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 THE LIBRARY 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 NEW POEMS
 
 Work by the same Author 
 DEIRDRE WEDDED 
 
 AND NINETEEN OTHER POEMS 
 
 INCLUDING 
 
 A Silver Birch 
 
 Song for the Funeral of a Boy 
 
 Come, let us make Love deathless 
 
 Shakespeare 
 
 A Charge 
 
 In the Roman Amphitheatre, Verona
 
 NEW POEMS 
 
 APOLLO ftf THE SEAMAN 
 THE QUEEN OF GOTHLAND 
 STANZAS TO TOLSTOY 
 AND OTHER LYRICS 
 
 BY 
 
 HERBERT TRENCH 
 
 LONDON : METHUEN AND CO. 
 
 ESSEX STREET, STRAND
 
 First Published hi igoy 
 
 Copyrighted by the Author in the United States 
 of America All rights reserved
 
 7R 
 Tc,An 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Apollo and the Seaman .... 
 
 i 
 
 An Ode to Beauty ..... 
 
 - 33 
 
 The Voice from the Column 
 
 39 
 
 Stanzas to Tolstoy in his Old Age 
 
 - 44 
 
 Lindisfarne ....... 
 
 49 
 
 Chant Sung in Darkness . 
 
 5i 
 
 O Dreamy, Gloomy, Friendly Trees . 
 
 54 
 
 Old Anchor Chanty ...... 
 
 55 
 
 The Questioners ..... 
 
 . 5« 
 
 I Heard a Soldier ..... 
 
 62 
 
 A Song — Her, my own Sad Love Divine 
 
 63 
 
 The Crocus ....... 
 
 64 
 
 Inscription for a Sword of Honour 
 
 66 
 
 Daughters of Joy ..... 
 
 67 
 
 Almond, Wild Almond .... 
 
 7i 
 
 Musing on a Great Soldier .... 
 
 73 
 
 When Mary Bathes 
 
 75 
 
 Jean Richepin's Song . 
 
 76 
 
 Multatuli Remoulded . 
 
 78 
 
 Chorus at the Green Bear Inn . 
 
 81 
 
 To a Nightingale heard upon a Hilltop before Dawn 83 
 
 94i 
 
 JL.
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Gemless Ring ..... 
 
 . 85 
 
 The Requital ...... 
 
 • 87 
 
 The Reparation ..... 
 
 . 89 
 
 Dark, Dark the Seas and Lands . 
 
 . 90 
 
 Ode on Armenian Massacre 
 
 • 9 1 
 
 There Comes a Moment of the Twilight 
 
 . 94 
 
 Killary 
 
 • 96 
 
 The Queen of Gothland .... 
 
 99 
 
 The Shepherd ....... 
 
 115 
 
 Stanzas on Poetry ...... 
 
 119 
 
 O Birds of the Air 
 
 124 
 
 I Seek Thee in the Heart Alone 
 
 125 
 
 Ode at Assouan on the Nile . 
 
 126 
 
 Notes ........ 
 
 129
 
 APOLLO & THE SEAMAN
 
 APOLLO AND THE SEAMAN 
 
 APOLLO through the woods came down Apoiio's 
 Furred like a merchant fine, coming - 
 
 And sate with a Sailor at an Inn 
 Sharing a jug of wine. 
 
 Had sun-rays, spilled out of a storm, 
 Thither the God conveyed ? 
 Or some green and floating cloudlet caught 
 On the fringes of a glade ? 
 
 For none had known him by his gait 
 Descending from the hills, 
 Though far and wide before him blew 
 The friendly daffodils; 
 
 No shepherd had discovered him 
 On upland pasture bare 
 By dew-pond or green Roman camp ; 
 No voice aloft in air
 
 Along lone barrows of great downs 
 With kine in rolling coombes, 
 Where bells blow up from all the plain 
 To headlands spring perfumes, 
 
 Proclaimed him to those coombes and folds 
 
 Of little lambs unyeaned, 
 
 Or sung him to the billowy woods 
 
 With spray of buds begreened, 
 
 Where spreads in haze the snowy maze 
 
 Of orchards deep-ravined — 
 
 Telling the dingles of the thrush 
 To overflow with sound, 
 Warning the grassy commons all 
 In vales for miles around : 
 
 " Wake ! shady forest-coverts wide ! 
 Wake ! skylit river-sward ! 
 Chases and meres and misty shires 
 Be ready for your lord ! " 
 
 But he would not stay nor tarry there 
 On the blithe edge of the down, 
 To the sea-coast his errand was 
 And the smoke-hanging town. 
 
 Far off he saw its harbours shine 
 And black sea-bastions thronged 
 With masts of the sea-traffickers 
 For whom his spirit longed. 
 2
 
 Far off he heard the windlass heaved 
 And the creaking of the cranes, 
 Gay barges hailed and poled along, 
 And the rattling fall of chains, 
 
 Till by the windows of that Inn 
 
 He sate and took his ease 
 
 Where the bowsprits of the swarthy ships 
 
 Came thrusting to the quays. 
 
 ii 
 
 Apollo. 
 
 Seaman. 
 
 " And why are you cast down, sailor ? 
 And why are you cast down ? 
 With lapfuls of the guineas light 
 Come you not back to town ? 
 
 Your feet that must have run in air 
 Aloft the slippy mast 
 Are they not glad to land, my lad, 
 On steady ground at last ? " 
 
 Up from his brown and branded hands 
 A heavy chin he raised, 
 And sidelong through the harbour bluffs 
 Looked out like man amazed. 
 
 " If you had cruised as I have cruised 
 The world for many a year, 
 Your blood like mine it would have struck 
 At the strange news I hear. 
 
 The rumour.
 
 the Moon went riding high last night 
 And the dance along the quays, 
 
 But I could not find it in my heart 
 To care for shows like these ; 
 
 For while still I felt the rollers' lift 
 Bear on through the dark land 
 And the little houses here still rock 
 And sway — they would not stand — 
 
 1 heard them calling in the streets 
 That the ship I serve upon — 
 The great ship Immortality — 
 
 Was gone down, like the sun. . . ." 
 
 in 
 
 Apoiio. " And whence did that craft hail, sailor, The Ship. 
 
 Of which you seem so fond ? " 
 seaman. " It was some harbour of the East, 
 
 Back o' beyond, back o' beyond ! " 
 
 Apoiio. u What shipwrights' hammers rang on her, 
 The stout ship and the leal ? 
 In what green forest inlet lay 
 Her cradle and her keel ? " 
 
 Seaman. " I think some arm of the sea-gods 
 Framed us her stormy frame, 
 And ribbed and beamed and stanchioned her, 
 And gave her strength a name. 
 
 4
 
 Never, Sir Traveller, have you seen 
 A sight the half as fine 
 As when she hove up from the East 
 On our horizon-line ! " 
 
 Apollo. " I have seen a dead god on the Nile, 
 Paddled by tribes of bronze, 
 Under mud-built villages of palms 
 Glide, statelier than swans, 
 And Isis' frail moon-golden skiff 
 Restore him to that barque of life 
 Whose years are millions. 
 
 I have seen Jason and his men 
 
 Into bows of Argo piece 
 
 Oak of Dodona, ere she slid 
 
 To find the golden fleece; 
 
 Ay, and triremes of the marble isles 
 
 Pursue from Salamis. 
 
 I have seen master-galleys rise 
 Dipping in mass the oar, 
 And centaur-carven caravels, 
 And galleons big with ore, 
 Dromonds, and mountain'd argosies 
 That sack the globe no more : 
 
 Great sails, like yellow weeping clouds, 
 Heap'd thunder, roaring squall — 
 And their fadings, like the fleet of stars 
 That floateth over all."
 
 Seaman. " Well — ask all navies such as these — 
 Was she not more divine 
 Who, challenged by Death's muffled drums, 
 Gave Death the countersign ? 
 
 Ah, to serve on her in time of war ! 
 Why it set aflame your blood 
 To feel her in the slack of peace 
 Come booming up the flood, 
 
 Thousands of wings about her bows 
 As she cast away the deep, 
 The morning star swung from a spar 
 And every sail asleep. 
 
 And her masts ! Land-locked and shut away 
 
 From the sea-winds' scud and psalm, 
 
 Her masts, they trembled in a leash — 
 
 You laid on them your palm, 
 
 And they quivered over with great life 
 
 That never could be calm. 
 
 No frothings in your purple wake 
 On the lone path to the pole 
 White as the spread of sail on her 
 That lent wings to your soul — " 
 
 Apoiio. " What was her build, that boat of yours 
 So proud upon the sea ? 
 What was her make of hull and deck, 
 What suit of sails had she ? " 
 6
 
 " O her stretch of sail so white, so white, 
 By no man's hand unfurled, 
 Was Heaven ! " 
 
 " And the decks you kept so bright ? " 
 " Were like this bustling World." 
 " And the hold and cockpit out of sight, 
 Pitch dark and ill to smell, 
 Full of the friends of your delight ? " 
 seaman. " That was the pit of Hell ! " 
 
 IV 
 
 " How think of her, gone down, gone down ! The tidings. 
 How think of her decayed ! 
 Or that the maker of that ship 
 Could let his creature fade ! 
 More unbridled — unforgettable- 
 creature made. 
 
 ■was never 
 
 Gone by the board, those swinging spars 
 That seemed through storm to climb ! 
 Sent down, like any cockle-shell, 
 To the tangle and the slime ! 
 
 Did he that takes the narrow sounds 
 His monstrous hands between 
 Whirl her among his crazy locks 
 Into an eddy green ? 
 
 Was it fog-bound, on a foul coast, 
 With not enough sea-room, 
 Or clear of land that she was lost, 
 Where the hard gale can blow home ?
 
 Was it ice-floe in the sheeted foam 
 Ambushed her ? or some ledge 
 Of false lights — or uncharted reef — 
 Broke her back upon its edge ? 
 
 Perhaps even she was seized at last 
 Off some island precipice 
 With weariness, like man's weariness, 
 Of everything that is, 
 
 And stranded so till the fresh flood 
 That through the channel swings 
 Crumbled that side like a sea-cliff 
 As one crumbles little things." 
 
 Apoiio. " Her end was none, my lad, of these ; 
 But first, if you must know, 
 Mutiny of those friends of yours 
 In irons down below." 
 
 Seaman. " And how got you, Sir Merchantman, 
 This news — or bitter jest ? " 
 
 Apoiio. " Sir, my trade is bringing light to all 
 From the East unto the West. 
 
 Nay, he that built your famous boat 
 From the old coasts to fly 
 And bear you ever out and on 
 Was I, and none but I ! " 
 8
 
 With that the sailor clutch'd the board 
 Wine spilt out of his glass 
 Dripp'd to the floor, but not a sound 
 From his parch'd mouth would pass. 
 
 «TU U- C The tale of 
 
 lhere was no whisper out of space, Apoiio. 
 
 Scarcely a ripple ran 
 From thine incommensurable side 
 O dim leviathan, 
 
 When from afar I came in flight, 
 Rumours 'gainst thee to probe, 
 Leaving far off, engraved in shade, 
 Many a dreaming silver globe 
 And approaching thee on the middle sea 
 Wrapt in my darkling robe. 
 
 From that Ship becalm'd, that triple-tier'd 
 Of Heaven and Earth and Hell, 
 Spread strange commotion as I near'd 
 Over the starred sea-swell. 
 
 Arcturus, I remember, shone — 
 That rebel ! mirror'd bright, 
 And Saturn in his moat of moons 
 Glass'd in unsounded night ; 
 All the million-litten vault below 
 Breathed, in a slumber light. 
 
 B
 
 As in some mountain forest glade 
 When frosts ere dawn are brisk 
 And early spring boughs knitted close 
 Across the red moon's disk, 
 
 And the rimy turf rings hard to hoof 
 Of the light branch-feeding deer, 
 One sees upflushing some glen's brow 
 Camp-fire of mountaineer 
 
 Bivouack'd below ; shag-bearded pines, 
 All gnarled, loom down estranged 
 At the wanton fire about their knees 
 With the moon-fire interchanged — 
 
 So strange her gaunt dishevelled spars 
 Loomed down out of the sky ; 
 Sails that had drunk Earth's soul immense 
 Hung pierced and slung awry, 
 
 My inwoven eternal blazonries 
 An idle tattered shame. 
 Was this the keen fire-spirited prow 
 Ark of the heaving flame 
 
 That sun-stampt and illumined ship, 
 
 That keel of mystery, 
 
 Loosed, after toilings beyond count, 
 
 To plunge from the Daedalian mount 
 
 And to stem futurity ? 
 
 10
 
 Now, because mine own insignia badged 
 
 Each white celestial vail, 
 
 Rage seized me, like your emperor 
 
 Trajan — how goes the tale ? — 
 
 Who on Tigris, twice defeated, tore 
 
 His gold wolves from the sail. . . . 
 
 And as from forge doors in her decks 
 Escaped, lulled, rose again, 
 Confused blasts — insolent uproar 
 From torch'd and naked men, 
 As it were some wind from Africa's 
 Tropic and demon'd fen. 
 
 And beast-like shadows ran and flashed ; 
 Knotted at grips they swayed 
 And writhed. Unkennelled Hell was loose 
 And swarmed in. escalade. 
 
 Hard-pressed my righteous stood at bay ; 
 But when Hell's desperate brood 
 Saw me, they shouted, * Lord of light, 
 Release ! ' And ruinous strew'd, 
 Fell on their faces on the decks 
 In breathless multitude. 
 
 But their leader, with inverted torch, 
 Stepp'd through them. Stern he comes, 
 Stirring their night-bound forest hearts 
 Like distant savage drums, 
 
 * ii
 
 And cries aloud, ' In this, in this — 
 Shaking his torch — is peace I 
 Not thou, tardy deliverer, 
 But I, confer release ! 
 
 Mighty shall be the high sea-Jlame ! 
 
 Superb the funeral pyre 
 
 Of Heaven and Earth ! . . . Kindle it, Hell ! 
 
 To glut this God's desire ! ' 
 
 He paused, with black distorted arms 
 Rear'd, long before the crash — 
 Like some hollow oak that long outliveth 
 Coil of the lightning's lash ; 
 
 Then fell. Majestic enemy, 
 Time with thy falling rang ! 
 He, first of all the ship, was free 
 And fled without a pang. 
 
 Out of the throng'd expanse, skull-bare 
 
 Heads rose and dropped again. 
 
 They quailed, they flinched before my gaze, 
 
 My light to them was pain. 
 
 Shadows of wreckage on the masts 
 
 Went streaming down the main. 
 
 Stooping above one cowering shape, 
 
 I raised it by the chin, 
 
 Upturned the pallid chronicle 
 
 And read the tale therein ; 
 
 Read the thing purposed, by the bone, 
 
 And the thing done, by the skin. 
 
 12
 
 The lecherous, wan, with eyelid lined, 
 Heavy-soul'd, torn with vice, 
 The murderous with the flitting smile, 
 The drunkard blue as ice ; 
 Incomplete and colourable things 
 Whose breathings must be lies. 
 
 All the sweet neighbours that men take 
 
 Within their breasts to thrive 
 
 Had blown like glass the body's case 
 
 Or stamped its clay alive. 
 
 So I mused — (All hung upon a hair !) 
 
 Why need the dead survive ? 
 
 In one face, stony, white and bleak, 
 Had passions scooped their bed ; 
 Old lavas down the rigid cheek, 
 Meseemed, were still unshed ; 
 
 And I read the eyes of him that thirsted 
 
 Only for things beyond ; 
 
 Whose strata, tossed in molten dreams, 
 
 Would never correspond 
 
 With things about him, for he willed 
 
 To die unparagoned. 
 
 • •••••« 
 
 Unseen above them so bowed down 
 Like bent and sodden corn, 
 Should I cast them with derision back, 
 That throng of the forlorn, 
 
 *3
 
 Herding them with derision cold 
 
 As with a hand of steel, 
 
 Condemn them to endurance back 
 
 And still to think and feel, 
 
 While the tears that might not fall for them 
 
 Did on my cheek congeal ? 
 
 And in that pause their mournful hope 
 Swelling like the undertone 
 That dins within the wildest gale 
 Utter'd aloud mine own. 
 
 Blindly they stretched their scarry hands, 
 
 Their piteous hands, to me : 
 
 ' Since bonds we cannot bear, nor sight, 
 
 Be thou our sanctuary I 
 
 Open again the narrow gate — 
 
 Let us no longer be ! ' 
 
 Then lo ! my righteous, whose wounds still 
 
 With bitter conflict bled, 
 
 Veer'd in their wrath, hoarsely unjust, 
 
 Arraigned me for these dead — 
 
 Spat on their own high bliss, and craved 
 
 To stand in Hades' stead. 
 
 Had all white-priested Egypt, then, 
 
 Not taught thee to perdure, 
 
 My Boat of Years ? Lo, in man's dust 
 
 So mixed — so long impure — 
 
 Came light ! Then I summoned up each soul 
 
 *4
 
 And round its neck secure 
 
 Fastened this token : ' "Judge thyself J 
 
 That justice might be sure. 
 
 Aloft, long since, I saw, had fled 
 
 That viewless sanhedrim 
 
 Of presences starry-cresseted 
 
 Who erst through waters dim 
 
 Had breathed the towering sails along, 
 
 My faithful seraphim. 
 
 And I turned about in mournfulness 
 Steadfastly to behold 
 
 Bulwarks charred, ay, and drunken masts 
 And slow deep-labouring hold, 
 
 And the heeling of age-crumbled beams 
 
 And helmless spars divine — 
 
 Beheld the horror of those decks 
 
 Bloodied with mystic wine ; 
 
 Even the little fluttering genius reft 
 
 From the wrecked and flameless shrine. 
 
 And I cried to the white shape on the prow 
 
 Ascendant by my skill, 
 
 ' O winged ardour, headless now, 
 
 To sound what wild sea-victory 
 
 Swing'st there, triumphant still ? 
 
 Why spared they wholly to shatter thee ? 
 
 Thy rippling veils from feet to breasts 
 
 Winds from the future fill 
 
 *5
 
 But I know my handiwork outworn, 
 
 And this bolted fabric vast 
 
 That disciplined through many wars 
 
 Man's courage in the past, — 
 
 And well, well, hath she served her Lord — 
 
 Unseaworthy at last ! ' 
 
 Then from ocean's frothy hazardous 
 Dream-element I caught 
 Her crew — every half-foundered soul 
 Wherewith her hold was fraught ; 
 
 And I sang them back to steady Earth 
 After their wanderings long, 
 Both quick and dead. Hangs on thy breast 
 The token of my song ? " 
 
 (He fumbled in his hairy breast 
 
 Yes — the ' Judge thyself hung there) 
 
 " And remembering then their mad outburst 
 
 Of quaint hope and despair 
 
 Who deemed each puny life should last 
 When nothing else escapes, 
 And the nations and the planets melt 
 Like breakers on the capes, 
 
 From laughter, from tears unquenchable, 
 
 Scarce able to forbear, 
 
 I smote the great hull to a ghost 
 
 And the mighty masts to air. 
 
 • •••••* 
 
 16 

 
 Seaman. " What ! is there not even left enough 
 Of that so noble craft, 
 A gang-board or a plank or two, 
 To lash into a raft ? " 
 
 Apoiio. " No, lad ; you shall not ride in her ; 
 But then you shall not weep ; 
 Nor hear aloft her pipes of cheer 
 Nor the wail under the deep. 
 
 Yet sometimes like the Northern Lights 
 Hull-down — a radiance dim — 
 Loftier than air of Earth, up-sprung 
 To planes beyond its rim, 
 
 At hours when you are fever-struck 
 A phantom you may see, 
 Derelict — drifting out of hail — 
 Lost Immortality ! " 
 
 VI 
 
 When the man knew the ship he loved The rebuke. 
 
 Had melted to a lie 
 
 He fronted him upon his feet 
 
 As who should Gods defy — 
 
 Syllables choked not in his throat, 
 
 He met him eye to eye. 
 
 Refreshed was he through long forborne 
 Anger. His spirit swelled 
 Manful — the stronger in his grief 
 By all that he had quelled. 
 
 c 17
 
 Seaman. " This is your world-discovery ! 
 This is the great landfall ! 
 This coil of warehouses and quays 
 And taverns — this is all ! 
 
 Well was it that we trusted you ! 
 Else — how had we achieved 
 Good luck ? But then we had a friend 
 Wholly to be believed. 
 
 This is the country we have gained, 
 This land of milk and balm ! 
 For this our innocent took wounds 
 And died without a qualm, 
 Drawn on as by a ghost, that ends 
 Like a catspaw in a calm ! 
 
 Stay ! I have heard, how in action's heat 
 
 A captain in his tent 
 
 Sealed a despatch ; and the rider died 
 
 That with the letter went; 
 
 But the letter — saved — was found a blank. 
 
 You, who the message sent, 
 
 Say, how will you now make amends 
 
 For what was vainly spent ! " 
 
 Fell off, fell off the enshrouding furs — 
 
 The beamwork of the room 
 
 To its last crevices was lit ; 
 
 So terribly illume 
 
 The God's eyes — all his presence seemed 
 
 Outwardly to consume 
 
 18
 
 As though all burning sovranties 
 And throbbings of the mind, 
 Condensed into a single flame, 
 Across that board confined 
 Shot the human shade, a skeleton, 
 Clean on the wall behind 
 The man. 
 
 Apollo. " Ah, fragment of my soul, 
 
 When I invented thee 
 To utter Mind, as guest and mate 
 Of a voiceless family, 
 
 And gave thee selfhood, barred with sleeps, 
 On yon ship's heaving shelves, 
 Selfhood that never can contrive — 
 However lightning-like it strive — 
 To escape, in its inmost, deepest dive 
 My Self beneath your selves, 
 
 I built through demiurgic powers, 
 Myriad human hopes and fears, 
 And laboured at this shipwright's task 
 A hundred thousand years. 
 
 Think'st thou I framed a vessel vain 
 As earthly ships of wood ? 
 Or that thy voyage never was, 
 And wasted all your blood ? 
 What ! Hast not felt the invisible 
 Nor faintly understood ? 
 
 10
 
 Thou hast seen armies serve a name, 
 A rag, a tomb forlorn ; 
 And the tides of men obey a ghost, 
 The ghost of the unborn. 
 
 Thou hast felt the Passions' blindest roots 
 Quake up man's silly crust, 
 And rock thy reason from its state 
 And crack its towers to dust. 
 
 Thou hast seen the Gods figure forth races, 
 Surging out of the vast 
 On the crest of wave after wave, for aye 
 To sweep till time be past : — 
 
 Feel'st thou no wind behind those waves 
 
 All washing on one way ? 
 
 Organs of the invisible 
 
 Yes, thou hast felt their sway ! 
 
 Deem'st those old faceless images, 
 ' Truth,' 'Justice,' ' Liberty/ 
 Heralding symbols thou employ 'st ? 
 They are employing thee I 
 Organs of the invisible 
 Yes, thou hast felt their sway. 
 All the buried city of thy heart 
 Knows thou art less than they. 
 
 But now get back upon high seas 
 Unknown and drear indeed, 
 Thou, the adventure of my cloud 
 And sailing of my seed ! " 
 20 

 
 Seaman. " Lord, I confess the things unseen 
 Closer the fountain-head 
 Than the wooden table in my grasp 
 Or yonder loaf of bread ; 
 But must we, ever-living one, 
 Go out when we are dead ? 
 When the arms that held us close and dear, 
 When the love that we are used 
 To mingle with, are wrenched away 
 And the body's kiss is loosed ? " 
 
 The God smiled, and with 'haviour soft 
 Leaning across the wine 
 Heavily took those shoulders young 
 Into his grasp divine. 
 
 Apollo. " Hearken ! I put you to the touch 
 My son, my prodigal — 
 Since every brave song hath its close 
 Your own life, end it shall ; 
 Yes, utterly shall meet an end. 
 Be it heroical ! 
 
 And, born aboard, my rover stark, 
 Dread you to die aboard ? 
 To lay you down beside your love 
 With the sunset on your sword ? . . . 
 
 21
 
 Apollo 
 (con- 
 tinuing). 
 
 VII 
 
 " Voyage after voyage, how else, how else 
 Should I man's soul prepare 
 For the new venture, bolder yet, 
 On which he now must dare ? — 
 
 The New 
 Ship 
 
 See ! from the voyage whence you come now 
 You come not back the same ; 
 Behind the door of your dull brow 
 Hath sprung up doubt and blame — 
 
 Defiance of me. That I praise. 
 
 This once low-cabined pate 
 
 Hollows deep-chambered — is become 
 
 Tribunal — hall of state 
 
 For the assembled thrones of angels — root 
 
 For an assize of fate ! 
 
 Thou hast forgotten, whom I took 
 
 From lap of things inform 
 
 And flung to embraces of the sea 
 
 And caresses of the storm ! 
 
 Now electrified, subtler-energied, 
 
 Starker-willed, battle-warm 
 
 Thou comest, thou comest again to me ! 
 
 Son of tumult, gloom enorm, 
 
 I have new jeopardy for thee 
 
 And new eyes yet to form ! 
 
 22
 
 O wrestler into consciousness 
 
 Stand upon Earth ! Away ! 
 
 Long hath the journey been by night, 
 
 But roseate breaks the day ; 
 
 Like a scroll I unfold the mountain-tops 
 
 And the windings of the bay. 
 
 Awake ! thou'rt already on the cruise 
 And shalt not see its end. 
 Earth is the ship ! Thou shalt have time 
 To find the Earth thy friend ! " 
 
 Seaman. " Is there a hand upon her helm ? ' 
 Apollo. " Weigh thou thine own heart-fires, 
 
 And her wash of overwhelming dawns, 
 And her tide that never tires — 
 Her tranquil heave of seasons — flowers — 
 All that in thee aspires ! 
 
 How like an eagle on the abyss 
 With outspread wing serene 
 She circles ! — thought rolls under her 
 And the flash from the unseen. 
 Here's to her mission, winged rock, 
 Bluff-bowed and heavy keel'd 
 Through the night-watches swinging on 
 Still under orders sealed ! 
 
 No crystal gives a peep, my son, 
 Of her errand far and surgy ; 
 No witch's magic brew of sleep 
 Nor smoke of thaumaturgy ; 
 Nor, for the future, shall you reap 
 Much benefit of clergy. 
 
 2 3
 
 But if thy former priestly ship 
 Failed of the port assigned, 
 The overwhelming globe takes on 
 Her altar-flame of mind. 
 See that the oils that feed the lamp 
 Fail not ! " 
 
 Seaman. " What are those oils ? " 
 
 Apollo. " Heroic, warm, abounding souls ! 
 These are the sacred oils 
 On the fragrant thin-flamed thymele 
 Lost on the deep like melody — 
 They who, as I My Self disperse 
 In them through the tragic universe, 
 Scatter themselves in toils. 
 
 And I shall stream into their life 
 
 Waking — sense after sense — 
 
 New understandings — endless, no, 
 
 But more and more intense. 
 
 Till joy in the will that wafts the world 
 
 Buoyant as swimmers be 
 
 Makes thee divine, perhaps at last 
 
 Wholly delivers thee." 
 
 seaman. And the man exclaimed, " Delivers me ! 
 How, if this death descends ? 
 I am a man and not a race. 
 What matters, if self ends ? 
 Speak ! quick, my brain is worn and cold, 
 Little it comprehends." 
 
 24
 
 Apollo. « i shall te u t h ee? J3 Ut as mus f c te n s# 
 
 I too, like thee, have striven. 
 
 I too am launched from the profound 
 
 And past ; I too am driven 
 
 In turn upon the stream of storms 
 
 From fountains beyond heaven ; 
 
 And to me, too, light is mystery 
 
 And the greater light half-given. 
 
 How can I make plain the goal obscure 
 
 Of thy journey but begun ? " 
 
 And again the God smiled on the man 
 
 And asked, " Hast thou a son ? " 
 
 He nodded. " And never yet hast guessed 
 
 That thou and he are one ! 
 
 Yet leaf shall of leaf become aware 
 
 On the selfsame bough and stem, 
 
 Whose branches are murmuring everywhere 
 
 And the heaven floods all of them ! 
 
 Between you — between all that love — 
 Runs no gulf wide nor deep, 
 But a sheen'd veil, thinner than any veil, 
 Thin as the veil of sleep. 
 
 Through the death-veil — looming silverly — 
 Through the self-veil's subtle strand, 
 Dawns it not ? For that dawn thy heart 
 Hath eye — shall understand 
 Before its seeing rock-walls melt 
 And cracks the mortal band. 
 
 D 
 
 2 5
 
 For when once the whole consummate strength 
 
 Of thy slow-kindling mind 
 
 Can see in the heart's light at length 
 
 All the strange sons of mankind, 
 
 Then the Earth — that else were but a strait 
 
 Rock-sepulchre — is new : 
 
 Of what account to it is death ? 
 
 It is glowing, through and through, 
 
 It moveth, alive with a God's breath, 
 
 Translucent as the dew ! " 
 
 VIII 
 
 cation 
 
 The last words in the rafters rang The embar. 
 
 And the bright haze sounded on ; 
 Walls, air and shadows vibrant still, 
 But the God himself was gone. 
 
 Was the thing dreamed ? The Tavern 
 
 wall 
 Solid ? Still it rang. 
 Feverish he threw the lattice back 
 Outside fluttered and sang 
 Trees of a tract of narrow yards 
 Behind dark tenements, 
 The nearest garden vacant — rope 
 Eked out its broken fence. 
 Naked it lay — brown mould bestrewn 
 With refuse crockery — yet 
 A pear-tree in its darkest nook 
 Bowered it in delicate 
 Whiteness. Beyond its further pale 
 26
 
 Above a wall-flower bed, 
 
 Women were hanging linen out : 
 
 One stoop'd a kerchief'd head. 
 
 In lime-trees idle rooks were cawing ; 
 
 Even to his upper room 
 
 Came wafted from some distant plot 
 
 Fragrance like thyme's perfume ; 
 
 And, adrift from zigzag chimney-stacks 
 
 And ancient courtyards, soft 
 
 Blue smoke was breathed amongst the trees ; 
 
 Dazzling clouds moved aloft ; 
 
 Even to the window where he stood 
 
 A cherry stretched its limb, 
 
 Half the diaphanous clusters clear 
 
 Enlumined, and half dim. 
 
 Green swift immortal Spring was here — 
 
 Spring in her lovely trim — 
 
 And whether it were ship or no, 
 
 The Earth seemed good to him. 
 
 Had he been Greek, or nurtured well 
 
 In lore of sages gone, 
 
 He would have felt her like that ship 
 
 Ascribed to Hieron 
 
 Which, beside its deck-house luxuries 
 
 Of baths and bronzes fine, 
 
 Carried a pergola's green walk, 
 
 Shade-galleries of vine, 
 
 And for awnings fruit-espaliers 
 
 From buried urns in line. 
 
 Quitting the Inn he made for home, 
 And by many a cobbled wynd 
 
 27
 
 Behung with mariners' wares, uphill 
 
 He strode with seething mind. 
 
 Above in the shady market-place 
 
 Unwonted silence reigned. 
 
 Under their patched umbrella stalls 
 
 Few flower-sellers remained ; 
 
 But one, with old face like a map 
 
 Wrinkled by good and evil hap, 
 
 Stretched forth her palm. It rained. 
 
 Ah, yes, it rained — sudden acold 
 
 The sky loured overcast. 
 
 Soon the pavements leapt with plashing drops ; 
 
 And as he hasty passed 
 
 He heard a burst of chanted sound, 
 
 And glanced up at the vast 
 
 Shadow that over huddled roofs 
 
 Loomed, pinnacled and grey. . . . 
 
 The spired cathedral thundrously 
 
 And widely seemed to sway ; 
 
 Like Earth upon her pilgrimage 
 
 Buffetting on from age to age, 
 
 It still was under way. 
 
 And on he trudged with peace at heart, 
 Rain pelting on his cheek, 
 But the shower half-ceased before he found 
 The bourne he seemed to seek. 
 
 A small house in a by-way dark 
 
 Beneath that April cloud, 
 
 And nigh the doorway he looked up 
 
 Keen-eyed. He could have vowed 
 
 28
 
 It was his wife stood shining there, 
 Yon, where the lintel dripped. 
 With soft, profound, familiar look 
 Low-laughing forth she slipped ; 
 
 Her mute nod warned him (while her hair 
 Released bright drops that fell) 
 And bade him watch, but not disturb, 
 A happy spectacle. 
 
 Now vapour'd were the cobble-stones, 
 And the runnel where they stood 
 Fleeted adown the middle street, 
 Rays gleaming on its mud, 
 When lo ! he saw a boy, their son, 
 Squatted beside the flood, 
 
 Like the city's sole inhabitant 
 And lost to aught beside, 
 Wholly absorbed, aloof, intent. 
 Upon that ruffling tide 
 
 The boy embarked a faery ship 
 
 Of paper, white and gay, 
 
 And watched, with grave ecstatic smile, 
 
 Its glories whirled away. 
 
 29
 
 OTHER POEMS
 
 AN 
 ODE TO BEAUTY 
 
 BEAUTY, thou secret lamp, awake ! 
 Tremble into sound ! 
 Burn in me now, as thou didst break 
 
 Those glooms profound 
 When with laughter of Olympians we 
 
 Marched to a song, 
 Vagabonds young, vagabonds free, 
 
 Up the mountains long. 
 Our road over roots of Apennine 
 
 Wound up, star-proof, 
 For the thick-enwoven forest pine 
 
 Made it a roof 
 Trebled for the foot-weary wight — 
 
 The knapsack-bowed — 
 By shade of precipices, night 
 
 And brooding cloud. 
 Came a yellow diligence flashing down 
 
 Cheerily jingling, 
 Rocking from side to side, and soon 
 
 With the valleys mingling ; 
 
 e 33
 
 And we overtook a team up-hill, 
 
 Some woodman's load, 
 Struggling though halted, breasting still 
 
 The invisible road. 
 Long after, his whip's crack and cry 
 
 And axle's plaint 
 Followed us up the forests high, 
 
 Submerged and faint. 
 
 11 
 
 We sang no more ; each aching sense 
 
 Craved silence, caring 
 But to climb on, on — forgetful whence 
 
 Or whither faring. 
 Cold sweat dript from us as we marched, 
 
 Grim fancies smote, 
 Imprisoned grew the spirit — parched 
 
 The stifled throat. 
 O for a breath up the ravines 
 
 To rift and rend 
 This muffling web of branchy screens 
 
 That never end ! 
 Dulness, even melancholy, stole 
 
 From friend to friend 
 As we left the dark high road where whole 
 
 Forests impend 
 And took the path up the clifFs face, 
 
 Brushwood and stones, 
 Clambering up from base to base 
 
 On the Earth's bones. . . . 
 
 34
 
 So hour by hour, until the escape. 
 
 At last — look back ! 
 Low in the gorge 'twixt cape and cape 
 
 Battalion'd, black, 
 Creeps radiance : a flush aureoles 
 
 Yon crag ! It bridges 
 Veiled chasms — floods the expectant souls 
 
 Of sombre ridges 
 
 Hail to thee, Moon ! Sudden she surged, 
 
 Far out and sheer, 
 Over vague plains immense, and purged 
 
 Our spirits clear, 
 Bathed our dust-heavy eyes with awe 
 
 And scope untold — 
 All sleeping Italy we saw 
 
 Fold beyond fold 
 
 Far down we saw one cloudlet curl 
 
 Glimmering and frail, 
 Opal and green and blue and pearl 
 
 Swam on its veil ; 
 And about us rocky pastures spoke 
 
 In herds of bells 
 And we saw the waterfalls like smoke 
 
 Blown from the fells 
 And aloft the fading arch of all 
 
 The stars, whose pouring 
 Maketh no thunder in its fall 
 
 Nor any roaring. 
 
 35
 
 
 Ill 
 
 And then, ah then ! while in the bliss 
 
 That yet is fear 
 Ranging with thee the great abyss 
 
 O lovely Sphere 
 Did I remember, by some wand 
 
 Invoked from sleep, 
 Another lamp, rising beyond 
 
 Another deep 
 
 How I, a wandering lute of verse, 
 
 When grapes grew heavy 
 Had lodged in France with vintagers 
 
 In a tavern leafy 
 And in a vine-dark corridor 
 
 Of that rude inn 
 Had glimpse through a half-open door 
 
 Of an arm within, 
 A woman's arm — bare, simple, pure, 
 
 Holding a light 
 Shielded (herself the while obscure) 
 
 In exquisite 
 Fingers translucent as a grape 
 
 Bird-wings or wine 
 Enshading in soft blood-hued shape 
 
 The candle-shine. . . . 
 
 36
 
 IV 
 
 A poise, a ray, a moment's gleam, 
 
 But, when they went 
 Against the wall as in a dream 
 , Witless I leant, 
 Knowing by that divine contour 
 
 Of warmth and bloom 
 Some thought immortal lit that poor 
 
 Rough-paven room. 
 Some eddy of the Infinite 
 
 Force on its way 
 Had caught that arm and moulded it 
 
 In mood of play ; 
 That curve was of the primal Will 
 
 Whose gesture high 
 Waved forth the choir of planets, still 
 
 In ecstasy ; 
 And the rhythm of its dreamed lines 
 
 Shall still flood on 
 Through souls beyond to-day's confines 
 
 When we are gone, 
 Shall bear to the unborn without name 
 
 The inurned light 
 Secret as life, signal as flame, 
 
 And in that flight — 
 Vaster than Moon's o'er Apennine's 
 
 Sepulchral doors 
 When from the breathless gap of pines 
 
 Golden she soars — 
 
 37
 
 38 
 
 To the tranced rock, dark-sunken, dumb, 
 
 Shall murmur, shall smile, 
 " Glorious the dance of passions ! Come 
 
 To life awhile ! 
 I, Beauty, travelling heaven on the hoar 
 
 Faint-phosphor'd wave 
 Of Being, charge ye to explore 
 
 And dare the grave ! "
 
 
 THE VOICE FROM THE COLUMN 
 
 THUNDER looms over the Thames ; 
 Warnings have come by the score, 
 Omens to her wide shore 
 Light as the flicker of flames 
 Or gulls come up from the Nore. 
 But lethargy heavily dwells 
 On river and dome and strand ; 
 Cloud embanks the white pinnacles, 
 Lethargy pale as of spells 
 Mounts the grey citadels 
 Muffling the drums and the bells 
 And leaving a nation unmanned. 
 If we have sentinels 
 Where do the sentinels stand ? 
 One I see watching alone, 
 And he is a figure of stone. 
 
 ii 
 
 Stationed aloft in the sky 
 
 Does he see in this van of the storm, 
 
 39
 
 This cloud-wrack lurid and riven, 
 
 His old line of battleships form, 
 
 His own rent Victory, even — 
 
 Their spars with sea-dogs aswarm — 
 
 Saluting as each goes by, 
 
 Arms and faint voices upheaven, 
 
 Their captain's all-daring eye ? 
 
 Ah, he that watches alone 
 
 Channel and Kentish strand 
 
 Is a sentinel only of stone ! 
 
 God, that yon stone could command ! 
 
 in 
 
 At the post he will not quit 
 Round him the sunset runs 
 Sulphurous, like smoke of guns ; 
 As he stood when he was hit 
 He stands, with empty sleeve upknit 
 And eye like a blinded rifle-pit 
 Still on the harbours opposite, 
 The cold star on his bosom lit 
 By the light of foundered suns. 
 
 
 IV 
 
 Speak ! for the hour grows late, 
 Great spirit that we have lost ! 
 What see you across the Strait 
 Your squadrons so often crossed ? 
 
 40
 
 " I see yonder nations changed 
 Since the day of Trafalgar. 
 They are not as we are ; 
 Each is a manful host 
 Self-disciplined, self-arranged, 
 Steadiest when threatened most. 
 I see them from coast to coast 
 At the destined and dangerous hour 
 Silent with sense of power 
 Moving upon one plan, 
 A post for every man 
 And every man to his post. 
 
 " They are not as we are. 
 
 They, accounting loss as gain, 
 
 Are enrolled, trained, ready to die 
 
 For the home-land, hill or plain, 
 
 Where first they saw the sky ; 
 
 An honour which you, true Englishmen, 
 
 Evade, to sell and buy. 
 
 Why should you, who are by proxy men, 
 
 Serve yourselves, when you can hire ? . . . 
 
 When your London is a loot 
 
 And your Westminster on fire ; 
 
 When your insulted weak complain 
 
 Huddled round this column's foot, 
 
 You, you will feel no stain ! . . . 
 
 " So are the nations changed 
 Since the day of Trafalgar ! 
 
 f 4 1
 
 What we have been, they are, 
 And (beat low, muffled drum !) 
 What they were, we have become ! 
 
 VI 
 
 " Therefore I stand and pray, 
 I stand and mutter alone 
 A hymn through my lips of stone, 
 And these are the words I say : 
 
 c O Disaster, woeful and great, 
 
 Terror and mournfulness dire ! 
 
 Since nothing but thy stern brows 
 
 Disaster, can save this house, 
 
 Sunk and degenerate — 
 
 Knock thou at the slumberous gate 
 
 Of this mine own people and State 
 
 With famine and steel and fire ! 
 
 Come, thou of the desperate star, 
 
 Who know'st that while Man shall care 
 
 For riches more than his life, 
 
 So long shall the Earth see war, 
 
 And that only shall he keep peace 
 
 Who for just war prepares, — 
 
 That even to guard human brotherhood 
 
 All shall need fortitude ; 
 
 Come ! And if war must be borne 
 
 Make thou equal the shares 
 
 Of brunt that each man bears ! 
 
 
 42
 
 Naught but thy terror and pain 
 Can here sting to life again 
 The spirit whose trumpet cries 
 All to self-sacrifice 
 And valour that makes us men.' " 
 
 43
 
 STANZAS TO TOLSTOY 
 IN HIS OLD AGE 
 
 I 
 
 IS this some glowering Titan, inly bright, 
 Angered that summer grasses bloom and seethe 
 Only to taunt him — strange to the upper light — 
 Born at the mouth of Tartarus to breathe 
 And lodged where vapour-dripping chasms en- 
 sheathe 
 The groping ire of his tremendous hands ? 
 Are these the thews that kept in swaddling- 
 bands 
 The winged Reason, and would now compel 
 
 Beauty, that Spirit clear, 
 And every art wherein the few excel 
 
 Under a peasant's smock to serve as drudges ? 
 Is it one forgetful of a long career 
 
 Through many wars and loves, who now be- 
 grudges 
 To youth its fair love-season — one who quarrels 
 
 With all not abject — one whose mood would bind 
 Under one law the wearers of the laurels 
 
 Whose feet are on the uplands, in the wind ? 
 
 44
 
 fi 
 
 II 
 
 Or may this peasant demiurge not mask 
 
 Mimir himself — the friend of right in hell, 
 Him that gave Odin on his awful task 
 
 Water of insight from the world-deep well, 
 And stayed as the god's hostage, and so fell ? 
 Perhaps this soul, half-savage, half-divine, 
 Is some freed ghost — the slave from Palestine, 
 Grim Christopher, who strove as he had sworn 
 
 To bear through the mid-flood 
 That little Child — so hardly to be borne ? 
 
 No, no, this is the prophet of the poor ! 
 That face is theirs — that heart hath understood 
 
 Their piteous certainty in things unsure. 
 And stay ! — those shaggy brows, and haunting 
 them 
 Unrest, unrest — O in the Dolorous Street 
 Have I not seen thee in Jerusalem, 
 
 With sheepskin coat and hat and dusty feet, 
 
 in 
 
 Like a poor herdsman, pilgrim from the snows 
 
 Far north of Volga, where his little hut 
 Lay warm, who on some glittering night arose 
 And blessed his old wife in the dark, and shut 
 On her the door, and took his newly-cut 
 Staff from the eaves — a sapling iron-shod — 
 And set forth for the sepulchre of God ? 
 
 45
 
 Yes, thence by great plains, Taurus passes bleak, 
 
 And fire-lit caravanserai 
 On, on — though fever sapped his bony cheek 
 
 Month after month, intent and still unbaulked, 
 Counting the dawns that met his wind-clear eye 
 
 Thousands of miles to find it had he walked ! 
 But now — since thou hast kissed the very stone, 
 
 Why restless still, gaunt shepherd come so far ? 
 Why mourn because the ray that led thee on 
 
 Shines from a long-annihilated star ? 
 
 IV 
 
 The Man upraised on the Judaean crag 
 
 Captains for us the war with death no more. 
 His kingdom hangs as hangs the tattered flag 
 Over the tomb of a great knight of yore; 
 Nor shall one law to unity restore 
 
 Races or souls — no staff of thine can urge 
 Nor knotted club compel them to converge, 
 Nor any backward summit lead them up: 
 The world-spring wherein hides 
 Formless the God that forms us, bursts its cup — 
 
 Is seen a Fountain — breaking like a flower 
 High into light — that at its height divides ; 
 
 Changelessly scattering forth, — in blaze and 
 shower — 
 In drops of a trembling diaphaneity — 
 
 Dreams the God-breathings momently up-buoy 
 To melt a mvriad wavs. Those dreams are we, 
 Chanted from some unfathomable joy. 
 
 4 6
 
 What ! Wouldst to one conception mould mankind ? 
 Hast thou not felt — on thy lone mountain track 
 Seeing, from some ridge of forest-rushing wind 
 Where the oak-boughs overhead wrestle and 
 
 crack, 
 Night-plains be-starred with cities mirror back 
 The naked deeps of stars — hast thou not felt 
 The whole high scheme wherein we move and 
 melt 
 With the swift world — that its last secret is 
 
 Not Good, nor Immortality, 
 But Beauty, — once to behold the immensities 
 Filled with one soul, then to make room and 
 die? 
 Hence the true faith : — to the uttermost to be 
 
 Thyself — to follow up that ecstasy 
 Compelling — to let being take its course, 
 
 Rise like a song, and like a dream be free, 
 Poised on the breath of its own soul and source : 
 Enough — the Fountain will re-gather thee ! 
 
 VI 
 
 Rejoice then, Master, at the multitude 
 
 Of wills in the many-coloured nations — yea 
 
 At the clouds of destinies distinct — the flood 
 Of exploring visions — all the radiant spray 
 Of hostile forces on their upward way ; 
 
 47
 
 Spirals of the interweaving elements 
 And species, these are but the long ascents 
 Of the self-poised waters of the Universe 
 
 Opening like a rose, . 
 Ingathering all it loses — to disperse 
 
 Its soul in fragrance on the night's abyss, 
 Yet to build for aye the rainbow as it flows ; 
 
 Rejoice that we have spectacle of this — 
 Of the Fountain opening, opening like a rose 
 And Eternal Wisdom rising from its core ; 
 For the light increases, and the rapture grows, 
 And the love, in them that perish, waxes more. 
 
 4 8
 
 LINDISFARNE 
 
 OUR seer, the net-mender, 
 The day that he died 
 Looked out to the seaward 
 At ebb of the tide ; 
 Gulls drove like the snow 
 Over bight, over barn, 
 As he sang to the ebb 
 On the rock Lindisfarne : 
 " Hail, thou blue ebbing ! 
 The breakers are gone 
 From the stormy coast-islet 
 Bethundered and lone ! 
 Hail, thou wide shrinking 
 Of foam and of bubble — 
 The reefs are laid bare 
 And far off is the trouble;! 
 For through this retreating 
 As soft as a smile, 
 The isle of the flood 
 Is no longer an isle. . . . 
 
 By the silvery isthmus 
 Of sands that uncover, 
 
 g 49
 
 Now feet as of angels 
 Come delicate over — 
 The fluttering children 
 Flee happily over ! 
 To the beach of the mainland 
 Return is now clear, 
 The old travel thither 
 Dry-shod, without fear. . . . 
 
 And now, at the wane, 
 When foundations expand, 
 Doth the isle of the soul, 
 Lindisfarne, understand 
 She stretcheth to vastness 
 Made one with the land ! ' 
 
 5°
 
 CHANT SUNG IN DARKNESS 
 
 THOUGH the fool — the old gainsayer — 
 The passionate inveigher 
 Whose passion is a prayer 
 
 To one beyond his view, 
 Saith, " Is He dumb ? Defy, then ! 
 Art thou indignant ? Die, then, 
 Bowed down and battle-writhen, 
 
 But never stoop to sue ! " 
 Yet Man, although he grieveth 
 And the pride of him upheaveth 
 Still in that God believeth, 
 
 Still in a goal whereto 
 Those heaven-plunging horses 
 Whose neck no rein enforces, 
 Unspent as from the sources 
 
 Of light and life they flew, 
 Sweep the earth-chariot. (Never 
 Shall the Charioteer's endeavour 
 Govern them — Man for ever 
 
 Must bide what they may do !) 
 
 5 1
 
 And though the breast maternal 
 Of the stream of lights eternal 
 Bears down a gorge nocturnal 
 
 Our little raft and crew, 
 And always wider, dimmer, 
 The coasts recede and glimmer, 
 And colder yet and grimmer 
 
 Unfold to oceans new — 
 Not here my wonder halteth 
 To trust Whom it exalteth, 
 Not here my soul defaulteth 
 
 To pay its worship due ; 
 Yet, yet it mounteth fearing 
 Voices of darkness, rearing 
 Challenges persevering 
 
 That nothing can subdue : — 
 
 ii 
 
 " The evil and offenceless 
 
 Thou smit'st, and both are senseless, 
 
 Against thine eye defenceless 
 
 The false man and the true ; 
 Our simplest, our sublimest, 
 Our bravest and our primest, 
 Are in thy hand who climbest 
 
 The heavens without a clue ; 
 Crush these, the brazen-throated, 
 But these, the self-devoted, 
 The deep-loved and unnoted, 
 
 Why dost Thou crush them too ? 
 Speak, Thou, who Earth evolvest 
 
 52
 
 And the globe of stars revolvest 
 And the night of life dissolvest, 
 
 Solve us this riddle too : — 
 Why to our young committing 
 The faults of the unwitting 
 Dost Thou award as fitting 
 
 Irreparable rue ? 
 Is not thy justice deathless ? 
 Why let ten thousand faithless, 
 Wise and unclean, go scatheless, 
 
 But not the faithful few ? 
 Thy face in cloud enswathing 
 Why visit'st Thou with scathing 
 The child, the beast our plaything, 
 
 And them that never knew ? " 
 
 in 
 
 And God saith, If ye hear it, 
 'This weeping of the Spirit 
 For the world which ye inherit, 
 
 Do I not hear it too f 
 Arise, and to your stations, 
 Te lighted living nations ! 
 These be my dark foundations — 
 
 To raise them is for you. 
 
 53
 
 O DREAMY, GLOOMY, FRIENDLY 
 
 TREES ! 
 
 r\ DREAMY, gloomy, friendly Trees, 
 ^-^ I came along your narrow track 
 To bring my gifts unto your knees 
 
 And gifts did you give back ; 
 For when I brought this heart that burns — 
 
 These thoughts that bitterly repine — 
 And laid them here among the ferns 
 
 And the hum of boughs divine, 
 Ye, vastest breathers of the air, 
 
 Shook down with slow and mighty poise 
 Your coolness on the human care, 
 
 Your wonder on its toys, 
 Your greenness on the heart's despair, 
 
 Your darkness on its noise. 
 
 54
 
 * 
 
 OLD ANCHOR CHANTY 
 
 First 
 Voice. 
 
 Second 
 Voice. 
 
 First 
 Voice. 
 
 First 
 Voice. 
 
 Second 
 Voice. 
 
 First 
 Voice. 
 
 WITH a long heavy heave, my very famous 
 men .... 
 
 (Chorus. Bring home ! heave and rally !) 
 
 And why do you, lad, look so pale ? Is it for 
 
 love, or lack of ale ? 
 All hands bear a hand that have a hand to 
 
 len'— 
 And there never was a better haul than you 
 
 gave then .... 
 
 (Chorus. Bring home !) 
 
 Heave hearty, my very famous men .... 
 
 {Bring home ! heave and rally /) 
 Curl and scud, rack and squall — sea-clouds you 
 
 shall know them all ... . 
 For we're bound for Valparaiso and round the 
 
 Horn again 
 From Monte Desolado to the parish of Big 
 
 Ben ! ... . 
 
 {Bring home /) 
 
 55
 
 First Heave hearty, my very famous men .... 
 
 (Bring home ! heave atid rally /) 
 second Bold through all or scuppers under, when 
 
 shall we be back, I wonder ? 
 First From the green and chancy water we shall all 
 
 Voice. i i • J 
 
 come back again 
 To the Lizard and the ladies — but who can 
 say for when ? . . . . ( 
 
 {Bring home /) 
 First Heave and she's a-trip, my very famous 
 
 Voice. 
 
 men .... 
 
 (Bring home ! heave and rally /) 
 second When your fair lass says farewell to you a fair 
 
 wind I will sell to you .... 
 First You may sell your soul's salvation, but I'll bet 
 Voice you two-pound-ten 
 
 She's a-tripping on the ribs of the devil in his 
 den .... 
 
 (Bring home !) 
 First Heave and she's a-peak, my very famous 
 
 Voice. 
 
 men .... 
 
 (Bring home ! heave and rally /) 
 Second You shall tread, for one cruzado, Fiddler's 
 olce ' Green in El Dorado .... 
 
 First Why, I've seen less lucky fellows pay for 
 liquor with doubloons 
 And for 'baccy with ozellas, gold mohurs, and 
 ducatoons ! . . . . 
 
 (Bring home /) 
 
 56
 
 First Heave and a - weigh, my very famous 
 men .... 
 
 [Bring home ! heave and rally /) 
 
 Second And drop her next in heat or cold, the flukes 
 
 Voice. 
 
 of England they shall hold ! 
 
 First Ring and shank, stock and fluke, she's coming 
 
 Voice. • i 
 
 into ken — 
 Give a long and heavy heave, she's a-coming 
 into ken .... 
 
 {Bring home /) 
 
 First Heave and in sight, my very famous men .... 
 
 (Bring home / heave and rally /) 
 Second With her shells and tangle dripping she's a 
 
 beauty we are shipping .... 
 First And she likes a bed in harbour like a decent 
 
 Voice, u 
 
 citizen, 
 But her fancy for a hammock on the deep sea 
 comes again .... 
 
 (Bring home /) 
 First Heave and she's a-wash, my very famous 
 
 Voice. J J 
 
 men .... 
 
 (Bring home ! heave and rally /) 
 Second O never stop to write the news that we are 
 
 Voice ***** 
 
 off upon a cruise .... 
 
 First For the Gulf of Californy's got a roller now 
 
 Voice - a +u 
 
 and then 
 
 But it's better to be sailing than a-sucking of 
 
 a pen .... 
 
 (Bring home /) 
 
 h S7
 
 THE QUESTIONERS 
 
 A MAN made a journey once over half the world 
 To come at the journey's end to no more 
 than this : 
 The cottage where he and another had long been 
 
 happy ; 
 But lilac-bushes had closed right over the path 
 And the stones of the place, it seemed, had become 
 alive. 
 
 ii 
 
 Threshold, familiar Threshold, may I not pass ? 
 
 Not till thou tell me my name ! 
 Stone of wonder ; on thee were the wedding 
 
 flowers 
 When I bore in to my hearth a silken-haired 
 
 stranger — 
 Strange unto me was her heart, strange to her 
 
 mine, 
 And soft and doubtful she trembled, like the blue 
 
 w V v» • * • • 
 
 Pass on, pass on ! 
 
 58
 
 Ill 
 
 Naked and sounding Stair, may I not pass ? 
 
 Tell me my name ! 
 Stair of meeting, where nightly I called the call 
 Of the exultant, the earth-engirdling, the night- 
 
 ' ingale, 
 And one from the stairhead, infinite-eyed and 
 
 slow, 
 Came down in her gliding brightness into my 
 soul. . . . 
 
 Pass on, pass on ! 
 
 IV 
 
 Window, O far-seen Window, may I not pass ? 
 
 Tell me my name ! 
 Window of parting, — for here would my proud 
 
 one stand 
 Arrayed in dreams and roses, — here, if by chance 
 Any that she loved much, in going looked not 
 
 back, 
 Stooped she to mingle sighs and tears with the 
 
 rose. . . . 
 
 Pass on, pass on ! 
 
 v 
 
 Chest, O thou oaken Chest, may I not pass ? 
 
 Tell ?ne my name ! 
 Coffer of vision ; with bloom upon far mountains, 
 
 59
 
 With rays upon ocean isles when their thunders 
 
 were still, 
 With these did she weave her dresses, simple and 
 
 secret, 
 Fragrant and here compacted, sealed even from 
 
 me. . . . 
 
 Pass on, pass on ! 
 
 VI 
 
 Table, ah ! merry Table, may I not pass ? 
 
 Tell me my name ! 
 Table of honour, for here in the vast evening 
 On the head of that pale companion, that more than 
 
 friend, 
 A man I remember inflicted his lordly anger 
 In words that return, return, return to him 
 now. . . . 
 
 Pass on, pass on ! 
 
 VII 
 
 Cradle, O Cradle, wilt thou not let me pass ! 
 
 Tell me mv name ! 
 Other children she bare, but this, the beloved one, 
 This was taken from her, this that most needed 
 
 care, 
 And the eyes of her turned from earth, and she rose 
 
 and followed it 
 At dawn, when the birds and the young children 
 
 sing. . . . 
 
 Pass on, pass on ! 
 60
 
 VIII 
 
 Bed, thou snow-silent Bed, may I not pass ? 
 
 Tell me my name ! 
 Ask him not, terrible image, ask not, for she 
 The woman by whom he lay down to whisper, 
 
 " Forgive ! " 
 Sings here no more, but only in thoughts of 
 
 friends — 
 Sleeps here no more, but heavened in the souls of 
 
 children. . . . 
 
 Pass on, pass on ! 
 
 61
 
 I HEARD A SOLDIER 
 
 I HEARD a soldier sing some trifle 
 Out in the sun-dried veldt alone ; 
 He lay and cleaned his grimy rifle 
 Idly, behind a stone. 
 
 " If after death, love, comes a-waking, 
 And in their camp so dark and still 
 The men of dust hear bugles, breaking 
 Their halt upon the hill, 
 
 " To me the slow and silver pealing 
 That then the last high trumpet pours 
 Shall softer than the dawn come stealing 
 For, with its call, comes yours ! ' 
 
 What grief of love had he to stifle, 
 Basking so idly by his stone, 
 That grimy soldier with his rifle 
 Out in the veldt, alone ? 
 
 62
 
 A SONG 
 
 HER, my own sad love divine, 
 Did I pierce as with a knife, 
 Stabbed with words that seemed not mine 
 Her more dear to me than life. 
 
 And she raised, she raised her head, 
 Slow that smile, pale to the brow : 
 " Lovely songs when I am dead 
 You will make for me ; but how 
 Shall I hear them then ? " she said, 
 " Make them now, O make them now ! ' 
 
 63
 
 THE CROCUS 
 
 ON mountains the crocus 
 Ere hollows be clear 
 In the bed of the snowdrift 
 
 Will rise and appear ; 
 Aloft the pure crocus 
 
 Born under the snow 
 In the sun is left trembling, 
 
 All bare to his glow, 
 Like the heart of the woman who listens to 
 love in the forests below : 
 
 ii 
 
 The " light-born, how oft 
 speaks. Shall I drink in, like wine, 
 
 Thy body cloud-soft, 
 
 Earth's marvel, yet mine ? 
 How oft shall I dare, 
 
 Unabsolved by death, 
 In the flood of thy hair, 
 
 In the fame of thy breath ? 
 From the incense-boat Sun hast thou wandered, a 
 dream from a time beyond death? ' 
 
 6 4
 
 Ill 
 
 And she yearns to respond 
 
 To that strain out of reach, 
 To that glowing and subtle 
 
 Stream-spirit of speech. 
 But she weeps — ah, too childish 
 
 For love is the span 
 Of the half-bestrung lyre 
 
 Of the language of man ; 
 So she breathes the sun-song of the crocus,- 
 reveal it, repeat it, who can ! 
 
 In the Jura, 
 June 1902. 
 
 65
 
 INSCRIPTION FOR THE SCABBARD 
 OF A SWORD OF HONOUR* 
 
 DRAW me not ! Let your laurels round me 
 wreathe — 
 You that have kept, since you began to breathe, 
 The soul within you ready to unsheathe ! 
 
 * Engraved on Havelock's sword, presented to Field Marshal Sir 
 George White, V.C. 
 
 66
 
 DAUGHTERS OF JOY 
 
 LONG, subtle-floating, the choir 
 Of strings — soft floods of tone — 
 In pleading dance-measure, invades 
 Cloud-like the pavement, where 
 With the night wind's vast lament in mine ears, I 
 am walking alone. 
 
 ii 
 
 Ton, from the dance yonder ? 
 
 In tears, at this street-corner ? 
 
 " I am going home, my friend. 
 
 (Strange, that you knew me !) 
 
 Dances are not for the sore heart, nor lights for the 
 
 scorner." 
 
 in 
 
 How came you to live so, sister ? 
 " Jealous was he I cared for — 
 False, but jealous — he died — 
 
 67
 
 Flung nimself into the river ; 
 
 And then a child ... no matter ! What should 
 the child be spared for ? 
 
 IV 
 
 " What mattered ? What matters in London 
 But the play of the iron mill ? 
 It is full of women who smile 
 And heroes live upon them. 
 
 There, if a love rise in your heart, 'tis that that 
 you must kill. 
 
 v 
 
 " Smile under the lamp-glare ! 
 To laugh cracks your painting — 
 There's no place to weep in there 
 Or bow the head in silence : 
 
 Under an archway the clever children mock at a 
 woman fainting. 
 
 VI 
 
 " Sick, hie to the almshouse — 
 Lie in your shroud, thinking ! 
 Soiled before you have loved, 
 When you have loved, betrayed ; 
 And is there, once betrayed, a better end than 
 drinking ? 
 
 VII 
 
 " O wiser ones will save — 
 
 And then there may be marriage ; 
 
 68
 
 After precipitous years 
 Settling down (with your past 
 
 Always to take the opposite seat) in a well-padded 
 carriage ! " 
 
 VIII 
 
 Through Asia sweeps that voice, 
 Through Christendom and Jewry. 
 Look up at the tavern-door — 
 See ! A phantom peering in, 
 
 The smile of a daughter of joy on the drawn face 
 of a fury. 
 
 IX 
 
 Down the dark tremendous vale 
 Whirling like leaves, O Daughters 
 Of Joy, O gash'd priestesses 
 Night-bound, hectic, marred, 
 
 Ye that were lovely once as clouds mirrored in 
 waters, 
 
 To what dominion dire 
 
 Flag your fierce wings, till they 
 
 Glide through the dense realms lit 
 
 Only by eyes of prey ? 
 
 Whither, O sister-spirits eternal, sink ye away ? 
 
 XI 
 
 " Back to the Past we sink, 
 
 Whence the human would be soaring, 
 
 6 9
 
 To deep-pent Chaos back — 
 
 Hold out no hand to us — 
 
 Rushing disharmonies, lost, lost, past deploring ! ' 
 
 XII 
 
 So the blazing rout shall coil 
 Unnumbered down for ever, 
 And the foul shall breed the foul, 
 And the heavenly heights be far, 
 While man knows not of love, and cannot curb 
 his fever. 
 
 7°
 
 ALMOND, WILD ALMOND 
 
 ALMOND, wild almond, 
 Give counsel to me, 
 And hush thy fierce lover 
 The wind in the tree ! 
 
 Along the night pasture 
 
 I've come through the dew 
 
 To tell thee, wild almond, 
 The old songs are true ! 
 
 Like the flower on thy branches 
 The heart in me springs 
 
 With airs and upliftings 
 And hundreds of wings ! 
 
 I, too, have a lover . . . 
 
 Keep, keep it from them — 
 The wise ones that eye me — 
 
 Thou whispering stem ! 
 
 7 1
 
 I deal with him coldly — 
 I dash him with pride : 
 
 Yet he comes of evenings 
 And stands at my side. 
 
 O had he entreated 
 I could have said nay, 
 
 But he, he says nothing 
 And then goes away ! 
 
 Ah, loves he for ever ? . . . 
 
 And loves me alone? . . . 
 These things that men say not 
 
 How can they be known ? 
 
 He may, but he may not^ 
 And I would be free : — 
 
 Now play not, now sway not, 
 Thou little black tree, 
 
 Almond, wild almond, 
 Give counsel to me ! 
 
 72
 
 
 MUSING 
 ON A GREAT SOLDIER 
 
 TfEAR ? Tes . . . I heard you saying 
 -* In an Oxford common-room 
 Where the hearth-light's kindly raying 
 Stript the empanelled walls of gloom, 
 Silver groves of candles playing 
 In the soft wine turned to bloom — 
 At the word I see you now 
 Blandly push the wine-boat's prow 
 Round the mirror of that scored 
 Yellow old mahogany board — 
 i" confess to one fear ; this, 
 To be buried alive ! 
 
 My Lord, 
 Your fancy has played amiss. 
 
 Fear not. When in farewell 
 While guns toll like a bell 
 And the bell tolls like a gun 
 Westminster towers call 
 Folk and state to your funeral, 
 And robed in honours won, 
 
 k 73
 
 Beneath the cloudy pall 
 Of the lifted shreds of glory 
 You lie in the last stall 
 Of that grey dormitory — 
 Fear not lest mad mischance 
 Should find you lapt and shrouded 
 Alive in helpless trance 
 Though seeming death-beclouded : 
 
 For long ere so you rest 
 
 On that transcendent bier 
 
 Shall we not have addressed 
 
 One summons, one last test, 
 
 To your reluctant ear ? 
 
 O believe it ! we shall have uttered 
 
 In ultimate entreaty 
 
 A name your soul would hear 
 
 Howsoever thickly shuttered ; 
 
 We shall have stooped and muttered 
 
 England ! in your cold ear . . . 
 
 Then, if your great pulse leap 
 No more, nor your cheek burn, 
 Enough ; then shall we learn 
 'Tis time for us to weep. 
 
 74
 
 IN SUMMER TIME WHEN MARY 
 
 BATHES 
 
 IN summer time when Mary bathes 
 And floats along as in a sky 
 O might I be the stream that swathes 
 Her beauty with infinity ! 
 
 O might I be that stealing song 
 The brown bird sings her from above 
 While in the dark wood, late and long. 
 She listens, and forgets to love ! . . . 
 
 Or else the rose, the rose that bends 
 To Mary, all its soul to give, 
 And on her dreamy bosom spends 
 The only day it has to live ! 
 
 75
 
 JEAN RICHEPIN'S SONG 
 
 A POOR lad once and a lad so trim 
 Fol de rol de raly O ! 
 Fol de rol ! 
 A poor lad once and a lad so trim 
 Gave his love to her that loved not him. 
 
 ii 
 
 And, says she," Fetch me to-night, you rogue," 
 Fol de rol de raly O ! 
 Fol de rol ! 
 And, says she, " Fetch me to-night, you rogue, 
 Your mother's heart to feed my dog ! " 
 
 in 
 
 To his mother's house went that young man 
 Fol de rol de raly O ! 
 Fol de rol ! 
 To his mother's house went that young man 
 Killed her, and took the heart, and ran. 
 
 7 6
 
 IV 
 
 And as he was running, look you, he fell 
 Fol de rol de raly O ! 
 Fol de rol ! 
 And as he was running, look you, he fell 
 And the heart rolled on the ground as well. 
 
 And the lad, as the heart was a-iolling, heard 
 (Fol de rol de raly O ! 
 Fol de rol !) 
 And the lad, as the heart was a-rolling heard 
 That the heart was speaking, and this was the 
 word ; 
 
 VI 
 
 The heart was a-weeping and crying so small 
 (Fol de rol de raly ! 
 Fol de rol !) 
 The heart was a-weeping and crying so small 
 " Are you hurt, my child \ are you hurt at all f " 
 
 77
 
 
 MULTATULI REMOULDED 
 
 ONCE lived a Man who from a Rock broke 
 stone — 
 For little wage, great labour. Hear him groan, 
 " O to be rich, and lounging on a bed 
 With sleepy silken curtains at my head!" 
 And there came an Angel, saying, Be it so ! 
 
 And he was rich, and on a bed at rest 
 
 Of silk as soft as roses. From the west 
 
 The King came by with horsemen and patrolled 
 
 That land, beneath his canopy of gold. 
 
 And the Newly Rich gazed from his lattice ; 
 
 "Why 
 Have I no kingdom and no canopy? 
 Happy I were, with just one little thing ; 
 I would have honour ! I would be a King ! ' 
 And there came an Angel, saying, Be it so ! 
 
 And he was King. With horsemen for a screen 
 And cloth of gold to fringe his palanquin. 
 
 78
 
 But one day, riding in a desert place, 
 The King grew angry. The Sun scorched his 
 face. 
 
 " What is this Sun that doth my face devour — 
 Heedless of princes at their height of power ? 
 Had I his room, and the arrows of his pride 
 Vast as the air, I should be satisfied ! " 
 And there came an Angel, saying, Be it so! 
 
 And he became the Sun. Jovial he sent 
 Arrows abroad to search the firmament 
 And bake the fields. Everywhere did they pass 
 And scorched the faces of Princes like the grass. 
 
 Till came a Cloud, that darkly overmisted 
 
 The plains, and all his sheen of rays resisted. 
 
 Long, long he battled, but at last avowed, 
 
 " My light is vanquished. I would be that 
 
 Cloud!" 
 And there came an Angel, saying, Be it so ! 
 
 And he became a Cloud of gloom and rain 
 That cooled and made green pastures of the plain, 
 Till the floods rose. Houses and herds were swept 
 Away in rivers, and the homeless wept. 
 
 And the Earth became a wholly flooded field, 
 Save for one Rock therein that would not yield. 
 Wildly the streams beat ; it withstood their shock. 
 Then the Cloud, sullen, yearned to be that Rock. 
 And there came an Angel, saying, Be it so! 
 
 79
 
 And the Cloud became a Rock. Stark he re- 
 mained 
 Still, whether summer riped or winter rained. 
 And there came a Man into his solitude 
 With pickaxe and with hammer ; one that hewed 
 Stones from the Rock. And the Rock groaned, 
 
 oppressed, 
 "Whose heavy Hammer strikes so sore my Breast ? " 
 And prayed at length. " Deliver me who can ! 
 Make me a Hammer-wielder — make me Man ! ' 
 And there came an Angel, saying, 2fc it so ! 
 
 And he became a Man, old, feeble, bent, 
 Who for small wages and long labour spent 
 Broke stones under a Rock, and was content. 
 
 ***** 
 
 Then the Earth-Spirit, an Enchanter wise, 
 Charmed at complete success of his device 
 Approached, rubbing his hands in genial wise, 
 " See now the empty Bubbles that enamour 
 You, the Enactor of my Fable, Man ! 
 Since you have ended just where you began 
 Confess how futile was the wish to rise ! ' . . . 
 And the Stone-breaker pushed up, in mild surprise, 
 His spectacles, that Questioner to scan : 
 " Not so ! The World's a Bubble, and mere 
 
 Glamour ; 
 But just to have been the round, and learned the 
 
 grammar, 
 Contents me with my Sitting-pad and Hammer ! ' 
 80
 
 Traveller. 
 
 Chorus. 
 Traveller. 
 
 Chorus. 
 Shepherd. 
 
 Chorus. 
 Shepherd. 
 
 Chorus. 
 
 Shepherd. 
 
 Chorus. 
 
 Shepherd. 
 
 Chorus. 
 
 Shepherd. 
 
 Chorus. 
 Shepherd. 
 
 Chorus. 
 
 CHORUS AT THE GREEN 
 BEAR INN 
 
 RUDDY old Shepherd, blithe of cheer, 
 [Here's to the leg that's lusty !) 
 When comes to you the pick of the year ? 
 [Mark what he says . . . he's trusty /) 
 " When I watch yon Fire in the chimney 
 
 roar. . . ." 
 {What in the embers dreamt he?) 
 "And sparks flee up from the embers* 
 
 core. . . ." 
 {Fill up his can — it's empty !) 
 " While out on the moorland gale I hear. . . ." 
 [Here's to the woes we bury !) 
 " Some Fiddle, ranting and rovering near !...'* 
 [Hail to that fiddler merry !) 
 
 " Yon Fire, so great and so quick with 
 
 glee. . . ." 
 [Here's to the world so stormy /) 
 " Is Love, the breath o' the world, you 
 
 0CC1 • • • 
 
 [Here's to the mother that bore me !) 
 
 l 81
 
 Shepherd. 
 
 Chorus. 
 Shepherd. 
 
 " And . . . hark to the Fiddle ! . . . That's 
 
 Hope ! Play on. . . ." 
 {Fiddle, we send a chorus J) 
 " Idling and wheedling, and come and 
 
 gone 
 
 * • • 
 
 Chorus. (Long may it march before us J) 
 
 82
 
 TO A NIGHTINGALE HEARD UPON 
 A HILL-TOP BEFORE DAWN 
 
 YES, Nightingale, I lie awake 
 And wondering hear thee sing 
 Over the deep world from thy brake 
 While every other thing 
 Sleepeth — the deep world like a lake 
 Stirred round thee, ring on ring ! 
 
 More than the chanters of the light 
 Thy passion men confounds 
 Because like ours 'tis born in sight 
 Of that which hath no bounds : 
 How the dark-streaming infinite 
 Wells in those golden sounds ! 
 
 Some traveller once in Himalay 
 Chanced on a tribe so lone, 
 So dungeoned from the world away, 
 They deemed it all their own, 
 And any human race but they 
 Incredible, unknown. 
 
 83
 
 But up, up where the snowy crest 
 
 Of Elburz mounts the blue 
 
 And Caucasus sinks east and west 
 
 Precipitous, some few 
 
 Clansmen are found, high on its breast 
 
 Where half the earth's in view ; 
 
 And these by that great prospect thrilled 
 
 Perhaps, in ioy or fear, 
 
 Poor hunters wild and rudely skilled, 
 
 Have raised an altar there 
 
 " To the God Unknown ; " and this they build 
 
 Of horns of goat and deer. 
 
 Like thine, their dark and lofty song 
 
 Where shining gulfs expand 
 
 Beyond the Caspian — Death, Time, Wrong 
 
 That few can understand — 
 
 Is launched, and low and clear and strong 
 
 Floats out to all the land ! 
 
 8 4
 
 THE GEMLESS RING 
 
 AH, hoop of gold that binds the maid 
 Within thy faery circuit strayed ! 
 No gem of murdered blood divine, 
 No dragon green of jasper's thine, 
 No piping shepherd-boy and flock 
 Drowsed on the Ethiopian rock 
 And sovran 'gainst the Bacchic mist 
 Sleeps in thee, shut in amethyst ; 
 Nor Isis in chalcedony 
 Protecteth, floating fadelessly. 
 
 Why hast no serpent-wreathen wand 
 
 Bescored on thee by diamond ? 
 
 No Winged Foot, departure's mark, 
 
 Treading out Life in garnet dark, 
 
 Or signed in gloomy emerald 
 
 Where stands Serapis pedestal'd 
 
 Mid sceptred JEons plumed and starred ? 
 
 No Name they write on Indian sard 
 
 Nor dreaded word from Dian's zone 
 
 Legends thee, seal without a stone ! 
 
 8S
 
 Yet, seeing no mage since time began 
 Hath found a greater talisman, 
 Since puissant was thy gleaming pure 
 Both to preserve and to allure, 
 Destroyers of this amulet 
 May look back, and lament thee yet ! 
 
 Thou hast outweathered many an age 
 Hid in the missal's burning page ; 
 Queens unto Christ in pilgrim guise 
 Tossed thee, with prayer for paradise, 
 And felt thee rained from Zion's gate 
 Back to the cold hand laid in state ! 
 Over the fiord of spirits gone 
 I hear great harpers harp thee on ! . . . 
 But who can now thy bond endure ? 
 Farewell ! thou art too plain and pure ! 
 
 86
 
 THE REQUITAL 
 
 WHAT shall I give you, woman dear ? 
 Kiss for your eyes, pearl for your ear, 
 Praise to requite you, 
 Toils to delight you, 
 Or trophies that shall leave your name 
 Canopied by outlasting fame ? 
 Ah no ! much less ! 
 Give me, give me faithfulness ! 
 
 Kindness I'll give — with sovran care 
 Harbour you like some temple fair, 
 
 With care that shields 
 
 Your way through fields 
 Flower-soft, and makes the wise of ages 
 Only your ministers and mages . . • 
 
 Nay, would you bless ; 
 
 Give me, O give me faithfulness ! 
 
 87
 
 Take this instead — this throbbing rose, 
 Passion, whose cloudy cups disclose, 
 
 Core within core, 
 
 Sea-and-moon-lore, 
 And the breath of lovers, whose exchange 
 Of being and worship still is strange . . . 
 
 Fair it is, yes . . . 
 
 But give, O give me faithfulness ! 
 
 'Tis true, you came with silvery zone 
 All the world's dayspring in your own ; 
 
 True that you gave 
 
 All he could crave ; 
 True, on your bosom warm and pure 
 His children smile in sleep secure ; 
 
 But no ! Ask less — 
 
 He will not give you faithfulness. 
 
 88
 
 THE REPARATION 
 
 WHEN Man was hounded from glens of Eden, 
 a rover, 
 By reason of her, his mate, 
 And under the pair lay the stone of the world, and 
 over 
 Terrors of Night and Fate, 
 O then did the sorrowful hands of the Woman 
 discover 
 A roof against despair, 
 And spread for the rebel head or her dreaming 
 lover 
 The shadow of her hair ! 
 
 M 
 
 8 9
 
 DARK, DARK, THE SEAS AND LANDS 
 
 DARK, dark the seas and lands 
 Between us lie ! 
 And to taunt these banished hands 
 Hang mountains high ; 
 Yet to-night your voice from home 
 Most strange, most clear, 
 Over the gulfs hath come 
 Gloriously near ! 
 
 Long since, in the desert's heat 
 
 I swooned, I fell, 
 
 To find your love at my feet 
 
 Like the desert's well ; 
 
 Now, loftier and more profound 
 
 Than the dawn at sea, 
 
 Your spirit, like heavenly sound, 
 
 Delivers me ! 
 
 90
 
 ODE 
 ON ARMENIAN MASSACRE 
 
 To Lord Salisbury 
 
 I 
 
 THEY escape to the quiet mercy of the snows, 
 A These pledged Armenians. And shall now 
 thine hand, 
 That sworn and signatory hand, be slack, 
 Or to defilement in their smoking land 
 And furnace of despairs consign them back ? 
 Grown old thou wilt not fail us ? Thou must 
 
 keep, 
 O son of Burleigh, rank with them that drave 
 The towered Armada from the wave 
 To sort with that great company asleep 
 On whom heaven-windowed Westminster for 
 
 aye 
 Rains glory, and the misty choir 
 Age-builded aisles and blackened vaults profound 
 At chantings quaked out of the footworn ground 
 Resolve their densities to fire, 
 Turn the cathedral's self into a lyre 
 And frame of giant sound 
 That cleaves through stone and dust, 
 In dirge and triumph dire, 
 From them that knew to trust, 
 And to command, the anger of the just ! 
 
 9 1
 
 II 
 
 Refuse, captain of England, to convoy 
 
 Only the crawling hulls of merchantmen 
 
 That hug safe coasts for bales ! Be ours the flight 
 
 Of the old sea-riders that with little sails 
 
 Fronted the rimless ocean with delight, 
 
 And took the frownings of a world with joy ! 
 
 O hear the counsellor that hath no part 
 
 In learning of the counter and the mart, 
 
 Wise to refrain, be thou as wise to dare ; 
 
 And by some messenger of noble heart 
 
 Speak, for our kindred race of Isles and Seas, 
 
 To the Republic in the West ! Declare 
 
 The solemn duty fallen to us and these, 
 
 In yon default of nations, to repair 
 
 The desolation of the lands of dawn 
 
 And worship to the humbled East restore, 
 
 That Tigris and Euphrates bear no more 
 
 Blood from their snowy founts to Babylon, 
 
 Nor wash with ashes of the meek despised 
 
 That grave of the mother of men civilised. 
 
 in 
 
 How long shall he of the hell-daring lute, 
 
 Genius, the sad deliverer, be mute ? 
 
 How long sit ye, grey parliaments, in fear ? 
 
 Now the blind wraths of the cloud-bewilderediwave 
 
 Doom, and sea-lights our fathers lived to rean 
 
 Range the abyss, but none put off to save ! 
 
 How long, Atlantic powers, that freed the slave 
 
 92
 
 And keep in chains the sea, shall vengeance pause ? 
 By counsel first, if counsel still avail, 
 But by the edge of death, if counsel fail, 
 Take ye from that Arch-fear his wanton reign 
 Who by the silent Greeks remembered main 
 Gods it on earth against the human cause ! 
 
 Written in September 1896. 
 
 93
 
 THERE COMES A MOMENT OF THE 
 
 TWILIGHT 
 
 THERE comes a moment of the twilight, 
 The red-forged Orb at his vastest 
 Sinking (how swiftly !) behind black-ridged 
 Intricate harbourage of trees, 
 When the brilliant beds of flowers, amid the 
 
 dimness 
 Of warm lawns silently resplendent, 
 Flame-cups of red gold, quietude 
 Of dusky companies of lilies, 
 Armies of sapphires and of purples, 
 Burn with a light not theirs. 
 
 They utter, they give off a singing vapour, 
 Discompose into rumour as of voices, 
 A troubled ground-swell, every chalice 
 Steamy with a yearning murmur 
 After the descended sun ! 
 
 Something of the late huge riot 
 Of cloud-light, to them bequeathed, 
 Dwells on, confused, in them, 
 
 94
 
 Thousand by thousand awaiting 
 Frail-hung lanterns of some gala 
 Invisible. 
 
 Even so are ye 
 All standing now at such a moment 
 Smoulderers objectless, uncertain, 
 Artists and priests of all religions, 
 Shapers of clay, sound, colour, 
 Shapers of perfection and of symbol, 
 Shapers of passion and of awe ! 
 Hath it gone, last hem of all that glory 
 For which we came to be ? 
 
 95
 
 KILLARY 
 
 YV7HEN all her brothers in the house 
 W Were lying asleep, my love 
 Ran before me under the bend of boughs 
 Till we looked down from above 
 On the long loch, 
 On the brown loch, 
 On the lone loch of Killary ! 
 
 ii 
 
 Together we ran down the copse 
 
 And stood in the rain as close 
 
 As the birds that sleep in the soft tops 
 
 Of the tree that comes and goes 
 
 When the morn moon, 
 
 When the young moon, 
 
 When the morn moon is on Killary ! 
 
 in 
 
 In tremblings of the water chill 
 Swans we saw preen their coat, 
 
 96
 
 Biting their plumes with stoop'd bill 
 
 And quivering neck, afloat 
 
 On the brown shade, 
 
 On the deep shade, 
 
 The shade of hills on Killary. 
 
 IV 
 
 " Why pale, my beloved, now 
 
 When the first light 'gins to beat ? 
 
 No sun of autumn is rich as thou, 
 
 And honey after thy feet 
 
 Shall rise from the grass, 
 
 From the wet of the grass, 
 
 The brow of the grass over Killary ! " 
 
 v 
 
 " My grief it is only that thou and I 
 
 Must part, like swans of the flood 
 
 That rise up sorrowful into the sky ; 
 
 For one goes over the wood, 
 
 And one oversea, 
 
 And one oversea, 
 
 And one oversea from Killary ! . . . 
 
 VI 
 
 " Ah, the little raindrops that hang on the bough, 
 
 Together they may run, 
 
 But never again shall I and thou 
 
 n 97
 
 Meet here in the morning sun. . . . 
 
 We shall meet no more, 
 
 We must kiss no more, 
 
 We shall meet no more by Killary ! ' 
 
 Q8
 
 THE QUEEN OF GOTHLAND 
 
 To M, S. 
 
 this portrait.
 
 THE QUEEN OF GOTHLAND 
 
 HO ! ho ! the Count was not of those 
 That care for treasure-trove ! 
 Ploughland and forest, quarry, fell, 
 Castle and pleasure-grove, 
 All that his house had heaped, he took 
 And shared among his mountain folk, 
 And wasted as they throve ; 
 Then flung the rest, all that he had, 
 Round the white neck of love ! 
 Ay, in pearls for his young love. 
 
 Make no mistake ! the squanderer knew 
 
 Shrewdly may be as I or you 
 
 The virtue that's in gold ; 
 
 But this despotic man we lost 
 
 Had faults and manifold. 
 
 He had a something in the brain 
 
 Never could bide his proper gain ; 
 
 He was not of the Clan of Take, 
 
 The Clan of Get and Hold ! 
 
 IOI
 
 There, in a savage discontent, 
 
 The Count would sit receiving rent ; 
 
 He took the silver that you brought 
 
 And thrust you back the gold. 
 
 " I'd hew with you down to the rock, 
 
 Down to the rock ! " he cried, 
 
 " Then could you know the man that's stript 
 
 And working at your side ! " 
 
 Well, he stript himself, he showed his thew, 
 
 He bared himself in pride, 
 
 He dared with you, he shared with you, 
 
 And you for him had died ! 
 
 And you heard his simple gusty laugh, 
 
 And felt, and you were sure, 
 
 'Twas thirsting for the fire of life 
 
 That made and kept him poor ; 
 
 And that he would keep the fire of life 
 
 As pure as fire is pure ! 
 
 So impetuously, so seriously, 
 Then grimly, nigh deliriously, 
 He fought, he played, for love ; 
 But he lost, and vanished utterly. 
 
 ii 
 
 Naught that shy beauty promised him, 
 
 Merry had watched him crave : 
 
 And the day she married Gothland's King 
 
 When her father's town was brave 
 
 With flags, drums, seething battlements, 
 
 After a duel for her sake 
 
 102
 
 Wounded and nigh the grave, 
 
 (Think you that could his spirit break 
 
 Or force the Count's head on his breast 
 
 Like any quivering slave ?) 
 
 He arose, lean in his uniform, 
 
 Pulse not a stroke too fast, 
 
 Waited her brilliant-eyed approach, 
 
 And saw her start aghast, 
 
 And she, the drawn face and the frown. 
 
 On gallant knee downcast 
 
 He tendered her his secret gift, 
 
 The poor enthusiast ! 
 
 Out of his square palm's brawny foil 
 
 She took the pearls. Faint gems entoil 
 
 Clasp-opals of their massy coil. 
 
 Then, with a jibe, he passed. . . . 
 
 She stood, she sighed, she took the gift 
 
 Because it was the last ; 
 
 Took that amazing gift of pearls 
 
 Unweeting all he gave 
 
 Thrice-pitying, reluctantly, 
 
 As 'twere a soul to save. 
 
 That night she wore the coil of pearls 
 
 With her bride's diadem, 
 
 And she locked away that coil of pearls 
 
 With many a holy gem 
 
 In a casket in her chambers high, 
 
 And thought no more of them. 
 
 Ah, dark towers ! Fort of faerie, 
 
 Steep as Jerusalem ! 
 
 103
 
 Ill 
 
 Three years ; and one night there was found 
 
 Up to the heather drawn, 
 
 The Count's boat, lying on the moor — 
 
 Like a young seal that tries to flee 
 
 Inland, instead of out to sea — 
 
 But no boat there at dawn ! 
 
 Some said he had appeared that night, 
 
 Dour as a thunderstroke, 
 
 And asked her for no more than this, 
 
 That she should slip the yoke : 
 
 Make off then in the dawning dim 
 
 Came she but in her smock to him, 
 
 And for kingdom, share his cloak! 
 
 Told how she seized a riding-whip 
 
 And slashed across his bearded lip 
 
 The hardy libertine. 
 
 But who puts faith in such a tale ? 
 
 What eye the Count had seen ? 
 
 No ! . . . Winters wore. The King grew bald. 
 
 All Gothland was serene. 
 
 IV 
 
 But at last the lady pale, so pale, 
 
 Who never could take rest, 
 
 She stept down from the bed of kings 
 
 And rode to south and west. 
 
 From the lightly-faithful bed of kings 
 
 She rode, they say, and drest 
 
 104
 
 In her white silken wedding-gown 
 Alone through many a drowsy town ; 
 Hardly she drew the rein by night 
 For the fire within her breast. 
 
 About the peak'd and stormy towers 
 
 At the corners of her keep 
 
 Had marched a music old and proud 
 
 For the waking of her sleep, 
 
 But the heavy voice she listened for 
 
 Was the sea's against the steep. 
 
 " Take him away, your nimble hawk 
 
 That comes again to hand ! 
 
 Bring me the bird that shows the pass 
 
 Into a blither land, 
 
 And the tune I never heard before 
 
 Is the tune I understand ! 
 
 " O where shall I now pin my faith 
 Who greatly have believed ? 
 And whither shall I fly my heart 
 That so hath been deceived ? 
 It does no good to speak aloud 
 Save to the wind, save to the cloud ! 
 
 " Make room, thou southland mountain-top, 
 
 Make room for my disdain ! 
 
 Make room, ^Egean-breathing Dawn ! 
 
 Cypress above the plain, 
 
 I will inhabit silence ; then 
 
 I shall begin to reign. 
 
 o 105
 
 " I had a cousin — a mad king. 
 
 Why mad ? He had a play 
 
 Played out for him, and him alone. 
 
 I'll have, < The Death of Day ! ' 
 
 The boards are bare, the footlights lit, 
 
 The house fills, tier on tier, 
 
 The vasty arch bedazzles. . . . Now 
 
 Among the oaks and deer, 
 
 With every grass-blade lustred through, 
 
 What tragic Gods I hear! 
 
 " As Muse, I'll listen. My thick hair 
 
 Night-heavy, my sole crown, 
 
 Falls round me like a close despair 
 
 And veils me on the throne. 
 
 See ! The players change as quick as kings ! — 
 
 The eve-mist changes. So 
 
 I'll waver with unstable things, 
 
 And go with things that go ! 
 
 " I will go wander like a wave 
 
 And lash me to the mast, 
 
 And sail by many a siren cave 
 
 Till peril's charm be past. 
 
 I'll wash this gaze in gaze of flowers 
 
 In some Greek olive glen 
 
 And listen, till I find my soul 
 
 In places far from men. 
 
 " O the world's ill, if even I 
 Whose whimsies none resist — 
 Who, satiate with all-yieldingness, 
 Can change lands as I list, 
 1 06
 
 Yet find Death sweetest of all tales 
 
 Of Life the rhapsodist ! 
 
 If I too sharp-set find the yoke 
 
 Of earth's monotony, 
 
 Then for these poor and common folk 
 
 What must it be, what must it be ? 
 
 " I will forget them. I am wronged. 
 
 How can I give them ease ? 
 
 I will forget them — play the Muse 
 
 Of all bright ironies. 
 
 Since what I asked the Gods refuse, 
 
 I will have Glory's kiss ! 
 
 Failure that's great — among great things 
 
 At least deny not this ! 
 
 " Now for the prey I cannot kill, 
 And the hound that comes not back, 
 And the horse I cannot break at will, 
 And a leap to end the track ! 
 For my soul it shall be hunting still 
 Though the night it may be black. 
 
 " I am a queen, and round a queen 
 
 Rumour hath ever rung ; 
 
 But rather than such honour grant 
 
 Me, Glory, to die young, 
 
 Full of the passion thou didst plant, 
 
 Sure that I could have shaped the chant 
 
 Woman hath never sung ! 
 
 " Blood of grapes stretch me not to drink, 
 But juices more sublime ! 
 
 107
 
 I'll see the world's green acre shrink 
 
 While life is at the prime ! 
 
 I'll lift my horse up on the brink 
 
 As he had wings to climb, 
 
 And pledge thee, Glory, ere I sink 
 
 Into the night of time ! " 
 
 v 
 
 She rode resolved and amain, 
 
 She rode for many a year, 
 
 A vagabond and scholar queen 
 
 Whose body knew no fear 
 
 (Her fear was of the spirit pent 
 
 For madness dogged her as she went) 
 
 And she chose the foam for outrider 
 
 And the wind for cavalier. 
 
 Became she poet ? She became 
 
 Empress, and in a line 
 
 Of oldest lineage she was first 
 
 Of ladies that must shine. 
 
 And to her deserted spouse returned — 
 
 Returned, at what a cost ! — 
 
 Mute, mute she wore her dazzling thorns, 
 
 But all dear things she lost. 
 
 For chance among her nearest kin 
 
 Strange havoc did contrive ; 
 
 In the blood of all whom she held dear 
 
 The gods made horror thrive ; 
 
 Brothers and sons were shamed and shot, 
 
 Or sisters burned alive. 
 
 108 

 
 She stared into Fate's eyes accurst 
 
 And, seeing no glint divine, 
 
 Closed her wise tragic lips, this first 
 
 Of ladies that must shine. 
 
 Ah, dolour that might never speak ! . 
 
 Yet as the herd-boy on the peak 
 
 Gathers the forest's roar and shade 
 
 Into the pipe he idly made, 
 
 So in this ditty even I 
 
 Would murmur all that mighty sigh ! 
 
 VI 
 
 At last, in a grove of ilexes 
 
 Off Epirus, in the sea, 
 
 She built a Grecian pleasure-house 
 
 Altar'd to poetry 
 
 And Heine. (May the clan that own 
 
 The palace now adore his stone 
 
 As piously as she !) 
 
 " Here, an old woman, I will rest," 
 She said ; and from the north 
 Sent for a girl's toys, jewelries. 
 But lo ! when they came forth 
 In that clear Adriatic morn, 
 On the cold imperial bed 
 The coil of pearls, so long unworn, 
 Lay lustreless and dead. 
 
 " Tell me now, Monks of the sea-crag, 
 Men wise in country lore, 
 
 109
 
 Whose bee-hive cluster of white cells 
 
 Juts on the western shore, 
 
 Where shall I sain them back to white 
 
 And how sick pearls restore ? " . . . 
 
 And one looked up from his lentil pan, 
 
 Like an olive, silvery-hoar, 
 
 And this Monk they sent her for a guide 
 
 To row her out at the ebb-tide. 
 
 He rowed her in a little boat 
 
 That secret place to learn, 
 
 His wrinkled hands pulled on the loom, 
 
 His eye serene and stern, 
 
 A Charon in the boat of doom, 
 
 Unblinking, taciturn. 
 
 There was gold broom on the sun-bright hills 
 And the plash of oars in chime, 
 And there came a smell from the rocky bays 
 Of lentisk-bush and thyme. 
 
 " Whose hold is that on the hot crag, 
 Yon rosy crag sea-gnawn ? " 
 " A ruin of a spendthrift race 
 Of despots long withdrawn. 
 
 " Deep, deep beneath it runs the pool 
 Where your sick pearls must lie ; 
 At its mouth is the sea-otter's hole, 
 And a slant slit is the sky. 
 And the walls aloft are green with slime, 
 And the sea-birds' dung is soft with time 
 Along the ledges high." 
 1 10
 
 Into that cranny darkly down 
 They went the sea-birds' way — 
 Above their heads the mountains leant 
 That plunge down to the spray — 
 Until they heard the black wave wash 
 That never sees the day. 
 
 She took the pearls from her sere breast 
 
 And kissed them, long unworn, 
 
 She kissed those pearls as they had been 
 
 The love-babe never born, 
 
 And she dropped them in the salt, salt wave 
 
 With tears of the forlorn. 
 
 " Lie there ! " he cried, " O lie there long, 
 
 Beneath the break of foam ! 
 
 Far have ye wandered, suffered much ; 
 
 To that ye wandered from 
 
 We give you back, thrice-noble pearls, 
 
 Until ye shall become 
 
 Perfect again and pure again 
 
 In that which is your home ! " 
 
 And swift came rushings through the air 
 Of cold and winged things 
 Alarmed escaping from their lair, 
 Blasts and torch-flickerings. 
 
 " Who art thou, visionary Monk, 
 That speak'st this requiem ? " 
 " One that sees peak'd and stormy towers 
 Steep as Jerusalem, 
 
 1 1 1
 
 Battlements grey, and over all 
 
 One window like a gem, 
 
 And a young girl, weeping on the wall, 
 
 That wears a diadem ! " 
 
 ***** 
 
 She took the high torch from his hand 
 And searched till she discerned 
 That maned visage, trace by trace, — 
 The solemn-sounding mountain's base 
 Rough'd to a humorous savage face 
 Wherein the granite burned. . . . 
 
 " How sharp," he said, " that last, last hour 
 
 Of departure's sick delay 
 
 Prints on the warm, cleft, trembling soul 
 
 The things it takes away ! 
 
 In the middle garden by the shore 
 
 The fountain's still at play, 
 
 And its spouted rabble of loud drops 
 
 Hangs in the evening still ! 
 
 November woods becloud the turf 
 
 By the dove-house squat and chill. 
 
 It is night ; and a ragged thunder-storm 
 
 Comes up over towers and wood, 
 
 And the white doves beat in a throbbing swarm 
 
 Against the thunder-cloud. 
 
 We pace together up the sward 
 
 As they circle over the firth ; 
 
 And the moonfall on thy coifless hair 
 
 Makes glamour of the earth. . . . 
 
 And then, leaning on the parapet, 
 
 I 12
 
 ' Ah ! ' thou saidst, c before passion's voice 
 All, all is overset, 
 
 But what is that " all " worth ? ' thou saidst. 
 Well, hast thou learnt it yet ? 
 
 " Why, great one, never kneel to me ! 
 
 We are too wise and old ; 
 
 Thou hast brought back the young man's pearls 
 
 Before his heart is cold ! . . . 
 
 Calm, calm's for all such agonies 
 
 As happened long ago ! 
 
 Calm is the Earth, though from its side 
 
 A moon was torn. What woe ! 
 
 Yet Time hath filled the wound with salt 
 
 And solitary flow. 
 
 " We were too passionate and hard 
 To mingle each with each. 
 Thou hadst to be thyself — to become 
 Thyself the last, high, tragic song 
 Of this our pierced Christendom, 
 Too high, too sad, for speech ! . . . 
 Saved in some vessel we see not, 
 Some dark urn of the Lord, 
 Is shed this everlasting loss, 
 This waste of spirit poured. 
 
 " And for me, more than I need is mine ; 
 Labour of the hands is mine ; 
 Content, among my lentils here, 
 And the obscurity divine." 
 
 P 113
 
 VII 
 
 Well, she went back, she faced her fate, 
 
 Her tasks, without demur ; 
 
 Amid the shining cares of state 
 
 Were lentils grown for her. 
 
 But not long had the pair to wait, 
 
 O not long to endure ! 
 
 A year thence, at the hour she fell, 
 
 Stabbed by some crazy boor, 
 
 The old Monk in his convent died 
 
 The death of the obscure. 
 
 And the pearls ? Ah, blithe rejoicing pearls, 
 
 Snapt is your rusty chain ! 
 
 Sucked out to the sea-darkness fresh, 
 
 Released and born again, 
 
 Somewhere beneath that sunlit crag, 
 
 That blue Ionian main, 
 
 Freely (for who shall seek the fort 
 
 Angelokastron ?) there 
 
 Unknown of all men ye may now 
 
 Beauty and sheen repair ! 
 
 114
 
 THE SHEPHERD 
 
 To H. W. N. 
 
 I 
 
 WHEN I am worn amid the burning dust 
 Of high-wall'd cities, round the mill-track 
 drear 
 Bearing the beam and yoke, as mortals must 
 Who by their lower selves win lodging here, 
 Oft, as among some ancient desert horde 
 Their King flung up the netted bird on high 
 Whose flight should show the nearest pass whereby 
 To cross the mountains from the sands abhorred, 
 Even so cut I the cord, 
 Dismiss my soul on its delirious wings 
 Spurning the dull den where the body dwells 
 In yon green cabinets of grass to stray, 
 Along the liquid mirrors to delay, 
 Yon, in the wished land of wells, 
 By the throbbing of full waters, gleamy springs ! 
 
 ii 
 
 Distilled out of the swift enormous skies 
 But nursed in darkness old, inscrutable, 
 
 "5
 
 Twixt Sinodun and its twin mount Harphill 
 By Thames I know a Wood-Spring takes its rise, 
 Azured and overbough'd, a margin still 
 Untainted, only known to beasts and birds, 
 And alive, like all things wholly beautiful, 
 Exquisite, deathless, seeming self-engendered. 
 Sand-pulses, bubbles, are its only words ; 
 And wide the region of the mountain'd earth 
 Cistern'd for the making of that little pool ! 
 And there what spirit-freshness comes to birth ! 
 Thither I voyage, to a dream surrendered, 
 And rays are golden there, and noon is cool. 
 
 in 
 
 Or I, a Shepherd, am in Thessaly ; 
 
 And the twilight village cries " Hath he not come 
 
 On the last scented load of myrtle home ? ' ... 
 
 He sits in the great valley wide and still 
 
 Blocked by the snow-capt Mountain, and his sheep, 
 
 Tawny and dark, roam far and crop their fill 
 
 Along the pastures, by the river deep. 
 
 His wandering fingers teach the stops at will 
 
 Melodies cool as water, soft as sleep. 
 
 IV 
 
 And once to him the Mountain spake, 
 " Climb ! Here canst larger music make ! 
 I know thy heart, and all its ache ! 
 For, since thy craving is and ban 
 Conquest of earth to plan, 
 116
 
 And to come up as if by right 
 
 All the kingdoms of earth to scan 
 
 With the soul and the sight of a seraph, 
 
 The strength of a man, 
 
 Therefore, lest it should break, 
 
 Thy heart for my arch-lute I take ; 
 
 My tarns and ghylls shall sing through thee 
 
 All Olympus and all Thessaly ! " 
 
 Then, lo, on a peak above the peaks am I ! 
 Above the waves of forest, vale and fell, 
 Above the torrent's voice, the clink of bell, 
 The flock, the scythe, of sparse humanity ; 
 Above the earth-enflamed ring of sky 
 That hems our footing ; so I stand alone 
 Isled in the last and dreadful light on high 
 And sovran silence of the air and stone. . . . 
 Slowly the plains, those warm and breathing 
 
 plains, 
 The hearth-lit villages that sleep and play, 
 Whose ceaseless blood and its in-dwelling pains 
 In volumes of sea-darkness surge and sway 
 In the heart most solitary, sink away. . . . 
 Nothing but starred immensity remains. 
 
 Chilly withdrawals yours, vast Light, vast Love ! 
 Though the skies swarm with tremblers faintly 
 
 bright 
 I am exile in this glimmering infinite ; 
 For centuries Man may see but stars above ! 
 
 117
 
 Yet shall those summits of scarred ages burn 
 
 Afresh, and all those lights be quenched in One ! 
 
 Pure new breath shall arouse 
 
 Our sunk horizons and our sapless boughs ! 
 
 The wrinkled iEons brood on that return, 
 
 And seal'd in's prison-house 
 
 The changeless blood keeps memory of the sun. 
 
 VI 
 
 And so, when Night hath rolled away undone, 
 Joyful my foot is bounding down the peak ; 
 Rich-memoried, I am eager for the yoke, 
 Like some young torrent swollen white with rains 
 How willing then my strength rejoins the plains ! 
 " Where is our Shepherd ? " cry the village folk. . . . 
 
 He sits in the great valley wide and still 
 Block'd by the snow-capt Mountain, and his sheep, 
 Tawny and dark, roam far and crop their fill 
 In the long pastures, by the river deep ; 
 His wandering fingers teach the stops at will 
 Melodies cool as water, soft as sleep. 
 
 118
 
 STANZAS ON POETRY 
 
 HERE in the Pentecostal woods are seen 
 Mid glens of floating odours, shifting sheen, 
 Motionless yews and scintillating green 
 Of birches young, and here in wandering mood 
 Our feet brushed through the drifts of listless 
 
 leafage 
 When quick and flame-like Spring was on the 
 bough. 
 
 Distinct each budding tongue could tell its tale 
 And underfoot the tide of flowers, that pale 
 Firmament, so eternal and so frail, 
 Powdered the woody bosoms of the coombes, 
 And everywhere infinity was hinted 
 Stealing in clouds of gems into the air. 
 
 And here, in stillness of this stately place, 
 I asked my musing friend to lift the grace 
 On me of her immortal speech and face, 
 And to reveal how in this roaring world 
 A man may tune his lips, and she replied : 
 " So sing, that nothing of thee shall grow old ! 
 
 119
 
 " This is your end, and this is your reward, 
 To become attuned to the universal chord 
 Wherein all life makes answer to its Lord. 
 O spectator of the sun and night and sea 
 Great waters with a song-born ocean sighing 
 Revolve their everlasting floods through thee ! 
 
 " Lift up thy head ! tear off the servile mask, 
 Salute the dead, and take on thee their task ! 
 In thee man's sleeping powers assemble. Ask, 
 Choose — wilt thou like a cow-boy ride savan- 
 nahs ? 
 Attend the Delian high solemnity ? 
 Unbury Egypt, or by Newton kneel ? 
 
 " Be thou, thrice-hot forespurring heart and sight, 
 A winged creature, questing for delight, 
 Released from bonds, and by augurial flight 
 Before the gaze of the earth-hungering horde 
 Show thou the pass over Caucasus, the barrier ! 
 Or divine thou the sunk waters of the Moon ! 
 
 "Chant like the head of that slain king they found 
 
 The night after the battle by sweet sound 
 
 In a clump of rushes on the battle-ground, 
 
 That sang at his beheaders' feast so true 
 
 They would kneel to the pallid lips upon the pillar 
 
 For saving wisdom and clear prophecy ! 
 
 " Inscription on the lightless dungeon be ! 
 Far trumpet that may set the prisoner free ! 
 Ray from the battle-ship on Futurity ! 
 
 I20
 
 Soar, thou blue mosque of lapis-lazuli 
 
 Whose mortar with some incense hath been 
 
 mingled, 
 Fragrant for ever at the sultry noon ! 
 
 " In thee Man's choir assembles, and finds tongue ! 
 Thy soul like Roland's horn of echoes flung 
 Must seize the mountains that it gropes among, 
 Must strike and must betray the Invisible — 
 Black peaks that like a crowd of humbled Gods 
 Attend the benediction of the Dawn ! 
 
 "Sing Valour, from the cradle to the pyre ! 
 Sing thine own country's glories, grief and ire ; 
 Hear thou the voice of every greening briar ; 
 And in thy song let all her woods be temples, 
 Her rude heights and calm headlands clothed in 
 
 foam 
 Nerve thee, and be within thee fortitudes ! 
 
 " Sing Love, and all that counteth not the cost ; 
 And many a beautiful and unborn ghost 
 (Even as the ever-widening starry host 
 Steals from the luminous blue gulfs of evening) 
 Softly shall join your ring of auditors 
 Outside the sitters round the Tavern-fire ! ' 
 
 " Goddess," I cried, " the task is far too great ! 
 Spare, overwhelming energies of Fate ! 
 Turn aside — shoulders cannot bear your weight ; 
 Descend not on us weaklings, us the living ! ' 
 
 Q 121
 
 " I speak to Man ! " she said. " The mill-wheel 
 
 turns : 
 Between thee and thy son lies but a sleep. 
 
 " Is not the statue inwardly impaled 
 
 On iron, when 'tis set aloft and hailed 
 
 For beauty ? Smiling have my noblest failed, 
 
 Playful as Socrates, the ungainly seer, 
 
 Or the glorious Persian, whom when Balkh was 
 
 stormed 
 Turanians at his blackened altar slew. 
 
 " There is no light except the light they saw ! 
 There is no song except that song of awe, 
 The slow unscrolling palimpsest of Law, 
 Where here and there a mighty word ye read 
 (O rushlights seeking on the battlefield !) 
 In haste, by the hasty taper of yourselves ! 
 
 " Thy song shall be imperfect, never fear, 
 Seeing but the half, the half of it is here ; 
 Yet fall'n to the heart out of the atmosphere 
 (If the symbol in thy hands ring metal true) 
 Flake soft electric touches of that Life 
 Whose heart-beats are sun-rises, slow and clear. 
 
 " Do not thy windows every morning hail 
 The sheen of Thames, curved in the forest vale ? 
 What splendour, though its reach from vision 
 
 fail ! 
 More than a brief arc you may never scan 
 Of the sweep o' the world, or the destiny ot man, 
 122
 
 Yet now begins to dawn on you the curve — 
 The sense of scale, the orbit's formula. 
 
 " Love, Courage, Truth, these are ; and while 
 
 these stand 
 Who can say Gods inhabit not this land ? 
 If wise men sifting light from Saturn's band 
 Discern the rainbowed metals there, what 
 
 wonder 
 If these passions in your dust shine back to 
 
 Saturn, 
 If the Soul, regnant in you, reign everywhere ! 
 
 " And if the chorded metals and the fine 
 
 Elements, in ethereal discipline, 
 
 Be spaced about the orchestra divine 
 
 So thou canst gauge a gap, and prove the curve 
 
 Celestial — even unveil the dark companion 
 
 Of devious orbs — may not thy soul intense 
 
 " In its unfrontier'd and illumined mood 
 Hear, far beyond its borders, as it would, 
 At the due interval, with certitude, 
 Transcendent harmony, transcendent Good ? 
 The Gods themselves are pipes in one great 
 
 organ 
 Wherethrough the nations send their shuddering 
 
 breath 
 Until the keyboard's motions die away." 
 
 123
 
 O BIRDS OF THE AIR 
 
 O BIRDS of the air- 
 Wild birds, buoyant, vagabond, light — 
 Streams may have taught you a stave ; 
 
 But how are ye born so sure of your flight 
 Hence over worlds of the wave ? 
 
 Whose mind remembers in yours as it weaves 
 Subtlest of houses to sway with the leaves ? 
 We have forgotten the land out of sight — 
 We build no house but the grave ! 
 
 i 24
 
 I SEEK THEE IN THE HEART ALONE 
 
 FOUNTAIN of Fire whom all divide, 
 We haste asunder like the spray- 
 But waneless doth Thy flame abide 
 Whom every torch can take away ! 
 
 I seek Thee in the heart alone, 
 I shall not find in hill or plain ; 
 Our rushing star must keep its moan, 
 Our nightly soul its homeward pain. 
 
 Song out of thought, Light out of power, 
 Even the consumings of this breast 
 Advance the clearness of that hour 
 When all shall poise, and be at rest. 
 
 It cracks at last — the glowing sheath, 
 The illusion, Personality ; 
 Absorbed and interwound with death 
 The myriads are dissolved in Thee. 
 
 125
 
 ODE 
 
 AT ASSOUAN ON THE NILE 
 
 Inscribed to W. A. 
 
 I 
 
 IN your amphitheatres of flood-worn rock, 
 Granite escarpments that the desert rings 
 Of quarries whence gray Egypt hewed her kings — 
 Hail ! stark beginnings that the fool can mock — 
 Sun-obelisks half-hewn, prone architraves — 
 Hail to you, every scarred and prostrate block ! 
 And hail to you, poor plot of English graves 
 Ranked in the sun, a little martial flock ! 
 What sudden-quencht, impossible command 
 Say, were you uttering to this drift of sand 
 For England ? Your command shall be fulfilled. 
 A temple housing kingdoms doth she build 
 Whose beams are ye, and whose foundations wide 
 The bones of sons; and you therein shall bide ! 
 
 ii 
 
 There shall be lifted for the Earth at last 
 One Temple, O my Soul, consummate, fair, 
 Whiter than lightning, rock-set, and so vast 
 That the hopes even of the young may enter there ! 
 126
 
 Round shall it be as that horizon old 
 About its steeps and clear dominions seen, 
 And girt with columns in the antique mould, 
 And doors, one for each nation, stand between 
 Statues heroic — doors, yea, numberless 
 And open. Yellow hands and black and white 
 Shall cast them — so that every race may press 
 Up always to that altar never cold ! 
 
 in 
 
 There shall be none cast out — nor any fears 
 Fraternal. Unknown music shall aspire 
 About that altar, nor shall human tears 
 Quench the high flame, or still the trembling 
 
 choir 
 Of man ascendant. Chiefest symbol there, 
 Whereon the eyes of all the host shall wait, 
 The winged chalice of the holy sun 
 Lifted above the roof from gate to gate. 
 Its only priesthood thoughts, that range on high 
 In the soft and changeful vestures of the sky ; 
 And the slow-built, straggling village of this ball 
 Thither shall mount to worship One, the All ; 
 And every soul find there, ere it depart, 
 That thing which fills the craving of its heart. 
 
 THE END 
 
 127
 
 NOTES 
 
 TO NEW POEMS 
 
 The longer poems, and most of the shorter, are now printed for 
 the first time. Among the remainder the " Dreamy Friendly- 
 Trees" appeared in the anthology entitled "The Open Road." 
 "I heard a Soldier" in an anthology printed in the Transvaal; 
 "The Questioners" in the French International Quarterly 
 Vers et Prose, and in the Fortnightly Review ; and the " Old 
 Anchor Chanty " in the Gazette of the Naval Reserve and the 
 Spectator, etc. 
 
 To a Nightingale on a Hilltop before Dawn 
 
 The " traveller " mentioned is Colonel Younshusband. 
 The " clansmen " on the heights under Mount Elburz 
 (or Elbrus) are the Kysty tribe of the Tchen Tchen. 
 
 The Queen of Gothland 
 
 The personage portrayed in this narrative may be easily 
 recognised, and it is, therefore, unnecessary to explain 
 allusions. 
 
 The Shepherd 
 
 In the second passage of this poem (11) I owe suggestions 
 to recollections of an anonymous article in some news- 
 paper. The source escapes me ; but may this be my 
 grateful acknowledgment to the writer. I also owe a 
 line and a half to Mr. Hale White. 
 
 In Summer-time, etc. 
 
 This is merely a variation on an old air. 
 
 R 129
 
 Apollo and the Seaman 
 
 This poem is intended to be accompanied by orchestral 
 music. Closely following its text, the distinguished 
 composer Mr. Joseph Holbrooke has composed a com- 
 plete Symphony which, it is hoped, may shortly be 
 performed. May his splendid music receive that recog- 
 nition which, in our day, and for the moment only, is 
 denied to Poetry ! In alliance between the arts of 
 Poetry and Music, and in the philosophic ideas they 
 may together convey, lies, I believe, much of promise for 
 our civilisation.
 
 PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND COMPANY 
 
 LIMITED, AT THE BALLANTYNE 
 
 PRESS, TAVISTOCK STREET 
 
 COVENT GARDEN 
 
 LONDON
 
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