bark too long, 
 
 Becalmed, or floating aimless on a stream 
 Of thoughts unshapen, motionless among 
 The images that rose and fell. But song 
 
 Lingered, until there came a sudden wind, 
 Keen with the bitterness of death and strong 
 
 To shake my drooping sails, and swept my mind 
 Shoreward at last by ways deeper than I divined. 
 
 E
 
 5O TWO LIVES. 
 
 69 
 Life unto death. There is no kingdom, creed, 
 
 No flower or human soul, no vital root 
 Of thought and aspiration, that can breed 
 
 Right offspring of itself, or freely shoot 
 
 To its full stature, or behold the fruit 
 Of far perfection in the life of time, 
 
 Or on the lips of men, but death transmute 
 Decay and weakness into power to climb, 
 And purge the earth which clogged and overlay its prime. 
 
 70 
 Death unto life. When all the world is worn 
 
 Beneath the burden of its years, and dearth 
 Dwells with the present, whose few flowers are born 
 
 Blighted, and life lies fallow, through the earth, 
 
 Out of the depths of some pure past, whose worth 
 Was drained not, runs a thrill which hath beguiled 
 
 Her heart from barrenness, and in the birth 
 Of the strange future's fair prophetic child 
 The great twin powers of time are blent and reconciled.
 
 TWO LIVES. 51 
 
 71 
 Death unto life. Oh doubtless ittwas law, 
 
 With signature and seal of God, deep writ 
 High on time's forehead. There it seemed to draw 
 
 Life's dreamful fragments to one vision, lit 
 
 With truth's own lightning. There it showed me knit 
 The great world's seasons secular, that roll 
 
 From spring to spring, recurrent, infinite, 
 And linked in one harmonious living whole 
 With all the petty periods of the several souL 
 
 72 
 
 Oh doubtless it was law impersonal, 
 Luminous, common, passionless, aloof, 
 
 Like some cold star. Ay, but to see it fall 
 One private flash on me ; to watch the proof 
 Break sheer upon my sight down from the roof 
 
 Of the world's reason ; and to feel it turn 
 To fiery potency within the woof 
 
 And tissue of my life, that I might learn 
 In the fierce school of pain how purest truth can burn !
 
 52 TWO LIVES. 
 
 73 
 Death unto life.; Had that death been but mine, 
 
 Not hers, with all my faculties unblown, 
 Unripened, touching there true anodyne 
 
 For imperfection, I had passed alone 
 
 Out of this twilight world of love and moan, 
 Content if only her dear hand had pressed 
 
 Mine, had her sweet tears shriven me, her tone 
 Of benediction calmed me on my quest, 
 And I had ceased to breathe only upon her breast. 
 
 74 
 Ay, but to live, where love itself was warm ; 
 
 To breathe, to dream, where love itself lay dead ; 
 To wake and fold within a hollow arm 
 
 Only chill memories ; to softly tread, 
 
 Trembling as in a world untenanted ; 
 To listen and to hear nought but the knell 
 
 Of dear love's daily parting ; to be wed 
 Body and soul to one live pain ; to dwell 
 Familiar with death's face alone how were that well ?
 
 TWO LIVES. 53 
 
 75 
 To overlive love's autumn, and to save 
 
 Hardly from his last season one bare seed 
 To grow withal ; and on love's very grave, 
 
 Feeling new fibres tremble to the need 
 
 Of light and motion, there perforce to feed 
 On the deep memories which rise and mould 
 
 The shape and seeming of a flower, but breed 
 Nor sap nor sweetness, and to watch unfold 
 Only a pallid life, like that first primrose cold, 
 
 76 
 Which blossomed over her ; ay, and to haunt 
 
 Daily the threshold of death's barred hall ; 
 To hold poor piteous hands that close on want, 
 
 Or ineffectual beat against a wall 
 
 Blank and impalpable ; oh God, to call 
 Softly in love's deep silence, and to strain 
 
 All faculty and passion to forestall 
 The faintest whisper, wafted back again 
 Into the spirit's pause and broken ebb of pain
 
 54 TWO LIVES. 
 
 77 
 How were that well ? And how, if life be mute, 
 
 Might I consent to listen unto death, 
 And watch those pale lips of love's substitute y 
 
 Shaping an answer, as of one that saith 
 
 " I am thine inspiration ; my cold breath, 
 More kind than love, shall quicken thee and bring 
 
 To birth full music, while it uttereth 
 A note, to whose pure function thou must string 
 Thy broken nature now, and school dead love to sing." 
 
 78 
 " Dead love shall lend thee sound and vision ; so 
 
 Hereafter thou shalt read true prophecy 
 Perchance in her hard saying." " Love, I go ; 
 
 Forgetfulness, fulfilment, God are nigh ; 
 
 And if I seem too human still to die, 
 Such little fingers hold me here, possessed 
 
 Of dear life's longing, not for thee I sigh, 
 Knowing thy life shall fare, by this bequest, 
 Better henceforth alone, for thou hast loved my best."
 
 TWO LIVES. 55 
 
 79 
 Dear love, dead wife, or if there be a name 
 
 Sweeter than these, more sacred, though my tongue, 
 Poor silent heretic, felt a quick flame 
 
 Of protestation leap against the wrong, 
 
 Done by thy doubting love to mine less strong, 
 And lightly would renounce, were I their lord, 
 
 The whole world's legacy and hope of song, 
 And what is most immortal, for one word 
 Fresh from thy lips to chime with my life's tuneless chord, 
 
 80 
 Strengthen me, that my passion may not chafe, 
 
 Solely insurgent on usurping death, 
 Or weakly bend and sue that he vouchsafe 
 
 Some vision to my sense ; nor wear a wreath 
 
 Of barren silence ; help me here, beneath 
 His eye, to arm my sorrow and accept, 
 
 For my fulfilment, what thou wouldst bequeath 
 Of life made fruitful by the tears I wept, 
 And waken by quick pain my secret powers that slept !
 
 56 TWO LIVES. 
 
 8l 
 Pardon me that I see the hollow wraith 
 
 Of music, which would haunt and half deceive 
 My dreaming, turning now to solid faith 
 
 Of shapely song ; pardon, if on this eve 
 
 Of death, when I perchance might better leave 
 Love's sanctity true-templed here alone, 
 
 Spiritual, formless in my soul, I weave 
 Its inmost meaning into words, whose tone 
 Shall meet the common air and blend me with my own. 
 
 82 
 
 Oh not with will untuned to thine, dear wife, 
 
 Or lips by thine unpurified I take 
 From my most private heart thy hidden life, 
 
 And here with trembling hands and reverent break 
 
 Death's heavy seal, not tearless now ; nor make 
 Confession to the public priest, true art, 
 
 Only for human absolution's sake, 
 Or lightly seeking to discharge my heart 
 Of sorrow's solemn debt, which I must pay apart.
 
 TWO LIVES. 57 
 
 83 
 If I were silent then, oh love, forgive, 
 
 When life's full function rose and would repress 
 My song ; if now I sing, who hardly live 
 
 Without thee, deem not that I love thee less, 
 
 Since, into this my world of emptiness, 
 Thy dear dead image cometh to incite 
 
 My mutinous dull powers, and dispossess, 
 By viewless transmutation of love's might, 
 My spirit of myself, to be song's proselyte. 
 
 84 
 Dead love not dead, it hath no sweetness thus ; 
 
 Oh living love, albeit never song 
 Fell from thy lips, so true and tremulous 
 
 To the world's beauty mirrored clear among 
 
 Thy visions pure ; and I but seemed to long, 
 Uncentred, ineffectual to set free 
 
 From my thought's burden this too pregnant tongue, 
 And, unprophetic, shaped its power to be 
 Master at length amid the lords of melody ;
 
 58 TWO LIVES. 
 
 85 
 Be to me now a presence and a fire, 
 
 Like that frail spirit, song's essential bloom, 
 A growth too fevered, born but to aspire, 
 
 Wed to the stem of his strong life, to whom, 
 
 Deep-travelled but unstained in doubtful gloom, 
 The world was sunny as in Asolo, 
 
 Whose wholesome subtle thought once could assume 
 
 For thee the office my love must forego, [flow. 
 
 And whet faith's languid edge and clear life's troubled 
 
 86 
 
 Be to me sanctuary and song ! Be mine, 
 
 O living love, that my love may not miss 
 Full consummation, as the Florentine 
 
 Austere grew perfect for his Beatrice ! 
 
 Beckon me to thee ! By that last cold kiss 
 Of consecration hold me, pure as she, 
 
 But warm with magic of remembered bliss ! 
 The love that was keep thou, and quicken me, 
 For the true power and stature of the love to be !
 
 TWO LIVES. 59 
 
 87 
 Compass me with clear hope and memory ! Touch 
 
 To pure effectual passion all my sense, 
 Sublimed, transfigured to an utterance such 
 
 As listens unto love in audience 
 
 Of death ! And if high reason, reverence, 
 Faith, freedom, love speak at my spirit's birth 
 
 In music grave, wafted I know not whence, 
 Oh love, dead, living, clothe it in my dearth 
 Or fulness with thyself and make it something worth !
 
 LOVE AND SONG. 
 
 Love. 
 
 COME not, oh song, between 
 My love and me ! 
 For though thy presence screen 
 My private soul and thought from scrutiny 
 
 Of sorrow, I would see 
 
 Only his haunting face, who hath so truly seen 
 My love and me. 
 
 Song. 
 Say not that I conceal ! 
 
 When sorrow dies 
 To song he doth reveal 
 His perfect vision, and in song's pure eyes 
 
 Mirrors his mysteries ; 
 
 And, living, from these lips, where love hath set his seal, 
 He prophesies.
 
 TWO LIVES. 6 1 
 
 Love. 
 Speak not to me, oh song, 
 
 Who wholly gave 
 My ear to wait among 
 Life's fragments, if from silence I might save, 
 
 Were it a single wave, 
 
 Of her sweet music ceased, and listen here, how long ? 
 By love's own grave ! 
 
 Song. 
 Hear me, for I have heard 
 
 Thy love's true tone ! 
 When it grew faint and stirred 
 Hardly one heart, it trembled to my own ; 
 
 And now, by my breath blown 
 Softly about thy senses, waiteth for thy word, 
 A song unknown. 
 
 Love. 
 Ask not, oh song, my heart ! 
 
 Dead love is there, 
 Sacred, enshrined, apart. 
 Let me go by ! For wherefore wouldst thou share 
 
 A soul, unsheltered, bare ? 
 
 Touch not my lips with thine ! Too passionate thou art, 
 Too full, too fair.
 
 62 TWO LIVES. 
 
 Song. 
 Tell me thy love ! I need 
 
 No other thing. 
 Say me thy sorrow's creed ! 
 Lend me thy lips, to shape thy suffering ! 
 
 For song can grow and cling 
 Unto love's empty home, or on his fulness feed. 
 Love thou and sing ! 
 
 88 
 But what am I that I should deem me ripe 
 
 For this high dedication, or akin 
 To canonized saints of song ? My pipe, 
 
 I fear it, yet will mock me, flawed within, 
 
 On lips unprivileged, by music thin 
 And miscreated ; if strong love not give 
 
 Power and precedent, whence I may win 
 Such elemental sound, full, nutritive, 
 As shall sustain proud purpose thus to sing and live.
 
 TWO LIVES. 63 
 
 89 
 There was a day they told me song was dead, 
 
 Or dying for that all his power was faint 
 With strange infection, which had inly fed 
 
 And stolen on his weakness ; a dull taint 
 
 Of doubt o'ersubtle, knowing not restraint 
 Or passion ; until that fine spirit, rife 
 
 With sick and pallid fancies, learned to paint, 
 From the dim places of divided life, 
 The wholesome world in hues of his sad nature's strife ; 
 
 90 
 Or like a lawless star, extravagant, 
 
 Spurning the simple period sublime 
 Of serene passion, ever seemed to pant 
 
 Inordinate for some fierce power to climb [rhyme 
 
 A void and viewless heaven, whose heart should 
 With ecstasy ; or fallen from true height, 
 
 And lost to the free motion of his prime, 
 Circled the large suns living on our sight 
 With dead mechanic fire, a shrunken satellite.
 
 64 TWO LIVES. 
 
 91 
 
 They told me fancy, moving once a maiden 
 
 Through the free fields of loveliness and awe, 
 A fresh note rising sweet from lips unladen, 
 
 Was grown to womanhood, and felt the flaw 
 
 Of life in strange transition, where she saw, 
 For surfeit of near knowledge, that first gleam 
 
 Prophetic pass in the cold light of law, 
 Then stood, all her high faculty of dream 
 Forgotten, thirsty, silent by song's empty stream. 
 
 92 
 Or if she sang, it was a troubled strain, 
 
 Touched with a broken longing to recall 
 The far-off passion and the free refrain 
 
 Of simple days ; or knowing not her fall, 
 
 Would blindly lift to song's high pedestal 
 An image of her lowness, and would drape 
 
 The unpurged and petty individual 
 In the fair seeming of large art, and ape 
 That pure faith's worship with her lean and languid shape.
 
 TWO LIVES. 65 
 
 93 
 And I misdoubting heard. For I had felt 
 
 That self-same shadow coldly fall, and creep 
 Across my being ; seen its darkness melt 
 
 Into the substance of my soul, to keep 
 
 A dim court there ; not as from clouds that sweep 
 The forehead of the sea, and lightly slur 
 
 Its pure reflection ; but a stain more deep, 
 Imperious, inward, such as wild winds stir 
 Over the ocean's heart, and all the heavens blur. 
 
 94 
 Yet even as I doubted, there arose 
 
 A vision and a shape, which stood aloof, 
 Majestic. On its brow was high repose 
 
 Seated with passion. From clear eyes reproof 
 Like reverend stars, haunting the full world's roof, 
 Looked forth upon me, shaming me to sing, 
 
 While life's whole music woven in the woof 
 Of that rich utterance seemed to meet and ring 
 With song itself or love or some diviner thing. 
 
 F
 
 66 TWO LIVES. 
 
 95 
 " Were song dead, then thou mightest sing his dirge 
 
 In sound so piteous, death should half forget 
 His proud cold purpose, and behold emerge, 
 
 Out of the very tomb of dear regret, 
 
 A vision only won by pure eyes wet 
 With love's own insight ; mightest carve a stone 
 
 So shapen by free faith with memory met, 
 That image should reclaim the authentic tone 
 And spirit of dead song, to echo to thine own. 
 
 96 
 " Were song a-dying ; were that pure full flood 
 
 So shrunk and fallen from the wholesome brim 
 Of life's true level, that it seemed to brood 
 
 Aimless amid the broken banks, which rim 
 
 And prison its low ripple, now too dim 
 To take the trembling image of one star, 
 
 Yet might a whisper of the sea's large hymn 
 By recreative faith be caught afar 
 From the free waves which beat and gather on the bar.
 
 TWO LIVES. 67 
 
 97 
 " Song is not dead. He sleepeth ; and the dawn, 
 
 Pure flushing for prophetic eyes, which make 
 To-morrow, were but doubt's cold curtain drawn 
 
 From the free vision, now should surely break 
 
 The seal at last of his dull dreaming ; shake 
 Sick phantoms from a spirit, tuned amiss 
 
 By trouble, and behold his being take 
 Under the warm world's fresh and fiery kiss 
 New breath from nature's life and God's creative bliss. 
 
 " Wouldst thou behold him, bid thy spirit climb 
 The clear height specular, whence doubt's deep rift 
 
 Doth faint and dwindle, while the full world's chime 
 Fuses sad notes unsatisfied, that drift 
 Low, ineffectual here ! Purge thou and lift 
 
 Dim eyes, now disinured, unsensitive 
 
 But to the soul's own twilight, where they sift 
 
 O'erfinely inward mood and vision ! Give 
 Thy sense to simple day, look forth and feel and live !
 
 68 TWO LIVES. 
 
 99 
 " Wouldst thou awake him, learn the purest spell 
 
 Of aspiration ! Seem as one akin 
 To his most perfect dream ! and wouldst thou dwell 
 
 Alone in that proud worship, deep within 
 
 The precincts of thy broken nature, twin 
 To his, with hands by pain and passion skilled, 
 
 And lips so consecrated they should win 
 His hearing, on love's sacred site rebuild 
 Thy soul to temple song, and be in him fulfilled ! 
 
 100 
 " Howbeit dream not thou shalt repossess 
 
 Lightly or all that vision, human, whole, 
 Which mirrors, with a larger life express, 
 
 The world's essential image in a soul 
 
 Unsundered. Time's transition now hath stole 
 Too deep upon thy spirit. Thou must speak 
 
 All its authentic trouble, that control 
 May ripen inward from the lips that seek 
 To catch the calm sure utterance of a song antique,
 
 TWO LIVES. 69 
 
 101 
 " Song is a flower which blossoms on the cleft 
 
 Of some divided life ; whose beauty's born, 
 Or late within a widowed spirit, left 
 
 Alone with memory, dreaming on forlorn 
 
 Of the fair past ; or from a soul unworn, 
 Which early, with quick pangs of prophecy, 
 
 Doth tremble onward to a fairer morn, 
 While want and fulness, fraught with hope and sigh, 
 Can waken dreams to life sweeter than days which die. 
 
 IO2 
 
 " But the rift ever runs and broadens down 
 On the perfection of the two lives, wed 
 
 By magic of high poesy. His crown 
 Of reconcilement withers from the head 
 Of time. His sweet reprieve doth pass. Unsaid 
 
 Is the brief benediction ; and dissent, 
 
 Deep, secular, cries on his honour ' dead,' 
 
 And doth usurp, upon that fair realm's rent, 
 The power of song's repose, lord of a world unblent.
 
 70 TWO LIVES. 
 
 103 
 " And ever must the simple seamless robe 
 
 Rewoven be on later looms ; retuned 
 The lyre to subtler sound ; a finer probe, 
 
 More inward, softly laid on nature's wound 
 
 By poet, as by one who hath communed 
 Deeply with all disease, till he divine 
 
 By wholesome vision, for a soul impugned 
 In its essential tissue, anodyne, 
 And large remedial hope. Look thou and hold it thine ! 
 
 104 
 " There with thy spirit, if thou wouldest know 
 
 The hurt and healing of this time's estate, 
 Watch thou and hearken ! If the sound be low 
 
 And inward, there is song articulate ; 
 
 There its true heart of action. There high fate 
 Holds his most secret court and council. There 
 
 Read thou the legend, epic, passionate 
 Of individual life, reared from despair 
 Under redemption's law to be fulfilment's heir.
 
 TWO LIVES. 71 
 
 i5 
 " There on the common sea of circumstance 
 
 Let thy sight travel, from the primal stream 
 Prophetic, over waves of old romance, 
 
 To strange horizons haunted by a gleam 
 
 Of sunny issues infinite ! There deem 
 Amid the relics of a dead world dwell 
 
 Freedom and awe and high effectual dream 
 To hold thee. There envisage very hell 
 And heaven, and shape thy sense to feel the spirit's spell. 
 
 106 
 " There shalt thou hear the very pulse of time 
 
 Tremble upon thy being. There behold 
 The pageantry of all its courses climb 
 
 Across thy vision ; catch the echoes rolled 
 
 From its far revolutions, till they mould 
 Thy motions to their own imperial beat ! 
 
 There feel the passion of its purpose fold 
 And sway thee, as high powers embattled meet, 
 To wrestle for thyself, thy freedom or defeat !
 
 72 TWO LIVES. 
 
 107 
 " There shalt thou touch life's elemental spring ; 
 
 Shalt see upon the hidden heart's brief stage 
 Time's subtle plot, the play of suffering, 
 
 And the sick purpose of a broken age 
 
 Reshapen 'twixt a heavy heritage 
 And free conception ; there proud tragic law 
 
 Hold colloquy with passion ; there presage 
 Luminous of a dawn, whereto we draw, 
 Purged from ourselves awhile in full prophetic awe. 
 
 1 08 
 
 " There in the hollow chamber of the heart, 
 
 Hear the world's spirit breathe, and take the tone 
 
 Of thine ! Wait thou and listen there apart 
 To thy most secret self s confession, grown 
 Too full and tremulous to live alone ! 
 
 Speak as high prophet, on whose tongue no seal 
 Is set but reverence ! Dare not to disown 
 
 Life's infinite commission ! Look, reveal 
 Thy private vision's scope, as one empowered to feel !
 
 TWO LIVES. 73 
 
 109 
 " There, if thou wouldest fuse in one fair birth 
 
 Loveliness, truth and dream and all desire, 
 Lend thou thyself, thus strung by time and earth, 
 
 To love, that he may hold thee for his lyre ! 
 
 Lend him thy lips, that from the central fire 
 Of his divinity a flame may fill 
 
 Thy spirit, and his image pass entire, 
 Essential, where with one creative thrill 
 He shall sublime thy functions unto his pure will !"
 
 LIFE AND SONG. 
 
 METHOUGHT my spirit watched beside sick Time, 
 In one brief chamber, where his long-drawn 
 breath, 
 
 And heart's faint beating ever seemed to rhyme 
 With the slow quiet coming on of death. 
 
 And I so closely was his being blent 
 
 With mine must helpless wait with him and feel, 
 
 While dim shapes in the darkness came and went, 
 And spake of life and death and strove to heal. 
 
 Grey Science touched and knew that trembling nerve, 
 
 And briefly said, as one that only saw, 
 " Give thou thyself to nature ! Win and serve 
 
 Her pure force ! Wed thy weakness to her law."
 
 TWO LIVES. 75 
 
 Large Nature softly took him to her breast, 
 And placed upon his brow her cooling palm. 
 
 She spake, " I bare thee ; I will nurse thee ; rest ; 
 Thou shalt outlive me ; only learn my calm ! " 
 
 Young Art bent o'er him with a fresh full kiss, 
 That lingered on his lips. A broken gleam, 
 
 Or of forgotten or unfashioned bliss, 
 
 Lit his dull vision, while she whispered " Dream ! " 
 
 Clear Reason pierced with subtle, probing gaze 
 Those wandering eyes, and found a pathless soul. 
 
 " I will retrace," he said, "thy spirit's ways, 
 
 And show thee where they meet, and life is whole." 
 
 Some secret prescience, when their whispering ceased, 
 Born of long watching, in my spirit woke ; 
 
 I flung life's window wide upon the east ; 
 
 And sound and vision held me and I spoke 
 
 " I feel the fresh wind teach me his refrain ; 
 
 I see the white dawn on my soul ascend ; 
 I hear those voices, beating through my brain, 
 
 Into one song, or mine or morning's, blend."
 
 76 TWO LIVES. 
 
 And then anon there came a matin bell, 
 
 A tone of pure fulfilment, close, more clear 
 
 " Faith is returned to ring for thee night's knell ; 
 Awake, come forth, oh Time, new life is here ! " 
 
 And Time arose, and laid his hand in mine ; 
 
 And so together from pale dreamful doubt 
 We passed to worship at the warm world's shrine, 
 
 And found God waiting for us there without. 
 
 no 
 
 Last winter, moving under mournful pines 
 
 Perpetual, where grey vapours brood and cling, 
 
 Sudden, unprisoned from those solemn lines, 
 I burst upon the southern world, one thing 
 Of sunshine, from the cliffs that shoreward fling 
 
 Their crumbled gold, kissed by soft lips of foam, 
 Outward and on, till ocean shimmering 
 
 Lay crowned with his most pure imperial dome, 
 And one white headland rose athwart the poet's home.
 
 TWO LIVES. 77 
 
 in 
 
 So from the shadow of that dreamy mood 
 
 I passed. I felt a fresh wind rushing purge 
 My spirit of its stain. Methought I stood 
 
 Full face with man and nature, on the verge 
 
 Of very life. Below a sunlit surge 
 Seemed to baptize my being. Whole and free, 
 
 I saw the magic isle of song emerge 
 
 From loveliness and motion, leaving me 
 
 The passion and the peace of God's infinity. 
 
 112 
 I am not mine. No shelter now, nor pause 
 
 Shall hold me from my larger voyage long ; 
 Such visions sway me, such free current draws 
 
 My motions forth. Yet would I make me strong 
 
 One moment by the sight of his clear song, 
 Which, posted over this low ebbing age, 
 
 Still beacons late and lonely if among 
 A new world's waters I might bear presage 
 Of such another dawn, such hope of harbourage.
 
 78 TWO LIVES. 
 
 "3 
 There lies the sea, whose fulness I would sail. 
 
 Broad-bosomed, solemn, strange, its power has caught 
 All my heart's craving. Though my song be frail 
 
 For such proud venture, and my soul o'erfraught 
 
 With the deep burden of untravelled thought, 
 Thus would I seem to beat across the bar 
 
 Of sorrow, straining on with eyes which sought, 
 Else all unpiloted, to pierce afar 
 This twilight time, and make one pure perpetual star. 
 
 114 
 
 I said my spirit darkling and alone 
 
 Seaward was driven by a waft of death ; 
 
 And after seemed to be more softly blown 
 By the calm breeze of love, who followeth 
 In his cold wake. But yet should come a breath 
 
 Supreme, or be it current, for whose lack 
 My purpose were a shoreless thing, beneath 
 
 An unsunned heaven, whence I must tremble back 
 To some forgotten port, or hold a starless track.
 
 TWO LIVES. 79 
 
 "5 
 Scarce were I now content only to sway 
 
 With the last billow on life's face, or drift 
 Unshapen, dreaming that full flood to-day 
 
 To time's true summit would mechanic lift 
 
 My outlook. But, as one long tossed, would sift 
 All sound and motion, till my soul divine 
 
 With sure forefeeling, under every shift, 
 The water's deep set and the wind's design, 
 For my fulfilment's course if it were wholly mine. 
 
 116 
 
 Not wholly mine. For, ever, as the mist 
 Rose from the surface of my soul, I felt 
 
 Some subtle influence, mocking analyst, 
 Enfold me. Large, effectual it would melt 
 Into my purpose. As a power that dwelt 
 
 Unlocal, timeless, it could overpeer 
 
 My will's most private motions, and half spelt 
 
 Read my whole vision through, and hold it clear, 
 Till I might dream myself were called to be his seer.
 
 80 TWO LIVES. 
 
 117 
 Felt I such spirit then, I would invoke 
 
 No lower now ; that He, perchance, might use 
 Me for a voice and mirror, when I woke 
 
 From that high dreaming ; that I might not lose 
 
 The authentic power to hold and re-peruse, 
 And shape His meaning forth in lines unblurred, 
 
 Passionate, palpable ; that He might fuse 
 My whole life's functions to one thing, which heard, 
 And trembled to His thought, half echo and half word. 
 
 118 
 Oh God since Thy free spring of growing faith 
 
 So hath unlocked my year from the long east 
 Of withering doubt my dim self s sunless wraith 
 
 If now my nature hath by hope increased 
 
 Unto such fulness, that, although the least 
 Of consecrated sons of song, I were 
 
 Not all unmeet for this pure temple, priest 
 Of love and loveliness and truth oh there 
 Purge Thou my lips to sing by this imperfect prayer !
 
 TWO LIVES. 8 1 
 
 119 
 If there be any isle of loveliness 
 
 Unvisited of man ; if any shore 
 Or haven, looming now with large access 
 
 Mysterious ; if far-folded at the core 
 
 Of nature new life's promise ; if rich lore 
 Still ripening over time's last human height 
 
 Unharvested ; if deep and unwrought ore 
 Of Thine own revelation school my sight, 
 And shape my spirit's course unto Thy Spirit's light. 
 
 1 20 
 Then were my service high, unsecular ; 
 
 Myself were then so wholly wrought and thrilled, 
 That underneath some unallotted star 
 For Thy dear benediction I would build 
 This open dome of song. And if I stilled 
 Briefly the heart of unconsummate time 
 
 With but a dream that it should be fulfilled 
 By Thy redemption, song itself might rhyme, 
 A prophecy and part, with Thy full music's chime. 
 
 G
 
 82 TWO LIVES. 
 
 121 
 
 Then, in Thy perfect season, were returned 
 
 Song's own fulfilment. Then should leap desire, 
 
 Up from life's plenitude, with thoughts which burned 
 Clear as white tossing pyramids of fire, 
 That from the chestnut's drooping base aspire, 
 
 To one pure point. Then I were ripe to sing, 
 Musical as this blackbird's liquid lyre, 
 
 With the whole world of joy and suffering, 
 And free the passion taught by my true spirit's spring.
 
 SECOND SPRING. 
 
 IF death were not a dateless thing, 
 One winter, who would disallow 
 All season else and know but " now," 
 Since first my sorrow learned to sing, 
 This should have been a second spring, 
 Whose breath is living on my brow. 
 
 Since first I looked death in the face, 
 Were not his spirit's atmosphere 
 So keen, untempered, true and clear, 
 I might have moved a little space 
 From his cold presence, by the grace 
 And mellow distance of a year. 
 
 Oh spring ! thou canst not disannul 
 My sorrow's cycle. Sudden June 
 Why comest thou, thus to commune 
 With me and April ? Wouldst thou dull 
 The edge of death ? Thou art too full ; 
 We cannot welcome thee so soon.
 
 84 TWO LIVES. 
 
 Yet what if spring might welcome be ? 
 
 If daisy low and celandine 
 
 Were come to make my season's sign ? 
 If primrose and anemone 
 And daffodil were meant for me ? 
 
 I hardly dare to hold them mine. 
 
 Nay not for me they come, but song, 
 Who half mechanic used my brain, 
 And measured out this year of pain, 
 And loitered on my lips, among 
 The slow months, seeking to prolong 
 My sorrow for his own refrain. 
 
 I think not song can be a thief, 
 To spoil my passion, but true friend, 
 Who taketh all I have to lend, 
 
 And holdeth all the hope of grief, 
 
 For my return to his belief, 
 
 And waiteth at my sorrow's end. 
 
 Although I gave but half a soul, 
 He sheltered it from sense of time, 
 And trained my weakness up to climb 
 Some height of more serene control, 
 Whence I should see that life was whole, 
 And even learn with death to rhyme.
 
 TWO LIVES. 85 
 
 I lent him, though my heart was loath, 
 
 The savings of my love and hers, 
 
 In faith that, if his hand defers 
 Fulfilment, I shall garner growth, 
 And feel that he is blending both 
 
 For some new life, that faintly stirs. 
 
 I looked and saw him softly move 
 
 The mask from life, and show beneath 
 The purer beauty born of death. 
 
 He beckons me to sing and prove 
 
 Song is enough to waken love 
 In some far May to fuller breath. 
 
 Then death were but a dateless thing, 
 And love were living on as dear, 
 And nature mine, and song more near ; 
 
 For I have sung and I must sing 
 
 As one who sees a second spring, 
 And ripens for another year.
 
 CANTO II. 
 DREAM. DOUBT. NATURE.
 
 TWILIGHT. 
 
 I DWELT alone, and loitered ever dreaming, 
 Not seeing self, nor knowing things without ; 
 Till life arose and shook my world of seeming, 
 And sundered all my being by a doubt. 
 
 I looked within, and met, in secret session, 
 
 A spirit disinherited of time ; 
 I saw the fragments of a broken vision ; 
 
 I heard the echoes of a vanished chime. 
 
 I looked without upon the face of nature, 
 
 And deemed a moment she was more divine ; 
 
 I found no soul beneath her fairest feature, 
 Or only one which seemed to mirror mine.
 
 go TWO LIVES. 
 
 I 
 There is a city seated in the eye 
 
 Of my dear recollection. As a dream 
 It haunts the threshold of my memory, 
 
 Ever a soft and unsubstantial gleam 
 
 Above my spirit's dawn. Far up the stream 
 Of broadening life it dwells amid the mist ; 
 
 There waiting till regret rise and redeem 
 Its image from unclearness, lit and kissed 
 To pure and living truth by love the realist. 
 
 2 
 Love will unmoor for me this wandering boat 
 
 Of fancy, as it tosses late and low, 
 Set seaward. Love will lightly bid me float 
 
 By his own method back, for all the flow 
 
 Of twenty summers. He will softly blow 
 Before my senses those grey mysteries 
 
 Of tangled tower and roof, which come and go 
 In the fresh magic of that first surmise 
 Fulfilled with insight born, when feeling faints and dies.
 
 TWO LIVES. 91 
 
 3 
 
 I may not linger by the mill, or brood 
 
 Among the meadows, though the pulsing oar 
 
 Beats echoing on my heart of solitude ; 
 I must not loiter aimless on the shore, 
 Where the two rivers mingle, where, before 
 
 Her pure life melted wholly into mine, 
 We spake apart, and listened to the lore 
 
 Of undercurrent love ; the posted line 
 Of elms is on me here ; beyond my memory's shrine. 
 
 4 
 I move from shadows, as a silent ghost, 
 
 Who cometh, unessential, to enquire 
 Of his mortality. Old shapes accost 
 
 Half human my full nature's want. Soft fire 
 
 Touches those twisted pillars, and the spire 
 With the same mellow meaning. Let me roam 
 
 The long street's sunny curve, my dream's desire, 
 Or haunt the green plot by the one low dome ; 
 Alien, unlocal now ; this was thy spirit's home.
 
 92 TWO LIVES. 
 
 5 
 But still my love, as he that would consort 
 
 With the dear witness of his dead, doth shun 
 All other vision, but of that cool court, 
 
 Whose shy face cloistered from the common sun, 
 
 And veiled in time's grey texture, softly spun, 
 Hideth a soul of quietude most pure, 
 
 Unsecular ; and, like some sweet pale nun, 
 Nourishes there, a devotee demure 
 Of loveliness and dream, calm's perfect temperature. 
 
 6 
 
 The same brief shadow awes me. The same breath 
 Of revelation seems to brood and freight 
 
 My vision, as it pauseth there beneath 
 
 Life's inlet through that grey and storied gate, 
 Writ over with forgotten hope and fate 
 
 Decyphered. There I see dear freedom dwell, 
 And softly move to welcome me, or wait 
 
 Beyond the enchanted arch, with quiet spell 
 Weaving her airy tissue to my spirit's cell.
 
 TWO LIVES. 93 
 
 7 
 I round the sunny turf, a soul alone, 
 
 And mount the dim stair by the silent hall. 
 Its stillness trembles to the undertone 
 
 Of an unlocal organ's solemn fall 
 
 As ever ; and across the panelled wall 
 Creeps on that mellow and mysterious stain ; 
 
 While ghostly now, unindividual, 
 Thin voices flit and echo on my brain, 
 And from the gloom old faces grow and fade again. 
 
 8 
 
 Again, through some far window subtly hid 
 And softly opened by my memory, break 
 
 Those early sounds. And sense moves faint amid 
 A labyrinth of bells, until they take 
 One tone, whereat my whole world leaps awake, 
 
 And listens to that tower, which stands apart, 
 Like a proud poet, who has felt life shake 
 
 With such tumultuous meaning all his heart, 
 He must abide alone, built wholly up for art.
 
 94 TWO LIVES. 
 
 9 
 
 Again I wander round the garden walk, 
 
 Between the grey wall and the drooping lime ; 
 
 And dreams live on in fragmentary talk, 
 Under the magic of that May's pure prime, 
 And light thoughts o'er dim feeling cross and climb, 
 
 Where chestnuts hold high tapers shimmering, 
 And the beech bronzes ; while as chapel chime 
 
 Awe briefly lingers, and life seems a thing 
 Of airy blossoms blown from the soft lips of spring. 
 
 10 
 
 Oh England, would thy free imperial youth 
 Be nurtured for each nobler year, with power 
 
 Replenished, purged, this Oxford were in truth 
 Pure soil, whereon such life for one fresh hour 
 Of unforgotten dawn should dream and flower 
 
 For thy ripe fruiting ; which at their high source 
 Can shape and sweeten, for thy spirit's dower, 
 
 New currents, broadening out and down to course 
 Through thy full beating life, and feed thy nature's force.
 
 TWO LIVES. 95 
 
 II 
 Here at thy heart of loveliness, a place 
 
 Elect, of high immunity, aloof, 
 She dwells. And here should souls of thy dear race, 
 
 Unworn, unshapen yet, for thy behoof, 
 
 Holden awhile, beneath some ancient roof, 
 From sense of all disjointed things, and jar 
 
 Of the loud world, be wrought to time's rich woof 
 And texture, at his great loom secular, 
 Which worketh soft and silent under nature's star. 
 
 12 
 
 Come back ! In our full England is no spot, 
 Where the benediction of things dear and old 
 
 Droppeth so dewy ; where grey time doth plot 
 And whisper such sweet reason, as, when told, 
 With his high schemes incorporate can mould 
 
 The wild and mutinous will ; where the fresh lore 
 And loveliness of nature doth enfold 
 
 Young sense so subtly, and through every pore 
 Of the light spirit creep and nestle at its core.
 
 96 TWO LIVES. 
 
 13 
 
 Come back ! Oh what if this worn bark of mine, 
 O'ertravelled, now a thing at large too long, 
 
 Might he reshapen to its dream's design ? 
 What if this soul itself, remoored among 
 Those quiet hills, in the clear depths of song, 
 
 Palpable there, more perfect might reread 
 Its own reflection, and from nature's tongue 
 
 Take up sweet comment on a lonely creed, 
 Replanted on the past, to ripen from its seed ? 
 
 Come back ! For all this longing, I were loath 
 
 To see life post me ever on her brink, 
 Motionless, musing only on a growth 
 
 Outgrown. For how should I lightly rethink 
 
 Wild thoughts forsworn and sweetened now? Or drink 
 The dregs of old regret ? Or haunt the stair 
 
 Of my ascent ? Or even briefly sink 
 To a forgotten self? who hardly dare 
 To say if this be dream, redemption or despair.
 
 TWO LIVES. 97 
 
 15 
 Yet would I once look down, through all the mist 
 
 Of tears and exile, rising thus between 
 Two lives, oh love, as one who keepeth tryst 
 
 Only with time, upon my city queen, 
 
 Over sweet hawthorn and low Hinksey seen, 
 From Foxcombe or from Cumnor, where the rim 
 
 Of sense is widened, and the air's soft screen 
 Breeds such a beauty as doth melt and swim, 
 While memory tempers truth to dream and vision dim.
 
 RESPICE. 
 
 SPIRIT of song, 
 Thou pale and formless thing, 
 Why art thou wandering, 
 Thus late and long 
 Through the wild places of my memory's life, 
 
 Where death is rife ? 
 Dreamest thou there among 
 Such seasons thou shalt be fulfilled of strife ? 
 Or shalt ensue the passion of a perfect spring ? 
 
 For boyhood's simple blossom felt 
 The world was grey, wherein I dwelt, 
 A homeless thing, unreconciled. 
 And youth for joyous June too wild, 
 Unfolded to a scentless flower, 
 And stained the face of that free hour. 
 
 For wakening thought's first hollow bud 
 Was troubled by a taint of blood,
 
 TWO LIVES. 99 
 
 And blighted in unfaith's long east ; 
 And love crept on me and increased, 
 New born of nature's purest breath, 
 To droop upon the lap of death. 
 
 For thou art sprung to meet my mood 
 Too late, and share my solitude, 
 Who flowerest from suffering ; 
 My life doth only dream of spring, 
 And linger down one loveless year ; 
 Oh song, thou canst not shelter here. 
 
 Spirit of life, 
 
 Wander thou with me back 
 And clothe me in thy lack ; 
 
 Where death is rife, 
 There can I live and listen there for both, 
 
 Though thou be loath ; 
 And from far banks of strife 
 Regather blossoms born for truer growth, 
 Clasping the skirt of spring, climbing the spirit's track. 
 
 For song can keep the primal gleam 
 Of roses wild, the snowdrop's dream ; 
 And watch the vision of a birth, 
 When nature, held too near to earth,
 
 100 TWO LIVES. 
 
 Must meet the cloud, and climb and face 
 New passion's breath, the spirit's space. 
 
 And he can bury wild things dead, 
 
 And wake the season, where was bred 
 
 The hidden germ of free belief ; 
 
 Can blossom on the lips of grief, 
 
 And blend with death, and quickened save 
 
 Love's sweetness breathing on the grave. 
 
 For song must grow, and he can give 
 Flowers for regret, and flowering live ; 
 And through the dream that dies behind, 
 When he hath deeply there divined 
 Fulfilment's promise, growth's long spring, 
 Shall reconcile thy lips to sing.
 
 TWO LIVES. 10 1 
 
 16 
 
 Spirits there are so pure, that they embalm 
 By their own breath and very effluence 
 
 Dead seeming shapes that case them ; whose dear calm 
 With consecration's quality doth fence, 
 From the common field of circumstantial sense, 
 
 A pale perpetual, so sweet it hath 
 No flower of wild regret or reticence, 
 
 But from encroachment ever holds free path 
 For life to pasture back on memory's aftermath. 
 
 17 
 
 Ah me ! And there are souls, which on the face 
 Of outward things put off and throughly print 
 
 The shadow of themselves. And thus the grace 
 Of nature, troubled with a cloudy tint, 
 Answers them in her mirror but by hint 
 
 And image of infection ; or must bar 
 
 Perfect access to high commune, and stint 
 
 Her mysteries, pure, free, oracular, 
 And hold their thought unpurged and heedless feet afar.
 
 IO2 TWO LIVES. 
 
 18 
 If such a one there be, as I have dreamt, 
 
 Who treads the hidden ways and underwood 
 Of my own nature ; who hath power to tempt 
 
 My memory back to wander there, and brood 
 
 Below, among the fragments of a mood 
 Downtrodden ; who would climb, as one akin, 
 
 To the true summit of my solitude, 
 And claim familiar power and place within 
 Myself, as sad winds sighing from life's origin, 
 
 19 
 
 Thus would I answer " Nay, not here, or now 
 I know thee, but as him who might have been 
 
 Myself. The clouds and sun that overbow 
 Low nature's movement, they alone have seen 
 Her truth in aspiration's flower. Between 
 
 This ' I ' and that, fresh seasons came and shook 
 My old leaves down to wither there, unclean, 
 
 Forgotten round life's root, when I forsook 
 Thy fellowship for ways, whereon thou shalt not look."
 
 TWO LIVES. 103 
 
 20 
 
 " And if I listen, think not thou shalt vaunt 
 Thy nakedness ; that I would entertain 
 
 Confession to but ease thee. Though thou haunt 
 The hollow interspaces of a brain, 
 Rebuilt for nobler use, with thy refrain 
 
 Mechanic ; though thou freely canst implead 
 My silent past, thou shalt usurp and stain 
 
 These lips of song no further than shall breed 
 Some sense of dead things fallen from a vital seed." 
 
 21 
 
 " And though within thee, such a soul, unripe, 
 Embittered, out of time, misshapen, bare, 
 
 Abide, I doubt not, hint and hidden type 
 Of the full fruit, whereof I would be heir, 
 Which linketh me half-reconciled to share 
 
 The memory of thy waste ; though mutual 
 
 Henceforth must be our knowledge, yet I were 
 
 Loath to behold thee now, or thus recall, 
 But as a thing outworn, alien, impersonal."
 
 104 TWO LIVES. 
 
 22 
 
 So on that spirit still, eyes of reproof 
 
 Peer forth from secret windows in the past, 
 
 To hold their visitation. So aloof 
 
 The clear stream of that fresh full world unglassed 
 Went gliding by, to find him here at last. 
 
 So, as some lonely pine defies the spell 
 
 Of spring, his nature round its growing cast 
 
 A darkness and a dream, where it would dwell, 
 A homeless life with thoughts ripe only to rebel. 
 
 23 
 If there was calm and welcome there, not then 
 
 It took or touched him, dreamful and distraught 
 Inly with strife. If high upon his ken 
 
 Rose the large world of immemorial thought, 
 
 He was swept fiercely out, a thing unfraught, 
 From the harbourage of time and hope, to sail 
 
 Long wild ways perilous, a soul who sought, 
 Under an ancient heaven, grown dim and stale, 
 A waste sea peopled only by one phantom pale.
 
 TWO LIVES. 105 
 
 24 
 The breath of strange things, and their graciousness, 
 
 Which brushed his forehead, stayed not to imbue 
 His being with their magic. No largess 
 
 From life's own liberal hand, no revenue 
 
 Of time enriched him at the first, or drew 
 His longing forth by high harmonious law. 
 
 No pure fulfilment nurtured him. He grew, 
 A spirit out of course, as one who saw 
 Himself athwart the sun, a vision void of awe. 
 
 25 
 Alas ! For he had brought a life unclear 
 
 And troubled to the gate of that pure school 
 Of loveliness. The simple atmosphere 
 
 Of feeling, which should sweep and lightly rule 
 
 The heart of boyhood, seeming but to cool 
 Its open brow, for him was disendowed 
 
 Of its prime motion. As a sunless pool, 
 Too often lay his spirit, lonely, proud, 
 Under the brooding shadow of a formless cloud.
 
 I06 TWO LIVES. 
 
 26 
 For him, unthought, unsevered, with the breath 
 
 Of outward things and nature, there was blent 
 The whisper of a broken self. Beneath 
 
 The flow of life's free course, some sediment 
 
 Of doubt, some cadence of strange discontent 
 Fell into sadness. Dull or overstrung 
 
 Grew the fresh nerve of buoyant hours ; forespent 
 The native pulse of wholesome blood among 
 Dim footless musings born within a soul too young. 
 
 27 
 So as he wandered down the years of youth 
 
 From the faint hills of childhood, still a mist 
 Went with him, blurring the bright edge of truth, 
 
 And shape of action. And if warm life kissed 
 
 His soul, yet ever shadows would assist, 
 To mar the fullness of their meeting. Thence, 
 
 Knowing not self or world, he only wist, 
 By half-forebodings and a far-off sense 
 Of things unreconciled, his nature's dissidence.
 
 TWO LIVES. 107 
 
 28 
 Too young he flowered. And though he moved amid 
 
 His fellows, seeming of them, yet alone, 
 Ever behind free words and motions hid, 
 
 His spirit dwelt, or wandered homeless, blown 
 
 From the near ways of commune half outgrown, 
 And from the ken of self, to live with want 
 
 Unshapen, reaping in far fields, unsown, 
 Vague harvest from his fancy's airy plant, 
 A countercharm to days, that life would disenchant. 
 
 29 
 Listless he ever paused, upon the brink 
 
 Of two worlds unsubstantial loitering ; 
 Now lost in self, as one who strove to think 
 
 But thought not ; now forgetful following 
 
 Life's footsteps, as a half unnoted thing. 
 But evermore each world would fade and seem 
 
 To leave him briefly touched by vision's wing, 
 Empty, unrealized beside the stream 
 Of life a pathless place for memories of a dream.
 
 IDS TWO LIVES. 
 
 3 
 Not from the laurels of that ancient lore, 
 
 Which lightly crowned his forehead, living shoot 
 Was grafted on his soul. They hung before 
 
 His eyes, a sapless vision, void of root, 
 
 To wither there or wait his spring. No fruit 
 Of knowledge nursed his lips to passion. Love, 
 
 Dreamful, unsequelled, dear, irresolute, 
 Found not a breath to quicken or disprove 
 The shadowy world wherein he moved or seemed to move. 
 
 No early bell of reverence rang belief 
 
 On his youth's drowsy ear. No wholesome scope 
 Of purpose shaped his power forth. No grief 
 
 Shook out his seeming. Never dawn of hope 
 
 Or solemn star of duty rose to cope 
 A blind will with a law new-born. He trod, 
 
 Unpioneered by prayer, a sunless slope, 
 The long hours of his twilight period, [God. 
 
 Through time's dim undergrowth, lonely o'erlooked by
 
 TWO LIVES. 109 
 
 32 
 Only the seasons and their solitude, 
 
 And something of the passion of a place, 
 And love made local crept upon his mood, 
 
 As kindred of its dream. Ah, they could trace 
 
 Clear record there, and register the face 
 Of circumstance, the little things of rote, 
 
 Unmemorable, from life's interspace. 
 And if awhile footless they seemed to float, 
 Could heal his empty sense with quiet antidote. 
 
 33 
 And still, though unessential, in their track, 
 
 When dreamy fingers from his life's full sheet 
 Unwrite life's superscription, glimmers back 
 
 Some primal flush of boyhood. Still his feet 
 
 Move through a vision as of something sweet, 
 Between the ancient arch and village cross, 
 
 And still he wakes and wanders incomplete, 
 And clasps beneath a dead dream's airy dross 
 Some residue of golden feeling blent with loss.
 
 DREAM AND DOUBT. 
 
 FAR up in the heart of the wild wild moor, 
 Where only the earth and the sunshine wist, 
 Where the free wind whispered his song secure 
 
 To the cloud, as he kept high tryst, 
 A rivulet rose in a vision pure 
 Of purple heather and mist. 
 
 Awhile it fretted in wanton foam, 
 
 And its shallows rippled, " Would I were free " ; 
 And lightly it longed to broaden and roam 
 
 To the fuller hope of the sea, 
 As under the vision and ways of home 
 
 Ran the dream of a destiny. 
 
 The breath of the wind, from the world's free space, 
 With a secret sadness its waters imbued ; 
 
 The shadow and sun went over its face, 
 And mirrored their dream on its mood ; 
 
 And the dark woods left in its depth a trace 
 Of silence and solitude.
 
 TWO LIVES. Ill 
 
 Among the meadows, beneath the brink, 
 
 It seemed to murmur, " Would I were still " ; 
 
 It stayed and listened, as though to think, 
 By the whirr and the work of the mill ; 
 
 It heard on its current rise and sink 
 The sound of a waking will. 
 
 Fresh rivulets ever and falling rain 
 
 Brought motion and life to its being's dearth, 
 
 And blent with its ripple a pure refrain 
 From the hills and the heaven of its birth ; 
 
 While deep in its bosom it bore a stain 
 From the broken ways of the earth. 
 
 The flowers died down on the broadening bank, 
 At the touch of the brine and the city's taint ; 
 
 And nought would blossom but wild growth rank, 
 And the wind from the sea was faint ; 
 
 And the soul of the river was troubled and sank 
 In the dregs of a dead restraint. 
 
 So the world was dim, and the waters low, 
 The deep bed mocking the river's drought ; 
 
 And the dream of the moor, as a dream long ago, 
 Was dying and dying out ; 
 
 And the sea-dream, born of a ceaseless flow, 
 Was lost in the ebb of doubt.
 
 112 TWO LIVES. 
 
 A viewless thing and lonely it dwelt 
 With a dead self, shrunken, unpurified ; 
 
 When its void of bitterness seemed to melt 
 In the life of a larger tide, 
 
 And it rose to the world's full rim, till it felt 
 It was one with a heart more wide. 
 
 34 
 I know not whether such a mood was bred 
 
 Wholly within his nature, lying there 
 In fallow dream, so waste, untenanted 
 
 Of wholesome thought or motion, it would bear, 
 
 Of its own want and emptiness, rank tare 
 And wild things misconceived ; or whether germ, 
 
 Winged with infection through a fevered air, 
 From the sick spirit of a time infirm, 
 Lay brooding deep, to ripen at his season's term.
 
 TWO LIVES. 113 
 
 35 
 Had her love beckoned to him from the first, 
 
 Had her bright spirit risen, a golden gleam, 
 On his grey dawn, perchance a nobler thirst 
 
 Had earlier found fulfilment in a stream 
 
 Purer, more calm. His faculty of dream, 
 Perchance, and will uncentred had been strung 
 
 To the fresh tones of some prophetic theme 
 Of inspiration opulent ; unwrung 
 His soul by wild regret, his sadness half unsung. 
 
 36 
 
 But he was set apart, as one recluse, 
 
 Conventual, from the whole world's vision sane, 
 
 And the pure breath of love. The very use 
 And shaping of an unsubstantial brain 
 Seemed but a school predestinate to train 
 
 His being for the hour, when the full rite 
 Of freedom should baptize him in the pain 
 
 And commune of a broken age whose blight 
 Fell on the hope and passion of its proselyte. 
 
 i
 
 114 Two LIVES. 
 
 37 
 For, though a formless mist would ever drape 
 
 His nature, like some wild and lonely heath, 
 With the twilight of a dreamful mood, and shape 
 
 His spirit to its fancy, deep beneath, 
 
 Brooding, unvital yet, there lay a breath 
 Of reason, whose keen quality should clear 
 
 The veil from off his brow, leaving a wreath 
 Of dream to haunt his memory's atmosphere, 
 And pierce with inward eyes to be his soul's high seer. 
 
 38 
 Wherefore, what time a fair face in the mask 
 
 Of freedom with the mocking eyes of fate, 
 Blent with his dream and whispered, " Wake and ask ! 
 
 I will endow thee with myself; new date 
 
 Thy nature here, and here initiate 
 Thy feet in my large ways ; I will unbar 
 
 For thee illiberal time's last mouldering gate, 
 And lead thee forth by reason's ample star, 
 True neophyte of my wide worship secular,"
 
 TWO LIVES. 115 
 
 39 
 Lightly he heard her welcome, as it broke 
 
 The thread of his dim dreaming, and unwove 
 Its texture. Then a lawless power arose 
 
 And looked upon her face, and felt the love 
 
 Of her wild beauty clasp his sense, and move 
 His spirit by its cold fire from the roof 
 
 Of reverence. Then he climbed with her above 
 A world outworn, downtrodden, and aloof 
 Sealed his new self and passion in her nature's proof. 
 
 40 
 And there with freedom's phantom for awhile 
 
 He sojourned, seeming to her soul akin. 
 But she, lest the full world should reconcile 
 
 His lonely nature, and a new love win 
 
 His vision back from her, a pale thing, thin, 
 Impalpable, wrought, with a subtle spell, 
 
 Such madness of denial deep within 
 His will, she deemed that he must ever dwell 
 Wholly in her wild love, and be life's infidel.
 
 Il6 TWO LIVES. 
 
 41 
 
 For the dear growth and use of sheltering time, 
 Which, in the fresh hour of the spirit's spring, 
 From the soft soil of life should sunward climb 
 And clothe its bareness, was for him a thing 
 Extrinsic. He had felt no fibres cling 
 To his true sense, or clamber to his heart, 
 
 That sweet thoughts might have nestled there to sing, 
 Nor flower of aspiration rise to thwart 
 The passion of a soul, which strove to be apart. 
 
 42 
 Though it was spring, the dead and hollow rind 
 
 Of faith and reverence, as the full sap grew 
 With lawless feeling, and a barren wind 
 
 From the empty east of reason rose and blew 
 
 About his being, fell, a withered strew 
 Before a naked soul. And he could face 
 
 A bleak world lightly thus, and wander through 
 The leafless autumn ways of liberal space, 
 Haunted with broken gleams of unregarded grace.
 
 TWO LIVES. 117 
 
 43 
 So by that wild wind, risen from a rift 
 
 Now deepening down upon a self unknown, 
 And rhyming with its solitary drift 
 
 To a void dreaming, he was fiercely blown. 
 
 He wandered forth, until he stood alone 
 On waste heights, which he deemed the very verge 
 
 Of the wide future, whence the voice and tone 
 Of time's unshapen music should emerge, 
 And he should see the vision of full freedom's surge. 
 
 44 
 And there he felt his spirit's motions form, 
 
 And blend with waves of the long after-roll, 
 Unspent, which followed from that southern storm 
 
 Of liberty, that shook time's strong control 
 
 From the light helm of France, but on the mole 
 Of our too solid England evermore 
 
 Broke foaming. Yet around each restless soul, 
 Unlulled it beateth inly, till the lore 
 Of revolution echoes on its silent shore.
 
 Il8 TWO LIVES. 
 
 45 
 There was a poet then, the very breath 
 
 Of pure rebellion, whose keen nature kissed 
 By the fiery sun of freedom, like a wreath 
 
 Of purple cloud, or unessential mist 
 
 Haunted life's peaks ; a soul idealist, 
 So elemental, light, timeless and rare, 
 
 He seemed a thing disbodied, to resist 
 Earth's pressure, and to soar and linger there, 
 Breathing aloof the vision of his private air. 
 
 46 
 And if our low sense lost his viewless flight, 
 
 And deemed his sweet note something overshrill, 
 Heard through the ether of unlocal height, 
 
 Where wild lips waited not for time to fill 
 
 The measure of their music, it could thrill 
 And pierce life's purest fibre, such a string, 
 
 Strained to the tension of a tameless will, 
 Lay quick within his spirit, quivering 
 To nature's finest breath, and bade her secret sing.
 
 TWO LIVES. 119 
 
 47 
 And though anon his vision floated thin 
 
 As dreamful cloud across the breathless blue, 
 A pale soul, half monastic, half akin 
 
 To earth, his passion, as it melted, drew 
 
 The veil from off a far and sunny view 
 Of a beauty and a brotherhood more free, 
 
 And from a dawning, dyed to the full hue 
 Of his own faith and golden phantasy, 
 Sank in the purple bosom of a southern sea. 
 
 48 
 Shelley, for such as thou there is no birth, 
 
 Nor death. No petty months or years compute 
 The measure of thy young and living worth. 
 
 They cannot touch the undated attribute 
 
 Of thy free dreamful music, or transmute 
 Its fashion. Would that now thy spirit's power, 
 
 Grafted anew on quick time's growing root, 
 From this ripe century fulfilled might flower, 
 And mellow in life's sun to song's most perfect hour.
 
 120 TWO LIVES. 
 
 49 
 Though on the lap of Rome thy lonely dust 
 
 Be hidden, and thy frame, which felt the fire 
 And elemental surge, be held in trust 
 
 By time's most central earth ; though now, entire 
 
 By death and God's purgation, doth aspire 
 Thy soul to breathe his ether's height, and draw 
 
 Fulfilment's music from thy broken lyre, 
 Restrung to tones of love's essential law, 
 And bend for the last wreath of consecrating awe, 
 
 50 
 Yet here in this fair Oxford late shall burn 
 
 A breath of thy clear spirit, to illume 
 Grey wall and grassy plot for thy return ; 
 
 Yet calm's art's carven grief shall disentomb 
 
 Some shape of thy free presence ; shall consume 
 On its pale marble pyre all memories wild 
 
 With God's own pity ; yet shall live perfume 
 Of youth, which here had blossomed, unexiled, 
 More sweet, of passion dead, of sad things reconciled.
 
 SONG AND LIFE. 
 
 LIFE, half awakened from a dream, 
 Arose and wandered out among 
 The shadows of the things that seem, 
 And stood before the house of song. 
 
 He cried, " Oh bid me now behold 
 The beauty I can half divine ! 
 
 Show me thyself, that I may fold 
 Thy nature's fullness into mine ! " 
 
 Lightly his spirit passed within ; 
 
 He only felt his vision kissed 
 By cold lips unto dream akin ; 
 
 His longing met a thing of mist. 
 
 And thin and far there seemed to float, 
 In formless waves, her tone's refrain ; 
 
 " Thou canst not catch my nature's note 
 Till passion be attuned to pain."
 
 122 TWO LIVES. 
 
 " Thou shalt not see my love's true face, 
 Till sight be purged for prophecy ; 
 
 Nor meet my being's full embrace, 
 Till sense and self broaden and die." 
 
 " No hand can touch my heart's high key, 
 But love first tremble down the nerve ; 
 
 Or my pure pulse of mystery, 
 
 Till it be strung to death's reserve." 
 
 " First love I would not half reveal 
 Myself to such a callow thing ; 
 
 Last love when thou art fledged to feel 
 Shall in long seasons learn to sing." 
 
 " Go forth from me ! Until thou climb 
 My spirit's height, my lips defer 
 
 Song's consummation. Live with time ! 
 Wouldst thou be my true worshipper." 
 
 " Go forth ! I know thee not. Know thou 
 Thyself and nature ! Feel, forget ! 
 
 My kiss shall be upon thy brow, 
 
 When hope hath ripened from regret."
 
 TWO LIVES. 123 
 
 " Grow thou for me, till life be twain, 
 
 By sin, unfaith, reflection, law ! 
 Grow thou to me, till love regain 
 
 New shapes of vision void of flaw ! " 
 
 " If thou wouldst see in song no wraith, 
 
 Awake and clamber to the noon 
 Of knowledge ! Wing thy feet with faith ! 
 
 And clothe thee for my far commune ! " 
 
 " If thou wouldst win my perfect soul, 
 Through day and night's full period 
 
 Sweep to the star, that maketh whole, 
 And burneth on the breast of God ! " 
 
 " Come back ! For thee, unwooed awhile, 
 
 Holding the deeper dream of eve, 
 I wait to crown and reconcile ; 
 
 Come back ! I wait. Oh love, believe ! " 
 
 " Come back ! Behold and clasp my life, 
 Myself, to make thee calm and strong ! 
 
 At eve fulfilment flowers from strife, 
 And blends thy being into song."
 
 124 TWO LIVES. 
 
 51 
 
 So he against a misconceived wraith 
 
 Of most majestic time, that he might pledge 
 
 His spirit to the power of that fierce faith 
 Of nothingness, turned the untempered edge 
 Of his unproven thought. No awe might hedge 
 
 With its mute sanction the high-templed past, 
 Or the pure infinite from sacrilege 
 
 Of wild lips and rude reason, as he cast 
 Their fragments at his feet, a blind iconoclast. 
 
 52 
 But though his homeless spirit sojourned long 
 
 Beside the empty desecrated shrine 
 Of a worship, where he sheltered not, no song 
 
 Built him new fabric for his soul's design ; 
 
 No free faith in a joyous youth divine 
 Of things and years regenerate rose to cope 
 
 The void he wrought around him ; the red wine 
 Of freedom flushed not to its vision's scope 
 The cold thoughts of a heart, uncoursed by power of hope.
 
 TWO LIVES. 125 
 
 S3 
 Not love, whose sovereign function doth enlarge 
 
 To its own nature's breadth and plenitude 
 The private spirit, and with fullness charge 
 
 Its empty frame of want, might yet intrude 
 
 On his soul's waste and solitary mood. 
 No voice of dear devotion's reverence 
 
 Stirred him. No breath of fellowship imbued 
 His being with the world's fine effluence, 
 Or blent with outward things a wild sequestered sense. 
 
 54 
 Unrapt he moved and dreamful, as he felt 
 
 Proud purpose ripen on him to refuse 
 Life's full endowment ; and familiar dwelt 
 
 With solitude, as one who might not lose 
 
 The shadow of his soul. He seemed to muse 
 In commune with a presence, formless, faint, 
 
 Whose image he must daily reperuse, 
 Till the red hour of shame should rise and paint 
 His twilight unto truth, and slowly thus acquaint
 
 126 TWO LIVES. 
 
 55 
 His spirit with its need, what time, the night 
 
 Of fancy fading, he should coldly trace, 
 In the long grey dawn of disillusion's light, 
 
 The blank and passionless penury of space, 
 
 Hearing the sad winds through the ruined place 
 Of a nature, broken, disinherited, 
 
 Sweep sighing evermore, and see full face 
 A self so bare, its vision should have bred 
 Some high conception's seed, some dream of hope not dead. 
 
 56 
 Only to nature would his longing turn, 
 
 And wander through her ways. For her largess, 
 Kinder than any wage that he might earn 
 
 By his sad service, would fulfil and bless 
 
 Briefly his soul. There could he half confess 
 For her sweet absolution all his gloom, 
 
 Half hear the secret of his emptiness 
 In her pure silence, blent with such perfume 
 As love's dear presence breathes within a darkened room.
 
 TWO LIVES. 127 
 
 57 
 But though she soothed him, she might hardly heal 
 
 His sickness, until pain's pure truth should wake 
 His apathy to day and power to feel, 
 
 And probe its hollow want ; till life should shake 
 
 His being free, and love's own season break 
 The waste fields of his dreamful impotence 
 
 With fruitful passion ; till regret should make 
 A deep home in his nature's dissidence, 
 And sweet thoughts sow anew the wildness of his sense. 
 
 58 
 And thus he wandered on, as one who dreamt, 
 
 Among the dead leaves of life's underwood, 
 A thing half lost in sunless self-contempt, 
 
 Passionless and unreal. Then he stood 
 
 At the broken ways of that deep solitude ; 
 And lingering aimless there, he caught between 
 
 The shadows falling from a bitter mood, 
 And a self hidden by a misty screen, 
 The glow of passion's quest for some far height half seen.
 
 128 TWO LIVES. 
 
 59 
 
 And thus there rose upon his lonely thirst 
 The fresh strong love of fair philosophy, 
 
 And swayed him. Not as nature subtly nursed 
 His mood to her calm tones and melody, 
 But with the troubled music of the sea 
 
 She drew his blind steps to the world's high brink, 
 And showed him all the hope of vision, free 
 
 To clear life's furthest rim ; and bade him drink 
 Of her wide wisdom's draught, and in her fullness sink. 
 
 60 
 But winds, that spake not half her spirit forth, 
 
 Filled the light want of an unladen soul, 
 And swept it wildly out to reason's north, 
 
 Mocking belief in full life's rounded whole 
 
 With the shoreless vision of some hidden pole 
 Of merest nothingness, whose one cold star 
 
 Trode down the last light of time's long control, 
 And held him with clear passion ocular, 
 And fashioned to its scope his broadening course afar.
 
 TWO LIVES. 129 
 
 61 
 From the low dream, where half his nature dwelt 
 
 Amid the mists, that seemed to line and wreathe 
 The valley of his viewless life, he felt 
 
 His longing drawn. He saw free hands unsheathe 
 
 Keen faculties he knew not. He could breathe 
 Fresh upland scenes, and clamber to an air, 
 
 Whence he beheld far down dim fancies seethe 
 Formless, and widely clasped, although it were 
 Only an outward shape, whose thought he might not share. 
 
 62 
 For how should freedom's aweless passion fledge 
 
 A reason callow yet for the full flight 
 And native pitch of its pure privilege?. 
 How, if it were but nature's proselyte, 
 Ordain it to true function ? How should sight, 
 Unsunned by time or love's tuition, soar 
 
 Prophetic to the world's imperial height ? 
 Or pierce, by faith unwhetted, to the core 
 And common heart of things, and hold life's perfect lore ? 
 
 K
 
 130 TWO LIVES. 
 
 63 
 It was a soulless and unreverend truth, 
 
 To whose grey temple he would coldly turn 
 A novice and unconsecrated youth. 
 
 It was her outer court, where he could learn 
 
 Her tongue and ritual only ; not discern 
 Through hard forms of mechanic vision, freed 
 
 From sense, that fiery spirit, which must burn 
 All functions in one ministry to feed 
 Her full pure worship's hearth, her high prophetic creed. 
 
 64 
 Such power was hers, as, working there aloof 
 
 Upon the dim forge of a dreamy brain, 
 Shaped forth a reason, impotent at proof 
 
 Of passion, and untempered to the strain 
 
 Of life. Therewith she strove to arm and train 
 To her keen nature's use and lead him out 
 
 By empty ways, that on the full world's plain 
 His spirit renegade might rise and flout 
 The blank and pallid banners of embattled doubt.
 
 TWO LIVES. 131 
 
 65 
 So, when his nature should have seen new birth, 
 
 Unfaith, false high priest of a soulless age, 
 Breathed on him and baptized him unto earth, 
 
 And disendowed him of all heritage 
 
 Of hope. Dead hands of reason came to cage 
 The unshapen spirit in the barren womb 
 
 Of nothingness. His dreamful spring's presage 
 Was warped by winds untimely, and the bloom, 
 That might have been, was wasted in a grey world's gloom. 
 
 66 
 For first love drew him wholly to that school, 
 
 Whose hollow frame of liberty doth mould 
 Thought's young life and light motions to a rule 
 
 Mechanic ; whose half lore can briefly hold 
 
 The allegiance of a nature unenrolled 
 By love or time's prevention ; which doth pare 
 
 To penury of sense the spirit's gold, 
 Mocking its passion with a promise bare, 
 And feed full longing's growth with dead fruits of despair.
 
 132 TWO LIVES. 
 
 67 
 And reason, which had learnt not yet to probe 
 
 The leanness of a faculty, unripe, 
 Empty, unnurtured, plucked time's woven robe 
 
 From the warm world, and stripped it to the type 
 
 Of his own bareness ; and would blindly wipe 
 The deep-lined purpose of a soul akin 
 
 Out from life's forehead, while the poor shrill pipe 
 Of doubt and disillusion's music thin 
 Piercing awoke his dream to their sad discipline. 
 
 68 
 Thus was he sworn to rebel thoughts, which rose 
 
 From that void longing. Through the inmost gate 
 Of life they broke imperious, to depose 
 
 The high proud spirit from its royal state 
 
 And motion large. Thus passion leagued with fate 
 Crept on its pale of power in the guise 
 
 Of freedom. Thus it sank, a delegate 
 Of their blind plotting ; and its prophecies 
 Put on their hollow voice, the vision of their eyes.
 
 TWO LIVES. 133 
 
 69 
 Alone he stood before the dull dawn. Lost 
 
 In vision grey, went out one lingering gleam 
 Of awe. God was an unauthentic ghost 
 
 Of twilight knowledge now ; and self did seem 
 
 A false shape, misbegotten in a dream 
 Of dim sense, blurring by its very breath 
 
 The windows of wide truth ; till as a stream 
 Wandering by cold December ways beneath 
 A leafless world, be mirrored nought but nature's death. 
 
 70 
 So scant a worship lured him to the porch 
 
 Of high reflection. Such dank winds of doubt 
 Blew shivering round his soul's half-kindled torch, 
 
 Which flung deep shadows on the life without. 
 
 Such passion of denial, more devout, 
 More meagre, straiter than the very mind [drought 
 
 Which mastered him, and mocked his dream-world's 
 With the mirage of reason, strove to bind 
 Its veil across his brow and visions undivined.
 
 134 TWO LIVES. 
 
 71 
 Such hard pale rays of reason, seen betwixt 
 
 Dream's twilight and the rise of love's red star, 
 Filling the void of revelation, fixed 
 
 His eyes, enfranchised from all vision far 
 
 Of things sublime. Such awe discipular 
 Led him to that keen spirit passionless, 
 
 Who was the cold saint of his calendar, 
 And fired his fiercer worship to confess 
 Unfaith's whole iron form and creed of emptiness. 
 
 72 
 That was a spirit loftier and more broad 
 
 Than his lean nurture Mill. His motions left 
 By man's more liberal method the low road 
 
 He paved through nature's plain ; and spreading cleft 
 
 The cell of system. Subtler than the weft 
 Of reason, life's large human residue 
 
 Worked on his vision, till, by noble theft 
 Of thought unearned, engrafted, he outgrew 
 Himself for God's late hope and high fulfilment's view.
 
 o 
 
 GROWTH. 
 
 , H far and low 
 
 In the moor's brown fold, 
 Where the wind doth know 
 
 And the sun behold, 
 A lonely gentian sprang and grew, 
 And blossomed in autumn long ago, 
 To be one perfect bell of pure deep-throated blue. 
 
 Oh bare and free, 
 
 As the waste bleak moor, 
 Would the large world be 
 
 In a vision poor, 
 
 As a shy flower dwelt with its dream alone, 
 And grew as a thing that should only see, 
 And life was void and viewless, and the mist was blown. 
 
 Oh deep and near, 
 Through fibre and vein,
 
 136 TWO LIVES. 
 
 Till it seemed to hear, 
 There rose a refrain 
 
 Low down from the heart and the lap of the earth, 
 That clasped its memory's root unclear, 
 And drew its nature back to blend with ways of birth. 
 
 Oh wide and full, 
 
 On the lips of the wind, 
 In passion and lull, 
 
 From life's large mind, 
 
 The breath of the worjd would whisper there, 
 And nature's severance half annul, 
 And fill a lonely sense with secrets life must share. 
 
 Oh high and true, 
 
 The face of the sun 
 Looked down and through, 
 And the world was one ; 
 And its life was lifted to breathe the whole, 
 And blent with the heaven's perfect blue ; 
 And love and song came by and planted it in their soul.
 
 TWO LIVES. 137 
 
 73 
 From the dim places, where alone he dreamt, 
 
 That phantom of false reason drew his soul 
 Apart. He felt its subtle power tempt 
 
 With promise of one world's imperial whole, 
 
 And of self seated in proud truth's control, 
 His solitary thought ; while keen more clear, 
 
 Through that cold commune, to time's very goal 
 His vision seemed to reach such atmosphere 
 Revealed life's barren range to sense its only seer. 
 
 74 
 For him that phantom wore two faces One, 
 
 The brow of liberty, and fruitful eye, 
 Broadening that knowledge, as a perfect sun, 
 
 Might meet and seal its vision's prophecy ; 
 
 One with lean lips ascetic would belie 
 Its own fulfilment, as a thing that knows 
 
 No touch of liberal truth's large charity, 
 And pressed penurious hands, thus to foreclose 
 Hope, that by life's whole method to completion grows.
 
 138 TWO LIVES. 
 
 75 
 It spake to him as with two voices " School 
 
 The outlook of thy spirit vagabond, 
 And trammel up its issues to the rule 
 
 Of my cold abstinence. And if beyond 
 
 The low horizon of my love, unconned 
 And shoreless oceans haunt thee, thou shall drown 
 
 Their sighing music, when at my free wand 
 Thou hearest time's high palace ruin down, 
 And from its sound and silence win new wisdom's crown." 
 
 76 
 But though it wakened from their lonely trance 
 
 Those brooding eyes, it might not wholly sate 
 Or tame by such spare reason's sustenance 
 
 Their speculative vision new, or bate 
 
 Their edge of longing with blank walls of fate. 
 Still want unshapen sojourned on to breed 
 
 A far-off passion for a future mate 
 More human. On his waste yet fell a seed, 
 Blown out by nature's breath, to ripen for her creed.
 
 TWO LIVES. 139 
 
 77 
 So was he driven to the wilderness, 
 
 The spirit's desert of denial, strown 
 With dead thoughts. There transition's troubled stress 
 
 Passed on him, as he dwelt and strave alone. 
 
 For God was not, and man a thing misgrown, 
 Unkindred. There he nursed an empty mood 
 
 Mid fragments of a fallow life, self-sown 
 With wild regrets unjoyous, seeking food 
 Only on nature's breast and heart of solitude. 
 
 78 
 Oh nature knoweth revelations twain, 
 
 Shown to man's spirit, shapen on its mould. 
 For loveliness is seated suzerain 
 
 On her broad bosom, where her heart doth hold 
 
 Such prophecy of love, as shall unfold 
 Full comfort and free vision's hope. But law 
 
 Dwelleth below her vesture, seeming cold, 
 And looketh forth, as who would half withdraw, 
 Half clasp the veil that lieth on the face of awe.
 
 140 TWO LIVES. 
 
 79 
 But on his wayward spirit dawned apart, 
 
 Diverse, her visions twain, unreconciled 
 By God's large method yet. That to his heart 
 
 Had lightly stolen with transition mild, 
 
 Sheltered him from himself ; had wept and smiled 
 With his own shadowy mood, a minister 
 
 Breathing about his sense things sweet and wild, 
 Whose far fruition she would half defer, 
 Till his full soul were ripe to turn interpreter. 
 
 80 
 More sudden this between the dreamy bud 
 
 Of love's long brooding commune, and the flower 
 Of insight proven, ere life's wholesome blood [power 
 
 Had coursed his waking brain with cold light's 
 
 Flashed through the inlet of an empty hour, 
 And showed his thought an image of false fruit, 
 
 The lean reflection of a spirit, sour, 
 Unshapen, as her primal attribute, 
 Slurring her season's growth, and deep diviner root.
 
 TWO LIVES. 141 
 
 81 
 
 From the fair presence, which familiar dwelt 
 
 Beside him, blent with dreamful memories, 
 And pregnant with the hope of lore unfelt, 
 
 His passion held aloof impatient eyes. 
 
 He waited not on her low prophecies 
 Of that ripe hour, wherein he should return 
 
 For the fulfilment of a love more wise 
 Than wisdom loveless, and at last discern 
 Her beauty wake to thought, and into worship burn. 
 
 82 
 And so was nature grown God's substitute, 
 
 For him a thing unspiritual, whose face, 
 Swept by a wind of death, seemed to transmute 
 
 Life's full suggestion and free soul of grace, 
 
 And human kinship, bred of sweet embrace, 
 To one mere shape of power. And she that stilled 
 
 And fired his sense with beauty, and to space 
 Touched his light spirit, held him cabined, chilled, 
 In law's thin icy grasp, passionless, unfulfilled.
 
 142 TWO LIVES. 
 
 83 
 
 For as he doubted, fallen from the faith, 
 
 The large hope and high service catholic 
 Of whole consummate reason, a cold wraith 
 
 Of the full life of science rose to trick 
 
 The empty passion of time's heretic. 
 Her free and hollow front of seeming drew 
 
 His spirit, homeless, unallotted, sick 
 Of twilight shadows, to her retinue, 
 And showed her worship's home, and nature's vision new. 
 
 84 
 All sense he stood. Before her proselyte, 
 
 Pointing his reverence unto nature's east 
 Of orbing knowledge, clear upon the site 
 
 Of ruined reason and of faith deceased, 
 
 Rose her proud temple's dome. And time her priest, 
 Self-consecrate, on life's high pedestal 
 
 Seemed to unveil truth's image, slowly pieced 
 And carven from earth's quarried heart, and call 
 New worlds to kneel beneath her shrine material.
 
 TWO LIVES. 143 
 
 85 
 That marble shape, with soulless eyes of death, 
 
 Unmystic, took his reason recreant. 
 And, under such chill benediction's breath, 
 
 Old chimes of worship faded, as her chant 
 
 Rolled inward with a burden jubilant 
 " Now is God fallen, fallen ! Come, return 
 
 To earth ! To me her chief hierophant 
 Hearken ! On her low altar only burn ! 
 The vision of thyself in service there discern ! " 
 
 86 
 Then was he nature's not as those that feel 
 
 The passion of her presence, simply blent 
 With dear allegiance, work and calmly seal 
 
 Their consecration ; such as dwell content 
 
 Wholly to walk her ways, and listen bent 
 Over her breath, till love unfold in lore, 
 
 And grow within them to ripe argument 
 Organic ; such as live and brood and pore, 
 Till her own face interpret all her being's core
 
 144 TWO LIVES. 
 
 87 
 
 But so put forth a fierce impatient hand 
 
 To pluck from off her forehead high result, 
 Untimely, sudden, that the mystic band 
 
 Of awe, wherewith full human love adult 
 
 Girdles her revelation's living cult, 
 Fell loosened for his sense ; and dreamed that there 
 
 Should knowledge dwell familiar, and exult 
 Thus to behold, in very vision bare, 
 False truth of naked nature through life's fuller wear. 
 
 88 
 Whether some elemental touch of earth, 
 
 Recurrent, trembled through his blood, and won 
 Upon the human pulse ; or very dearth 
 
 Over the void of fancy subtly spun 
 
 Some wild dim formless longing to be one 
 With outward things ; or passion would peruse 
 
 Nature's new world romantic, so to shun 
 Too real self, and by her charm to lose 
 The phantom of a past, wherewith he might not fuse ;
 
 TWO LIVES. 145 
 
 89 
 Or whether, chief, the broken restless nerve 
 
 Of a sick spirit, which in part foresaw 
 The pain of waking loom afar, would swerve 
 
 And start from the sharp healing of its flaw 
 
 By shame resurgent ; but would turn and draw, 
 Still dreaming, absolution's anodyne 
 
 From unreproachful lips of soulless law, 
 I say not only came no dawn divine 
 To that lean nature's life, which would with his entwine. 
 
 90 
 How else should the free spirit, human, whole, 
 
 Consent to wander back on nature's waste ? 
 How, treading down the hope of its high goal, 
 
 Till vision's faculty be half effaced, 
 
 Averse, can haunt its upward stream, retraced 
 To the wild blank barren issue, whence it rose ? 
 
 And stand a surface thing, shallow, abased, 
 As who would linger there, and there foreclose 
 All dream of deepening quest, which to God's ocean grows?
 
 146 TWO LIVES. 
 
 91 
 
 How else behold fate's finger only carve 
 
 The soul's full image after nature's frame 
 Unvital, fleshless ? How decline and starve 
 
 The spirit of its sustenance, and maim 
 
 Its motions free ? How else should life disclaim 
 True birth, deeming itself a thing misbred 
 
 By aspiration ? How put off high aim 
 Prophetic? How, self-disinherited, 
 Reclothe an inward want in dream of worlds long dead ? 
 
 92 
 How bear to be an atom-waif of time, 
 
 Tossed out upon the foam of shoreless chance, 
 Mocked with a sky, whose void its motions climb 
 
 In vain ? To see the twilight of its trance 
 
 Break in a shadowy self, that circumstance 
 Usurpeth for his mirror? To be lift 
 
 On dream's free topmost wave of far advance, 
 Only to feel below life's backward drift, 
 Only divine the vision of its own deep rift ?
 
 TWO LIVES. 147 
 
 93 
 
 Ay to such issue was his spirit wrought ; 
 
 Whose barren soil, unstirred by higher need, 
 Untilled of time ; whose solitary thought 
 
 And wild sense mated to an empty creed, 
 
 Unfertile, the rich promise of that seed, 
 Dropped on quick waiting life, as pollen's gold, 
 
 By him, whose patient vision seemed to breed 
 With ripe creative magic, and to mould 
 New life in nature's lap, new flowers that yet unfold. 
 
 94 
 Darwin There grew a large and simple life, 
 
 A spirit touched to nobler strains and use, 
 Than was begotten ever in the strife 
 
 Of blind worlds. There a loyal soul, recluse, 
 
 So listened to full nature's heart profuse, 
 Her silence took his voice ; her soul, unloath, 
 
 As to pure priest's true question, learned to loose 
 The veil from off the secret of her growth, 
 And sight's long service blent to tongue prophetic both.
 
 148 TWO LIVES 
 
 95 
 Broad-browed, benignant then on thee the calm 
 
 Of nature fell, and now death's attribute 
 Of consecration. But must life embalm, 
 
 Deep in this century of thine, the root 
 
 And freshness of thy power. Though time transmute 
 And choose, the mellow methods of his law, 
 
 Rounding and ripening for fulfilment's fruit, 
 Linked unto thee, as one elect, shall draw 
 Through thee to springs diviner than thy spirit saw. 
 
 96 
 But he, whose nature yet was poor, unripe 
 
 For late fulfilment's hour, nor caught the clue 
 Of aspiration's spring, flung out the type 
 
 Of his own want upon the full world's view. 
 
 And there he dreamed his vision should ensue, 
 Far off, life's limit in some soulless germ ; 
 
 Nor yet foresaw the free ways which outgrew 
 Growth unprophetic, flowering to affirm 
 Spirit and self thereafter in true season's term.
 
 TWO LIVES. 149 
 
 97 
 For, ever backward, by the shadows cast 
 
 From a broken self s reflection, out of rhyme 
 With life, some formless passion of the past, 
 
 Some longing void for elemental prime, 
 
 Like phantoms, lured him down the steps of time, 
 To watch its travail, till all sense of birth 
 
 Died in the long transition, whence would climb, 
 From secular gestation of the earth, 
 Wind and illusion's shape, to clothe the spirit's dearth. 
 
 98 
 
 And there, as one half willing to be lost, 
 
 He was content to roam beneath the roof 
 Of opening ages. There forgot the ghost 
 
 Of self in some far dream of proud disproof. 
 
 And there, though life's large spirit stood aloof, 
 Strove to behold her barren frame conceive 
 
 All growth, that, through time's vesture and the woof 
 Of the rich world, wild sense might wholly cleave 
 To such bare truth, whose tissue law's dead fingers weave.
 
 150 TWO LIVES. 
 
 99 
 Wherefore was life a shoreless thing, between 
 
 Two worlds of mist, whose grey and spectral gloom 
 Would ever hang one cold and widening screen 
 
 Across the spirit's quest ; and power a doom, 
 
 At whose dim fiat law should half illume 
 Death's way for shadowy souls, that upward strive ; 
 
 And growth a curse misgotten of the womb 
 Of nothing, whose deep oppositions rive, 
 And lure time's own elect to clamber and survive. 
 
 100 
 
 Wherefore was nature set, one soulless norm, 
 
 Whereto his world was straitened ; who could fuse 
 
 Lightly life's full rich metal in her form 
 Mechanic, with wild reason's heat ; and lose 
 True growth's high law, watching her motions choose, 
 
 Which chose not nor were shapen of presage, 
 From lavish chance, seeds she would blindly use, 
 
 Sown on the mystic lap of heritage, 
 Till time's mere method seemed to take the spirit's stage.
 
 TWO LIVES. 151 
 
 IOI 
 
 Yet was his being led beyond the marge 
 
 Of private vision. Yet he heard within 
 The beat and motion of a life more large 
 
 Rise echoing on his nature, as akin 
 
 Recurrent through the blood. Yet seemed to win 
 Space and one path, to turn and reascend 
 
 Late from the ways of growth and origin, 
 And there, regathering time's true blossoms, blend 
 With whole fulfilment's view, and face the spirit's end. 
 
 102 
 
 Three lords in nature rule art, science, song 
 
 Shaping her service to their passion's food ; 
 Three lovers, unto whom she doth belong, 
 
 As one that seeketh only to be wooed ; 
 
 Three ministers which wait upon her mood ; 
 Three priests that bless her elemental ore 
 
 To purest use ; three spirits that do brood 
 Over her silence, till her secret's core 
 Rise to prophetic lips and perfect vision's lore.
 
 152 TWO LIVES. 
 
 103 
 
 Three such he knew, or felt their primal breath 
 Of inspiration move upon his face 
 
 And nature's, with a power which passed beneath 
 Slowly to love. Thereof one would enlace 
 His motions with her law and wide embrace ; 
 
 One, with rich vision warm, and softly paint 
 Across a grey life's free and shadowy space 
 Loveliness ; one would answer and acquaint 
 His mood with hers, and briefly heal division's taint. 
 
 104 
 For he would bathe in streams of fairest art, 
 
 Which image nature, lonely sense, and view 
 Self in his mirror, whose proud soul apart, 
 
 Wholly express in form, to nature grew 
 
 In stolen converse, till it sunlike drew, 
 Through his fine vision's free prophetic mist, 
 
 Her beauty forth, more fused, more subtly true, 
 Reshapen, mellowed, wider than she wist, 
 Turner by love's long use her ripe impressionist.
 
 GUI BONO. 
 
 A WILD rose over the the rivulet bent, 
 The wind was a whisper and half a sigh, 
 And the hum of the bee with its life was blent, 
 And the cloud went shadowless by, 
 Heigho ! And the sun was high. 
 
 And the rose, as a thing in a formless dream, 
 The shape of her vision and self would trace ; 
 
 And fairer more faint in the tremulous stream 
 She met with her mirrored grace, 
 Heigho ! and the sun's full face. 
 
 She hearkened awhile as a soul alone, 
 
 But she only heard in the hum of the bee, 
 
 " Thy life in the lap of the earth was grown 
 Thy beauty was made for me." 
 Heigho ! And the sun could see.
 
 154 TWO LIVES. 
 
 And her life was sad, and the soft lips curled, 
 
 And the grey cloud grew, till her heart would close, 
 
 But the song of the wind went over the world, 
 And bore the breath of the rose ; 
 Heigho ! And the sun he knows. 
 
 Lonely he stood, as one who would escape 
 
 Himself and life's clear mirror. Now in dream 
 
 His spirit moved aloof, and sought to drape 
 Sadness in airy sense, or brooding seem 
 To lose all things authentic in the gleam 
 
 Of fancy. Now he woke and wandered out 
 And bathed a troubled self in nature's stream 
 
 Of loveliness. And now in nature's drought 
 Haunted the hollow waste and empty ways of doubt.
 
 TWO LIVES. 155 
 
 106 
 
 And there with wild and shapeless things he dwelt, 
 The free and mystic wind, brown moor and wold, 
 
 Cloud and grey sea, whose fellowship would melt 
 Into his mood, and soothe and softly fold 
 His longing. Or, as striving to withhold 
 
 A shy unshapen spirit, which would face 
 
 Such dreamful emptiness, from the true mould 
 
 Of time, by barren reason wrought a space, 
 Where he might be apart, a silent, soulless place. 
 
 107 
 And yet anon his being seemed restrung 
 
 To life's true tension. He would catch and blend 
 With the air of common things ; or lightly flung 
 
 His passion on the full world's arms ; would lend 
 
 Himself to wave and river ; buoyant bend 
 To the oar's pulsing motion and refrain 
 
 His open youth ; or, half fulfilled in friend, 
 Sweep the new surface of a trackless brain, 
 Breathing new nature's breath, and sweet life's vision sane.
 
 156 TWO LIVES. 
 
 108 
 But evermore the stream of outward sense 
 
 Was shot and ruffled by the wind of thought. 
 Ever emotion, touched with transience, 
 
 Was broken, blurred, as, floating thus unfraught, 
 
 Helmless through shadowy woods, his hearing caught 
 Some undercurrent tone, that ever sighed 
 
 Nearer ; the whisper of a life which sought 
 To wear upon his nature and divide 
 His spirit for itself, and deepen to its tide. 
 
 109 
 
 And evermore a passion analyst 
 
 Drew him to wander in the ways unclear, 
 Where life is haunted by the spirit's mist, 
 
 As deeming in that twilight atmosphere 
 
 Reason unreverent should be the seer 
 Of time's true vision, or as one akin 
 
 In mood. Then, unprophetic, saw appear, 
 As rose two pure stars, love and law, within, 
 Flung on a riven soul the shadowed form of sin.
 
 TWO LIVES. 157 
 
 no 
 
 And thus song found his season ; not to nerve 
 Or ripen then. But with the light impress 
 
 Of spring, it planted there some pure reserve 
 Amid wild paths, that love might seek access 
 Later ; there heard his silence half confess 
 
 The secret of his dreamful mood ; and strawed 
 Softly before the feet of bitterness 
 
 Young buds of nature, till the name of " Maud " 
 Sank on a lonely sense, half sweetened and half awed. 
 
 in 
 
 And though far other love should subtly probe 
 With shame and aspiration's power the hurt 
 
 Hid in his nature ; other thought unrobe 
 The bareness of his soul, and with the skirt 
 Of time's true raiment cover and convert 
 
 Its empty passion ; other life recharge 
 His life unladen, till the free world, girt 
 
 At last with God's horizon, should enlarge 
 A vision more divine to deep fulfilment's marge ;
 
 158 TWO LIVES. 
 
 112 
 
 The light wind of that song, which purely shook 
 And freshened his sad season at the first, 
 
 Is wafted back, and round some sheltered nook 
 Of ripened fancy, by its sweetness nursed, 
 Wanders familiar, as a thing rehearsed 
 
 To love's dear habit. Still its echoes call 
 
 Through far faint chambers to a soul immersed 
 
 In its own vision, rhythmic, musical, 
 And footless haunt his mood, and softly beat and fall. 
 
 Oh now more softly, seeing that dull death 
 
 Hath frozen up song's summer current, whence 
 
 Such sweet waves wandered, pulsing with the breath 
 Of love and nature's west, through audience 
 Of our free world, waking its fuller sense ; 
 
 Seeing that his chill weight hath power to numb 
 Wholly the heart of music, and condense 
 
 The spirit's supple air, till no sounds come, 
 And sorrow heareth not, and the lips of life are dumb.
 
 TWO LIVES. 159 
 
 114 
 
 Oh grey October dawn, thou comest back, 
 
 With autumn's pause, that cold room and the rote 
 
 Of common things recurrent, of whose track 
 All sense were faded, but for death's deep note 
 Then graven. Yet, methinks, I hear him quote 
 
 One question from the lips of waiting dread, 
 Touching that life, until one answer smote 
 
 The silence, and the chestnut withered, 
 And the thin aspen's leaves listened and whispered "Dead." 
 
 "5 
 
 For, even as I spake of nature's speech, 
 Hearing two voices, seeing visions twain 
 
 Of law and loveliness, and watched them reach 
 Apart, and with spring passion purge or stain 
 An unripened spirit's free and formless brain, 
 
 He, at whose song I felt her sweet sap stir, 
 Now rising to my season's own refrain, 
 
 Who to my wild sense was interpreter, 
 Passed, and I knew him blent with silence and with her.
 
 l6o TWO LIVES. 
 
 116 
 Blent living, dead his spirit still shall fuse 
 
 Her revelation's fullness, now more dear. 
 For this fair England's face shall never lose 
 
 Fresh beauty, painted by his vision clear, 
 
 Who gazed through human art's true atmosphere, 
 Till to his pure constraint, as love would brood 
 
 Prophetic, she uncovered for her seer 
 Bosom and silent soul and mystic mood, 
 With his fine passion's breath and subtle form imbued. 
 
 117 
 
 And I, what time the slow hours watched the ebb 
 
 Of his broad life, was wandering, as before, 
 By this brown channel, woven in the web 
 
 Of his melodious magic evermore ; 
 
 Where, fringed with glamour from that purple shore 
 Of legend, sea and Severn, to and fro, 
 
 Beating and blending with his sorrow's lore, 
 Part the faint fields of passion long ago, 
 And bathe my love's fresh summers in their fall and flow.
 
 TWO LIVES. l6l 
 
 118 
 
 Oh love ! Along those shores, that autumn dusk, 
 While at thy children's feet the dreamy foam 
 
 Rose lapping, outward, down, from Wye to Usk, 
 By the haven of his memory and each holm, 
 Our quiet stream, the Quantock where we clomb, 
 
 To the free breath and utmost blue of Morte 
 
 Ran clear my longing's current, which must roam 
 
 Ever to love's last issue, and consort 
 With soulless things awhile, and wait my passion's port. 
 
 119 
 Come back ! Fulfilment's touch with one red flush 
 
 Of sunset shamed brown waters, and there fell 
 On woodland head and harbour autumn's hush, 
 
 Cool mist and calm. Beneath that ripe hour's spell, 
 
 From brimming bar and westering sail's farewell, 
 Home by the quarried cliff and haunting moan 
 
 Of sliding ships we followed that soft swell, 
 Whereon by God's breath he was seaward blown, 
 For me dead love rose flooding into song, alone. 
 
 M
 
 1 62 TWO LIVES. 
 
 120 
 They told me song was dying, dead ; such song 
 
 As hears the authentic heart of growing time, 
 And all its passion's music beat among 
 
 The secret places of his power, then climb, 
 
 With the true pulse of its essential prime, 
 And flush his faculties, and wake his word 
 
 On lips of love creative, whose full chime, 
 Echoing back and blending with life's chord, 
 So maketh free and whole the breath of beauty's lord. 
 
 121 
 
 And ever was their muttered half lament 
 
 Lost in his music, whose high laurelled brow 
 
 Rose, as some island peak, sole, eminent, 
 With immemorial ease doth overbow 
 The level ways of petty life. But now, 
 
 Rhyming with their presage, the mist of death 
 Of his large custom's awe would disendow 
 
 Our sense, and on that forehead set his wreath, 
 Purer than any song we whisper here beneath.
 
 TWO LIVES. 163 
 
 122 
 
 Dead ! Since the courier lightning, who doth serve 
 The public scope of grief, with that first spark 
 
 Flashed round the fibres of the world's quick nerve, 
 And made a space and silence in the dark, 
 Loosening elemental tears, whose mark 
 
 Shall burn upon time's brain one deepening date, 
 Must we, who saw SQ large a soul embark 
 
 Calmly on his last voyage, haunt the gate, 
 And range the house of song, sorrowful, desolate. 
 
 123 
 The black sail dwindles down the year. Unbuoyed 
 
 By vision, dumb and listless on the verge 
 We loiter. Or but thinly on the void 
 
 Hear our own voices rise. They fall and merge 
 
 In formless music of unlocal surge, 
 Beating on sorrow's shore for one farewell, 
 
 While from grey sea and sombre heath a dirge 
 Blows on the heart with solemn, pulsing knell, 
 Dull, fitful, brief, abrupt, as some snow-muffled bell.
 
 164 TWO LIVES. 
 
 124 
 And yet death's silence might more fitly robe 
 
 Our sorrow. For the strength of this dear tongue, 
 Whose large free tones have girdled round the globe, 
 
 Mellowed and subtilized by him who sung 
 
 To his harmonious hearing, lies unstrung 
 For the full use of grief. The laurels, glossed 
 
 By his warm golden art, whose year was young 
 And green with winter freshness, now have lost 
 Life's touch, and droop to dullness, withered in our frost. 
 
 125 
 For song so lived with him, we deemed her wed 
 
 To his one life, whose life itself was song. 
 And so with her he communed, nought was bred 
 
 But noble issue breathing strength among 
 
 Our sweetened ways. So loyal grew, so strong 
 His clasp, that something as of nature's rote 
 
 Passed on his spirit. And his love so long, 
 From his pure privacy of spring would float 
 Through all our season's dearth a new refreshment's note.
 
 TWO LIVES. 165 
 
 126 
 
 And now, by such divorce, if song must die 
 With him, or linger widowed and uncrowned, 
 
 This were fit passing for true poesy, 
 
 Where love beholdeth, and love's hand hath found 
 Fulfilment and farewell in song ; where sound 
 
 Is not but silence, that his lips may lull 
 
 With their own requiem life, and nature round 
 
 And mellow with her moon, and half annul 
 By benediction death, and God rise calm and full. 
 
 127 
 Dead ? Nay, transfigured, seeing that the mist 
 
 Of life is blown and purged by the breath 
 Cold seeming of that clear idealist, 
 
 Whom his pure spirit's height not needed, death. 
 
 Nay, living, whose dear loss transfigureth 
 In part, as song in part, and for a space 
 
 O'erpeering sorrow, where it shadoweth 
 With its dull brooding vapour, doth efface 
 Low things, and to his star illumine, lift our race.
 
 1 66 TWO LIVES. 
 
 128 
 Leave him, where death's completing touch doth paint 
 
 Round his pale forehead time's last aureole, 
 And canonize in calm so true a saint 
 
 Of song, who ever held his vision whole, 
 
 Unsoiled ; through the pure ether of whose soul, 
 As one sublimed to listen, set apart, 
 
 God's music wrought and ripened by control 
 For reconcilement's broad and mellow art, 
 And beat through nature's bosom to his human heart. 
 
 129 
 No waste is here, no wildness ; no dead root 
 
 Of growth misgotten ; nought unseasoned, sour, 
 Decadent, crude ; nothing but perfect fruit, 
 
 And calm fulfilment of consummate flower, 
 
 Now falling, at this autumn's frosty hour, 
 Into the lap of honour, there to live, 
 
 As needing not to wait for death's free power, 
 Or centuries to winnow in their sieve, 
 But ripely doth presume timeless prerogative.
 
 TWO LIVES. 167 
 
 130 
 Perchance I too had laid a fuller wreath, 
 
 To fade or blossom on so high a tomb ; 
 I too, perchance, had seen that soil of death 
 
 Breed from its own pure depth some other bloom 
 
 Than this ; had planted there for brief perfume 
 Some flower of verse, such as I dreamed should blow 
 
 Over song's grave ; had followed through the gloom 
 Of such a twilight time, when song was low, 
 And stayed his glory's flush, and beauty's afterglow ; 
 
 But that the passion of a death more dear, 
 Which circles on me from this central date, 
 
 One ripening season of my sorrow's year, 
 To its own use doth seal and consecrate 
 The yield of all my nature, now too late 
 
 For love's fruition ; whether it be spring, 
 Lent to a spirit quickened to create, 
 
 Or winter, which shall nerve anew and string 
 Myself for lonely growth and life fulfilled to sing.
 
 1 68 TWO LIVES. 
 
 132 
 Yet were my sorrow thus a thing too poor 
 
 And private, if I plucked not from the wall 
 Of love's own home, for song's high sepulture, 
 
 Flushed with the autumn glory of his fall, 
 
 Some leaves of this free speech, imperial 
 Of England, grave, impassioned ; if, aloof, 
 
 I wove not at his passing now a pall 
 Wrought to our flag's yet full and seamless woof, 
 Largely to drape his death, under time's solemn roof. 
 
 133 
 Therefore to song's large loss time now shall wed 
 
 My private date of death, that life has wove 
 Into my spirit's texture; who beheld 
 
 That same sad hour, which hardly breathed above 
 
 His sleeping, steal upon the lips of love, 
 Which once were mine, with pallid power, and close 
 
 All sweet approach and answer, that might move 
 With whisper of farewell as a white rose 
 Fainting at summer dusk is folded to repose.
 
 TWO LIVES. 169 
 
 134 
 
 And therefore consecration's sound hath passed 
 
 On the memory of that mellow sunset song, 
 Prophetic of his parting, and the last 
 
 Whereto she listened, trembling from my tongue ; 
 
 Whose pure waves echoed on, perchance, among 
 The fragments of her memory, softly stirred 
 
 By little steps, till love, who would prolong 
 His deepening proof, might ripple with no word 
 The dreamful shore of death, and only God was heard. 
 
 135 
 
 And ever shall it haunt this silent room, 
 Wherein my lonely spirit doth embalm 
 
 All buried sweetness in its love's perfume, 
 Mingled for me with what of larger calm 
 And sanctity hath fallen on each psalm, 
 
 More solemn, by her children's voices read, 
 With the faint feeling of her pulseless palm, 
 
 Those lilies seen with white and drooping head, 
 These violets, late for vision, breathing by the dead.
 
 17 TWO LIVES. 
 
 136 
 
 There on my heart's white page his lines have writ 
 Love's perfect form and creed, which I confess, 
 
 The first of his quotation, whence was lit 
 In the pure vision of my own princess 
 A gleam prophetic, half of doubtfulness, 
 
 Half dread that love's allegiance should compel ; 
 Whence unto mine in slow and sweet access, 
 
 From the brief magic moment of that spell, 
 Her lips, her spirit grew, for greeting and farewell. 
 
 137 
 Oh love ! Oh death ! Would now that I might build 
 
 For memory and for you a monument 
 Perpetual, pure as his ; wherein fulfilled 
 
 My spirit might behold its true ascent, 
 
 And broaden out, perchance, for souls still pent, 
 In large free service ; where I should escape 
 
 Solitude, self, and be for ever blent, 
 In its most central shrine, with her, and drape 
 In full and reverent folds my dear love's deathless shape.
 
 TWO LIVES. 171 
 
 138 
 Were any master mine but doubt and dream, 
 
 Knowledge and nature, loveliness and life, 
 And she, who woke my spirit with the gleam, 
 
 Wherein all melt and gather love and wife ; 
 
 Were mine an inspiration more than strife 
 Hath grown, more than begotten was of death, 
 
 And what of passion sane and sweet is rife 
 In the rich world, and what of reason's breath 
 Hath blown my nature free, and mingled me with faith ; 
 
 139 
 He were, in sooth, the one, whom I had sought, 
 
 To bathe my faculties from the wide brink 
 Of his pure current, till, perchance, I caught 
 
 Some subtler flow of music ; or to drink 
 
 Fuller of memories, which do partly link 
 His motions unto mine ; to raise my pipe 
 
 To rhyme with his large reverent love ; or think 
 Through the deep law, that mouldeth him to type 
 For me of life and song, things reconciled and ripe.
 
 1/2 TWO LIVES. 
 
 140 
 
 But for the spirit speaketh what he hath 
 Of private vision, things that do belong 
 
 To his true thought, and treads a living path 
 Only by unattempted streams ; and song, 
 Set by God's breath, thus slow and late among 
 
 New fields, for me has blossomed on the soil 
 Of my own nature, freely grown, made strong 
 
 By love and death and ripe perfection's toil, 
 Flowering unfathered, sourceless on the full world's spoil- 
 
 141 
 Now from this lonely tree I were content 
 
 To pluck a leaner fruitage ; and to grope 
 A lower way than his high precedent, 
 
 By my own spirit's clue ; if but the slope 
 
 Were sunward ; if but seed of golden hope 
 By me might yet be planted, nutritive, 
 
 Sifted in song, and chosen to the scope 
 Of time, to whose pure passion love should give 
 Growth and fulfilment's hour, her law to die to live.
 
 SONG'S SEASON. 
 
 A LTHOUGH my lonely year be young 
 ^\. And timeless still, since death can breed 
 
 Some sense of motion from a seed 
 Planted and slowly grown among 
 The months, wherein my sorrow sung, 
 
 Since love must flower for living need, 
 With something of a season's rote 
 I turn again to nature's note. 
 
 Oh crocus, can thy heart of gold, 
 Still sleeping hidden in the corm, 
 Flame out again and face the storm ? 
 
 Oh love, for all my winter's cold, 
 
 Look forth, and only half unfold, 
 In song's new season now, and form 
 
 For song, for her, a blossom, though 
 
 My heart lie dreaming yet below 1
 
 174 TW O LIVES. 
 
 Oh bells of blue, that made a mist, 
 
 Through dull deep green and underwood, 
 Breathe, as you breathed upon my mood, 
 
 Where no one but the cuckoo wist ! 
 
 Oh lips of love, which once were kissed, 
 When May was waking in the blood, 
 
 If dream and shadow yet can sing, 
 
 Touch me to listen now for spring ! 
 
 Oh little lips of tufted thyme, 
 
 Whose silence whispered at her feet 
 When summer's passion was complete ! 
 Oh breath of song, who canst not climb 
 Up to her spirit's height, or rhyme 
 
 With her free motion's beauty, meet 
 And blend with me and here embalm 
 Dead sweetness in my spirit's calm ! 
 
 Oh flush again, thou purple heath, 
 This year my nature's solitude, 
 And richly colour song's grey mood ! 
 Oh love, who livest warm beneath 
 My spirit's waste, pulse up from death ! 
 
 That with some autumn sense imbued, 
 My loss may flower to fuller type, 
 And sorrow's fruit for song be ripe.
 
 TWO LIVES. 175 
 
 Oh plant, whose flowers of lilac pale, 
 And leaves of ivy climb and keep 
 Life's vision through the month^s that sleep ! 
 
 Oh deathless past, whose tendrils trail 
 
 Over my fancy still, and veil 
 
 Its bareness, send your fibres deep 
 
 Into my heart, where love once clomb, 
 
 And clothe in song love's empty home. 
 
 Oh love, to-day, since thou wast born 
 In some sweet hour, the date of this, 
 I too have felt the sun's light kiss 
 With earth ; for me the woods have worn 
 Fresh-tasselled catkins, though the thorn 
 
 Be silver yet with clematis ; 
 And by gaunt bracken's withered wraith 
 The golden gorse has flowered in faith. 
 
 Oh song, make thou my seasons one ! 
 That, shapen for time's true ascent, 
 Perchance, in thy prefigurement, 
 
 To-morrow's texture, yet unspun, 
 
 Inwoven by God's central sun, 
 
 With love and nature purely blent, 
 
 May measure by thy mellowing change 
 
 My larger growth, my spirit's range.
 
 SOMETHING WHITE. 
 
 QOMETHING white ! oh is it only foam? 
 
 ^7* Is it sail or sea-bird's wing ? 
 
 Is it brief far vision of the face of home 
 
 Growing on my sense and glistening ? 
 
 Am I coming back to England and to spring ? 
 
 Something white ! Has sunny welcome kissed 
 
 Cliff of England, caught between 
 Yonder grey and edgeless line of lifting mist, 
 
 And this channel's surging sullen green ? 
 
 Am I coming back to England and my queen ? 
 N
 
 178 TWO LIVES. 
 
 Something white ! which met me there and smiled 
 
 Was it chestnut's solemn sway ? 
 Was it hawthorn waiting ? Was it roses wild 
 
 Stealing summer whilst I was away ? 
 
 Am I coming back to England and to May ? 
 
 Something white ! Oh full Venetian moon, 
 
 Is it still thy mellow gleam 
 On canal and campanile and lagune, 
 
 Moving with me down my memory's stream ? 
 
 Am I coming back to England out of dream ? 
 
 Something white ! Ah, was it snow of Greece ? 
 
 Proud Parnassus set among 
 Purple mountains, sea of sapphire, with his peace 
 
 Haunting my o'ertravelled sense, how long ? 
 
 Am I coming back to England and to song ? 
 
 Something white ! Oh, that was long ago. 
 
 Shining there beyond, above 
 Cliff of England, sweetness on me seemed to grow,
 
 TWO LIVES. 179 
 
 Something from spring's whitest blossoms wove ; 
 I was coming back to England and to love. 
 
 Something wnite ! Oh is it sorrow's wing 
 
 Wafted back on song's own breath ? 
 Is it love's fair blossom fallen, withering, 
 
 Blown about dead passion for a wreath ? 
 
 Am I coming back to England and to death ? 
 
 Something white ! Oh is it bridal bloom ? 
 
 Is it love on sorrow grown ? 
 Broadening, blending with a fresh and full perfume 
 
 Through a people's soul and round a throne ? 
 
 Am I coming back to England, and alone ? 
 
 Something white ! Oh pure and full and far, 
 Thou art waiting, love, for me, 
 
 For my song's true season, still my living star, 
 Blent with love of England, one and free, 
 I am coming back to England and to thee.
 
 180 TWO LIVES. 
 
 Something white ! For me love flowered here ; 
 
 Here my love shall grow and sing, 
 Clasping summer hope to memory's fruitful year, 
 
 Nevermore a dead and lonely thing ; 
 
 I am coming back to England and to spring. 
 
 CHISWICK PRESS: c. WHITTINGHAM AND co., TOOKS COURT, 
 
 CHANCERY LANE.

 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 A 000 101 817 5