Ex Libris C. K. OGDEN THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES UNTO THE HILLS UNTO THE HILLS BY DOUGLAS W. FRESHFIELD ' Cantantes licet usque, minus via laedat, eamus.' Virgil. ' Ttjs dvoj odov dd f^ofxeOa.' Pl.ATO. LONDON EDWARD ARNOLD 1914 A II rights rtstrvtd PR 4 - - -' FB92u CONTENTS SONNETS PAGE ON HIGH DOWN, FRESHWATER, ... 3 GIBRALTAR, 4 PROVENCAL SONNETS — I. VOX HUMANA, 5 U. VOX MONTIUM 6 III. INTER OLIVAS 7 IV. MORS JANUA VITAE 8 V. EPICURI DE GRKGE! .... 9 VI. WITH A NOSEGAY OF WILD ANEMONES, lO APRIL IN ROME, II THE PALACE OF THE CAESARS, ... 12 O DEA CERT^ ! I3 IN VAL MAGGIA, I4 EX VOTO 15 V 1001633 J-AGB nunc formosissimus annus l6 life's voyage, 17 the happy marinf,k, 18 TO F. J. D. , 19 TO M. A. C 20 RHYMES IN THE CAMI'AGNA 23 AD ALTA 27 DE PROFUNDI S, 30 THE SONG OF THE HIMALAYAN FAIRIES, 32 VIEW AND VISION 35 QUOD SEMPER, 42 EST DEUS IN NOBIS ! 47 A DIRGE SI D, O. M 53 REVELATION 54 IN A DANTE 55 IN ST. PETER'S OF ROME, .... 56 COLUMBUS, 58 vi PAGE w. F. D., i8S8 59 ON A WINDOW IN THE STRAND, . . . 6l INSCRIPTION FOR A STONEMAN ON THE PRAKION, 62 ON A PICTURE SIGNED FF. BASS, ... 63 A PORTRAIT OF AN INFANTE AT VIENNA, 65 ALLA DOGANA, .66 TO A GOOD DOG 70 LEVIORA FABULA NARRATUR ! . AN EGYPTIAN VALENTINE, LA BELLE ERNESTINE, TO LADIES WHO GARDEN", PROSERPINAE APUD HESPERIDES, RUSTICUS EXPECTAT, VALE A REFUSAL, .... AT THE BAR — A WEALD PASTORAL, THE OLD MOUNTAINEER TO HIS GUIDE, MOUNTAIN MIDGETS, vii 75 79 83 86 87 90 95 98 100 104 105 PAGE THREE IN BURMA, ^^° SING CUCKOO ! ^^^ ENVOI, ^^3 NOTES "5 vm i^a SONNETS The small figures refer to the Notes at end. ON HIGH DOWN, FRESHWATER i Moulder of golden thought in silver rhyme, The wiser Virgil of a world grown grey, For whom, beyond Mortality's decay, Above our lowland night of Sloth and Crime, Shone the faint Gleam, pealed forth the Morning Chime, The Chime that heralds Life's slow-climbing day. The Rose of Dawn on summits far away, Whose snows outsoar the twilight mists of Time : Poet and Prophet of a mighty race, You bade the Statesman 'keep our England whole,' You loved Imperial Britain, since her face Shines with the Light of Freedom in her soul ; We raise this Beacon on the Down's High Place To guide our homebound navies to their goal. 3 GIBRALTAR • Gibraltar ! Thousand-tongued to foemen's ears, O'er the bright billows of the narrow Main That parts green Barbary from tawny Spain The famous Rock its caverned strength uprears : Outpost of Europe, where through blood and tears Men dimly strive some better state to gain. Fronting the land where all old things remain, And nothing changes save the changing years : Bulwark of Britain, of the fleet whose sails Bear Peace and Justice to the Farthest East, Of the great Isle, whose Fortune still prevails. Herself among her offspring first and least, Till wars shall cease and all mankind be free Our brave March-Warden of the Midland Sea ! 4 PROVENCAL SONNETS I VOX HUMANA Friends of the sun, unvext by winter's blight, In this gay Garden of the Hesperides, Between the azure sky and sapphire seas, We lead a life of delicate delight — A careless life — yet, ever, out of sight, Coiled in the gloaming of the garden-trees, The grey death-dragon waits his prey to seize. Wreaking on each in turn his ancient spite. Must we and all fair things on this fair earth In soulless, senseless atoms pass away? Is man a puppet, fated from his birth To dance whatever tune blind chance may play? Are Love and Duty shadows of no worth, Poor, painted shadows on the potter's clay ? S II vox M0NTIUM2 Lift up, sad souls, your eyes above the hills, Hills olive-hoary, vine-encompassfed, Above the amber range, whose caverns shed Great fountains forth to serve a thousand rills, Above the fields man's labour sows and tills, Above each pasturage his flocks have fed, Up to yon mighty Alp, whose silver head, Outsoaring earth, a place in heaven fills. What tidings kindle thy lone lantern-light, Space-searching watchman ? Down the solemn height Spirit to spirit through the husk of clay Whispers — ' Be brave ; fear not the coming night ; Being endures, though Alps and men decay ; God lights my beacon from His deathless Day.' 6 Ill INTER OLIVAS First from the ruddy ground the corn upshoots, Weaving a pattern with the lusty blade Grow frail anemones, like queens arrayed, And companies of tulips, spring's recruits : Ere green turns gold, the low and dusty roots That hold the vine put forth a leafy shade ; Some sultry moons ; and, see ! each hill and glade Draped in soft tendrils, decked with purple fruits: Between the sun and summer's revelry, Guarding through months and years her ghostly leaves, The olive spreads a thin, perpetual veil ; So over all our human pageantry Hangs the pale shadow. Yet the stocks and sheaves Teem with the life to come, which shall not fail. 7 IV MORS JANUA VITAE Earth's happier generations rise and fall, They leap to birth, droop, die, and dis- appear ; Yet stocks and seeds keep, against spring- time's call. Blossoms as fair as those of yester-year : Shading a thousand vintages and sheaves, The olive lives, while all around it die, A hoary, helpless God, who feels and grieves, Tithonus-like, his immortality ; Rather a grey philosopher, who knows Decay the gate to larger forms of life. Who sees how deep the stream of Being flows. How order reigns beneath the seeming strife, And has in symbols the great secret read — Since Death is Change, Death— Death alone— is dead. 8 EPICURI DE GREGE! Earth's first and fairest-born, the anemon^, Tall warrior tulips, poppy-banners red, Narcissus' stars, which lured Persephone, With these the Spring comes girt and garlanded. The field-flowers pass ; high in the cypress-spire Rose-tendrils climb, to fall a white cascade ; The fig's stiff boughs are tipt with living fire ; Fond vines leap up and clasp the plane- tree's shade. A soft, grey cloud, through all the summer's shining, The olives hang about the mountain's feet ; Winter's rough gale reveals their silver lining, And rains fat berries on the peasant's sheet : Corn, wine and oil some God has given to man ; Take the good gifts, nor ask the Giver's plan. VI WITH A NOSEGAY OF WILD ANEMONES This fairy host, camped in the fields all day, Through the green blades of tender wheat outshone. Gay courtiers of the orb, whose earliest ray Unpeoples heaven, and bids its host. Begone. Now by my hands transplanted to the shade Their pretty bannerets hang limp and low,. The bravery spent, of late so fair displayed. As prisoners, not ambassadors, they show. Such augury had filled me with despair But that a floweret whispers — ' Our appeal Misdoubting thus you much misprize the Fair, When the soft sunshine of her eyes we feel, Our buds, no more their gentle heads declining, Will ope as wide as Phoebus' self were shining.' lo APRIL IN ROME Spring has an altar now in every street, And all the wind-tost, starry tribes that dwell Under Borghese's pines have felt her spell ; In the Campagna shepherds catch the beat Through the lark's song of her soft-falling feet ; On Nemi's down tall spires of asphodel Wave sun-illumined ; in Marino's dell The violets and cyclamen are sweet ; Where Alba's height takes the low sun's last dart, Where Anio's streams the soft, broad meadows part. Bright-eyed narcissi dance in snowy rings ; Light, life are everywhere, and Nature's heart Grows vocal, while the nightingale outflings The living soul of all the world's dead springs. II THE PALACE OF THE CAESARS This is the ancient pleasure-house of death, Caesars — his regents — here have reigned and bled, Hither the nations of the world were led, Rome's offerings to Jove who Conquereth. The soft, warm air grows heavy with the breath Born of a soil that hardly holds its dead ; The poppy-blooms, that paint the waste walls red, Witness of those whom none remembereth : Followers of Christ, who, when the Flavian Ring Shouted their doom, heard only Heaven at hand ; Patriots, who felt not death's, but serfdom's, sting. Slain, these for Faith and those for Father- land : — Life strives at odds with Death in Death's own home, And Youth grows mortal in immortal Rome. 12 O DEA CERTEI3 The glorious moorland from its purple crest In three great capes breaks down upon the brine, Dark storm-stained crags, the billows under- mine, Front the red sun, slow broadening to his rest : Beneath the cliffs the cormorant builds her nest ; Above the waves white wings of seagulls shine, Smoothly they sail, like messengers divine. Out of the fabled regions of the west. Surely the God whose radiance fills your face. Who gilds with light the halo of your hair. To bid bright Dian to her wonted place Sent out these tireless couriers of the air. Who fly no farther, since they here behold The very Goddess of the sky and wold. 13 IN VAL MAGGIA'* Your young, irradiant presence I compare To Maggia's brook, that leaves Bavona's snows For skies and vales Italian, and the Close Where Ponte Brolla frames a Naiad's lair : Past the thin shallows, through the noon's hot glare, Hasteless, unresting, the sweet water flows . To seek cool caves, whose sapphire stillness glows Deeper than heaven, when midnight's vault lies bare. May such a life flow on, inviolate, Unmarred by winter storm, or summer spate, To the Great Lake of all our lives the goal ; And, if beyond that silence reach Man's fate, On the broad flood of Being while we roll May we be sometime conscious, soul of soul. 14 EX VOTO Henceforth I know how Guardian Angels greet The worn wayfarers from our lower skies ; On their clear brows the glow that spreads and flies Is lately lit from that celestial heat Where flesh turns spirit, their bright lips repeat Slow, soft, sweet Welcome, while their far-off eyes Look through the maze of Life's perplexities Into the souls of those they smile to meet. Did I not watch you on the sacred stair All mortal feet must soon or later pace Halt and lean down and listen, even there, Then, hesitating for a little space. Turn at the last in answer to love's prayer With heaven's light reflected on your face ? 15 NUNC FORMOSISSIMUS ANNUS The May returns, but He returns no more ; The sylvan choristers from over-sea Find their old chauntries in each hedge and tree ; For us no voice rings through the open door ; The slow, sad waves that sob along the shore. The cliffs, the downs, the copses whisper : ' He Returns no more, whom best we loved to see, He has gone hence, gone Home for evermore.' What if this World to that for which we yearn. Some larger life that lies beyond the tomb. Be but the pictured page that children turn ' Shadowing great histories in little room,' And souls too bright to dwell with shadows here Must Onward, where realities appear ? i6 LIFE'S VOYAGE A seabird's pinion, or a heather-knoll, Cloud-piercing Alps, great streams, a silent wood, Oft touch our souls with sense of brotherhood, Making us one with one great sentient Whole ; But most we lean on some fair fellow-soul, Partner in perils and in solitude, Sailing with us across life's billows rude, Steering, like us, for no sure, shining goal. Yet Duty, stern-eyed captain, stops our ears. When Nature's myriad voices move the sense, And Fate clips Love with harsh, untimely shears. Lest, should souls' sympathy grow too intense, The human fleet, safe moored in sunny bays. Forget its goal and the wide ocean ways. B 17 THE HAPPY MARINER TO DANTE By Chance and Circumstance the deck is manned Whereon embarked on seas with dangers rife We steer, or drift, amid the Wind waves' strife From the Forgotten to the Unknown Land ! Birth, dealing souls with undiscerning hand, Youth, keen to start upon the Voyage of Life, Choose the ship's company, child, parent, wife. With whom we sail, where winds and tides com- mand : Thrice happy he, who through the stress and jar, Menace of tempest, turmoil of the crew, Can set his helm by one bright, far-seen starj One star, far-seen and therefore ever true ; Though the wild billows surge and sweep his deck, Sure of his course, he shall not suffer wreck. i8 TO F. J. D.5 OBIIT A.D. 1905 Knight-errant of the glacier-cleaving blade, Whose cottage lies hard on the narrow way Trodden in summer by the World at play — The World that hurries home to drive its trade ; Then left to silence, in the two-fold shade Of winter and Mont Blanc, where no warm ray Breaks the white darknessof the shortest day, And Spring's first blooms in Summer's lap are laid : Let the frosts bite; they cannot chill the glow Lit by the memories of other years ; Embersthrough whichshines the far Syrian snow, Or Caucasus its conquered peaks uprears ; Smoke-wreaths that frame old friends — young faces too — For old and young find guide and friend in you. 19 TO M. A. C.« or.iiT A.D. 1887 Type of the veterans of a byegone day, When all the silver Alps were holy ground, And few the feet that ventured o'er the bound Of the white realm that owns the Frost-King's sway. Guide of my boyhood, old Michel Couttet, Through life's long walk in all things faithful found, A village sage, by fourscore winters crowned. Your upright strength in peace has passed away. You lived too soon to join in the great fight, To lead with Frangois, or to climb with Croz ; Your care to keep Jacques Balmat's path in sight, Hand down the craft that conquers ice and snow ; We, victors hailed on every Alpine height. To such forerunners all our victories owe. 20 RHYMES IN THE CAMPAGNA 'Epws Oi'/aecri^oiTrjS Far from the City's hum and strife, The stress and jar men miscall Life ; Here, where the shepherd makes his home Among the vacant tombs of Rome, Here on this grassy, sheep-cropt hill Above the champaign broad and still Rest we one hour ; the time and place Have something of a special grace ; Lured by this season of fair weather Our souls, perchance, may slip their tether, And, soaring high beyond the bound Set all our daily wanderings round, To the frore mountain-tops take flight, That flush, as opals, soft and bright, 23 Thence, like the seer on Pisgah's brow, Catch glimpses out beyond the Now Of that dear land, our dreamt-of goal, Where soul has fellowship with soul, And earthly lives of noble kind Meet in eternity enshrined. The world would stop us — ' Cease to seek Foreknowledge on the mountain peak, With idle questionings to ply The borderland of earth and sky, Whose rainbow tints, so seeming-fair Through noon's translucent veil of air, For men who on the summits climb Turn to pale snow and barren rime ; The flowers scattered at your feet Are no less bright — and, Ah ! how sweet ! Life in the present finds its sphere. And all we need is given here : 24 Listen ! the lark at heaven's gate Sings, but sings only for his mate, Nor thinks of heaven ; the flocks who pass Like summer clouds across the grass Know their own pasture and their kin, From these their food and pleasure win, Nor look beyond ; the shepherd-boy Finds in his play-fellow a toy While the sun shines ; and, what are we To boast our lives and loves must be Alone, where all draw mortal breath, Beyond the stroke of Time and Death?' Thus far the World ; his tale is told : To ancient tale reply as old : — ' Let Venus in the forest-glade, A primal Goddess, undismayed, Join living things, and lovers face Each other at the trysting-place, 25 ^/v And hands and lips together press, And each yield each such happiness As Earth can give. Love, linked to sense, In time alone has permanence ; But those who love with higher scope Fix in eternity their hope, And while our globe beneath them rolls Rest anchored to the land of souls : Therefore, though field and grove and stream And all the life with which they teem Be spread about us, our delight Is still in "gazing up the height," Up to the everlasting hills, '"^ Our tower of refuge from life's ills, In whose immutable repose And steadfast, skyward-facing snows We find fit emblem of the soul That through Life's parts discerns the Whole, Fit type of the enduring Love That links our world with worlds above.' 26 AD ALTA There are who love the silver heights, The silver heights above the lawn, Who spurn the lowland's tame delights, Sworn fellow-travellers with the dawn ; Pursuers of no earthly goal, They leave the slopes of maize and vine, Outclimbing pasturage and pine To seek beyond the mountain line That fabled country, dim, divine, Where Life is whole. Not as on Mecca's pilgrimage In one long, bright, unbroken stream These pilgrims of our modern age Their march pursue ; to crowds who dream As dreamt our fathers long ago They yield the broad, the common round, Daring their fate, beyond the bound Of mortal sense, on that high ground Wlience Truth and Knowledge, star-encrowned, Watch ages flow. They strive, they strain, to reach the pass Where the white peaks asunder swerve To frame the Heaven's blue. Alas ! Of all that reach that shining curve Not one returns — not one to tell What lies beyond — a void abyss. Or summer-lands where those we miss. Those gone before, join hands and kiss, Before they mount through spheres of bliss With God to dwell. Yet some, who leave a vacant hearth, And, grief for guide and comrade, scale 28 Heights that within our fate-fixed garth Yet half o'erlook its bounding pale ; These in the all-embracing skies Watch, through the gates of quiet snow- Where Death sits warder, far and low, On earth's horizon pulsing slow, The gleam of Deathless Love, the glow Of Paradise. To their high silence human strife Comes as the torrent's muffled roar ; The clouds that roof the Plains of Life For them are Heaven's golden floor ; The lights that all about them fly Are God's own shadow ; in their ears The Soul that makes and moves the spheres, That is in all that here appears, Whispers the secret of the years : Life cannot die. 29 DE PR0FUNDIS7 The moorland breaks upon the brine, The brine breaks on the barren shore, The curving foam-wave's yeasty line Rings the rough cliff with circles hoar, And all the flooded sea-caves roar. Where to the utmost bounds of sight The ocean stretches, dark and bare. Lingering, as jealous of the night. Low in the golden dome of air. The sun descends his wonted stair. Before the purple billows leap To meet and hold their glorious guest His shafts the waste of waters sweep, And every wave that fronts the west Bears on its brow a shining crest. 30 The gleam flies on to strike the rocks, Red capes to fiercer red to sting, To touch with fire the harvest shocks, To add fresh colour to the ling. New radiance to the seagull's wing. One moment sea and moorland bask, We worship in a Holy Place ; The next ; a cold, grey, empty mask Mocks the sad eyes that fain would trace In Nature a Creator's face. Some larger life on which to lean, Some token of Creation's goal, We crave ; unbroken still, the screen Of matter fronts the lonely soul ; Silent the waves, the planets roll. 31 THE SONG OF THE HIMALAYAN FAIRIES 8 Far from the dusky alleys Of the many-tongued Bazaar, Beyond the shadowy valleys Where the Lamaseries are, Here, where no springtime varies The frost's eternal span. We dwell, the Mountain Fairies, Since first the world began. The glacier's winding river Is our familiar road, Through frozen waves that shiver We sweep to our abode, The foam-flakes on our horses Are sheets of driven snow, 32 The goal of their wild courses Only the winds may know. The tribesmen, bent on plunder, Who crawl in troops, like mice. Where keen peaks, rent asunder. Gird hidden seas of ice, Hear, as the shadows thicken, Clear through the crystal air, Sounds that the silence quicken, Our evening call to prayer. Then grows in ears that listen, Beyond the dim crevasse. The pulse of wings that glisten, The beat of hosts that pass, As round earth's loftiest steeples. In shrines by man untrod, The sky's primaeval peoples Assemble unto God. c 33 From our far-shining stations, Where Death finds nought to slay, We watch the way-worn nations Toil upward from their clay ; We wait on our white islands Of everlasting light For souls who love the Highlands, That soar above the Night. For them we weave strange dances, Like cloudlets ' lightly curled,' We whisper them in trances The Secret of the World ; Those whom we show our faces Are fain with us to dwell In the elemental spaces, Remote from Heaven or Hell. 34 VIEW AND VISION 9 I LAY alone with the sunset, hard by the Caucasian snow, And gazed from my eagle's eyrie over infinite space below And infinite space above me, the lifeless wastes of the sky. And the fields where men as of old are born, grow weary, and die : For Phoebus had stooped from the Height and sunk to his nightly rest. Where the waves and sky were one in the far- oflf Gates of the West, And the white-robed, soft mist-maidens, who spring from the salt sea-spray To dream on the hills at noontide, had quietly melted away : 35 Bare, boundless, all-embracing, the vault of heaven outspread, While the face of the earth still glowed with the kiss of the day that was dead, And the mountains shone transfigured, each hill and valley and stream Clothed round with light for raiment, and fair as a poet's dream : A sudden star in the gloaming, a flash in a dusky space, Shone Phasis, the ancient river, the pride of a vanished race, At rest in the lap of the lowlands, where, girt in a pomegranate close, Aietes'city, Kyteia,looksuptothe stainless snows. At my feet lay the Home of the Outlaws, the Vale of a Thousand Towers, Where murder wades red-handed, knee-deep in a garden of flowers, 36 Where the glaciers in avalanche fall on a carpet of lily and rose, And through leagues of glade and forest the fragrant azalea glows ; Where the Snow-Rhododendrons cluster on pastures unbitten by kine, And above the quivering birch -grove the crests of the Stormpeak shine. Then slowly o'er hill and valley were spread the wings of the night, But the frosty summits about me shone forth as pillars of light, And the ice-stairs, all untrod, from Kaf s Temple of Wingless Peace Stretched down towards golden Kolkhis, the Land of the Golden Fleece ; While over earth's climbing shadow, unfurled on the field of blue, 37 Where the banners of fire once flickered the banner of day still flew, Rose-red on the heights of Elbruz, on the domes that were built by Dis, When the lava seethed and weltered where now roll billows of ice. As high o'er Rome's Coliseum the purple velarium spread, A shade to the proud patrician, a shade to the slave just dead, So the face of the earth was full of beauty and story and strife, While the dome of the sky stretched empty above the turmoil of life. Then I watched till the chill before dawn, when the blood in the veins runs cold, And the face of the earth was void, but crowded the heavenly fold ; 38 The moonless vault was ablaze with the splendour of spheres unknown, Suns upon suns in systems, each greater far than our own. And the fragments of orbs in making were a causeway of living light, As the star that heralds the morning sailed up on the skirts of the night ; And vain seemed all the beauty and all the strife of a World, Blotted out in an instant's throb by the Vision of Space unfurled ; And Night grew greater than Day, and Life grew larger than Death, And a man's brief wrestle with Fate as an in- fant's battle for breath ; And the body was less than raiment, and our Earth as an inn on the road, Where the traveller halts for an hour on his way to some far-off abode : 39 And the gods man makes in his image, the creatures of stock and of stone That led the nations to pillage, that fought each one for his own ; The creeds of saints and sages, who strove for a viewless goal, Were as shadows athwart the ages from the depths of the human soul. Dim shadows, faint and fleeting, yet born of that Infinite Day In which on the Heights of Being all shadows must melt away : For the shackles of flesh were loosed with the fetters of mortal feajs, And the walls of sense fell down to the song of the circling spheres, And the suns upon suns uncounted were forms of the Living Soul, The Law that abides in the Heavens to shep- herd their flock to its goal, 40 And Spirit spoke with Spirit, and the part was one with the Whole. Then the frosty summits about me that loomed like ghosts through the night Once more in the crystal clearness flashed forth as pillars of light ; Day broke over field and forest, while void was the upper sky : In that 'still small voice' within me had the Soul of the Worlds passed by ? Had I seen or dreamt the Vision ? Let me dream my dream till I die. 41 QUOD SEMPER I ' What always, everywhere, by all,' — Nay rather read, — ' by all the best ' — j^ Has been believed, has stood the test Of Time, while creeds and systems fall. Hold this for Truth ; nor think the clod Let loose to suffer change and chance In the wild clash of circumstance Evolves its conscience and its God, Nor side with those, who hold the spark Of Being struck when man is born Flies out to wander here forlorn. Then falls back quenched in light, or dark. 42 Our life is not without a goal, We were not made to pass as smoke ; On the World's anvil, stroke by stroke, God hammers out the single soul. Thou sparest all, for they are Thine, Lover of souls, All-knowing Lord, Parts of Thy Spirit, sent abroad. But indestructible, divine. II The child must picture the Unknown From his own knowledge, and the priest Create his Heaven, a solemn feast ; His God, a tyrant overgrown : Yet some new race may apprehend With finer, subtler sense than ours The Things Unseen, the Moving Powers, The Unknowable to which we tend. 43 Noon's rays will melt the cobweb-creeds Spun in the morning of man's brain ; Dogmas that narrow Hope in vain Spring, spread, and perish, earthly weeds. With the Invisible we dwell, The Unknown God allots his span, His Day of Banishment, to Man ; We wait in trust Life's curfew bell : The bell that tolls when human breath Goes forth to wander in the night That blots all mortal things from sight To open Heaven, the Night of Death. Ill We talk : our little lanterns fail. Or shed an ineffectual ray, Sufficient if they light the way Between the forest and the vale. 44 The lamp before Our Lady's shrine May guide the peasant to his hearth, But those who cUmb beyond the garth Must trust to beacons more divine. The guests in Nature's hostelry Still see in watches of the night, As Moses on the Arabian height, God's raiment trail across the sky : We trust the Broad succeeds the Strait, That Onward, Upward, we shall climb Beyond the bounds of Space and Time, Above the farthest shafts of Fate : Past Moslem bowers with roses twined. Past the pale fields of asphodel, Valhalla and Nirvana, Hell, The dim, grim visions of mankind : 45 Past Sin and Sorrow, Death and Pain, To that white Throne, where, set above The Heaven of Heavens, Immortal Love Shall make Creation new again. 46 EST DEUS IN NOBIS ! On Life's dim road I had for guide A child of light : he left my side ; Then in my loneliness I cried ; Not to Jehovah on His throne, Who rules by sacrifice alone, Like his old foes of wood and stone ; Not to the God of priests and scribes, Whose delegates, Rome's venal tribes, Mete out eternity for bribes ; To none of these, the shadows cast By man's dark mind in ages past Across th' impenetrable Vast ; But rather to the Saint and Sage, The souls of every clime and age. Who pent on this revolving stage, 47 Lived not as beasts that pace their den, But kept the stars within their ken, True Sons of God born sons of men : The Christ, who taught in Palestine, In words that through His gospels shine. How man may make himself divine. He saw past Death, but could He tell For those fond hearts that all is well, For whom one face makes Heaven or Hell ? What help has the sad King whose lore. Pierced through the husk of life, and tore His Proverbs from its inmost core ? What the wise Greek, who, fancy-sped, Followed the souls by virtue led Down the dim pathways of the dead ? 48 What help the Caesar, cold and lone, Content, a Saint in camp and throne, To leave the end of Love unknown ? Next I addrest our time and race, Seeking for Revelation's trace In Voices of the Market-place. The Comptist prates, ' Mankind may brood On all great lives with gratitude ' : Offering sad Love this stone for food ! One trusts our souls in Nature lapse ; One walks collecting Psychic Scraps ; The wisest linger on ' Perhaps.' Last I besought the Voice within. If from that witness, dulled by sin. Some surer message I might win. D 49 ' Live well, love well ' — the Spirit saith — Good deeds outlast this fleeting breath, Love, lord of self, has mastered death ; ' Learn : he in Nature's book who reads May graft Heaven's flowers on earthly weeds ; Believe — the Truth beyond the Creeds.' A DIRGE Before the dull earth closes Above our Darling, roses, Heap roses, spring's first roses, On our Beloved's bier ; Since love— fond love— supposes His spirit may be near. Primrose and violet shower, Bluebells, the woodlands' dower, Strip every hedgerow bower Of all he held most dear ; Leave Spring without a flower Since he, our Spring, lies here. Last, fond yet idle token. Where no word can be spoken, This blossom that is broken Beside him gently lay, This lily that lies broken, The loveliest of May. 51 Gone hence before his summer, Earth's happiest newcomer, The Maytime's gayest mummer, Whose part was yet to play. Gone, to what far-off Summer ? Gone, gone, what worlds away ! Not here, where we stand heaping Pale flowers, does he lie sleeping : Beyond all earthly weeping, Beyond all mortal fear, He watch for us is keeping Where dark things are made clear. Help, strengthen our backsliding, We follow thy dear guiding, Till, Death no more dividing, We break the bonds of clay, Till Souls in Love abiding Meet on Life's upward way. 52 D. O. M. Earth's ancient peoples heard a voice Which said—' Thou shalt not slay ' : Being in whom the worlds rejoice, The law Thou gavest, obey : Thou who hast cooped, Man knows not why, Our souls in mortal clay, Creator, hear Thy creature's cry Repeat— 'Thou shalt not slay ! ' 53 REVELATION Not only in the Hebrew page Man reads, writ large, his heritage, God's revelations come to each : He sends His sons to every Age As child or poet, saint or sage, Love's Immortality to teach. 54 IN A DANTE Most mortal creatures use the name of Love ; But few — how few — Lift up their hearts all earthly ties above, To Love's self true. Dante's high soul in Beatrice near Found life made new ; Her presence lost, to Beatrice's sphere Past all worlds flew. So may it be, till death and after, Dear, With me and you. 55 IN ST. PETER'S OF ROME^o 1870-1880 Before religion's ancient home, Where Michael Angelo's great dome Outsoars the seven hills of Rome, I stand ; the fountains leap and play. The stream of life flows either way. All earth and sky are keeping May. ' Pass in the pillared doors between. Push back the ponderous leathern screen. What vision in the shrine is seen ?' The bitter wind across me blown Comes from a wilderness of stone ; I wait, with buried Popes, alone. 56 No clear-voiced choir, no trumpet-blast, No living soul within the vast Cold cenotaph of ages past, Where ten years since, these aisles along, Before my eyes with pomp and song Swept the great Council's mitred throng. Ah ! foolish priests ! The silver head You crowned all-wise, all wisdom fled, . In yonder marble cell lies dead. The world that stared has gone its way, ' God's voice was not in him,' men say, And turn to other shrines to pray. While ye, whose altar sheds no light. Cry in your chambers, ' Lo the night ! ' Look forth ; the outer world grows bright. 57 COLUMBUS Greatest of all seafaring men, The Captain of a glorious quest, You pierced the sunset and the West To add new worlds to human ken. Happy in this you reached your goal : God grant us such good hap, when we Put out on Death's estranging sea, Bound for the other world of soul. 58 W. F. D., 1888^1 I White Soul, in lands of purer light Who caught the secrets of the snow, For you no priest performed the rite, No hireling led the funeral show, Lost on the far Caucasian height, We know not how, content to know The guardian stars their watches keep. The mountain walls their ward extend. Where Nature holds in quiet sleep Her own interpreter and friend. 59 II Mens nive candidior, nlvium depingere sellers Effigies vivas, sole juvante, manus ! Nulla suburbano posuit te pompa sepulcro, Nee tibi supremum vox pia dixit Ave. Rupibus aeriis ingens ubi Caucasus horret, Quam procul, heu ! patria, dulcis amice, jaces. Discretos cineres cingunt candentia mundi Moenia, custodes sidera sola loci : Corripuit gremio dignum Natura ministrum ; Pro tumulo pictae stant monimenta nives. 60 ON A WINDOW IN THE STRAND ii For us the common churchyard sod ; Within the temple lies the priest, Who made the highest works of God For town-pent crowds a daily feast. 6l INSCRIPTION FOR A STONEMAN ON THE PRARION T Two sisters, one small brother, raised my frame As part and parcel of their daily game ; Spare me, rude cowherds ; idle tourist, spare, To show how far three British babes may fare. II Me posuere duae parvo cum fratre sorores, Metaque ludorum saepe petita fui ; Parcite, pastores 1 Vacue, O mihi parce, viator ! Sit sacrum, tenerae quod statuere manus. 62 ON A PICTURE SIGNED AND DATED ' FRANCISCUS BASS, MCCCCCLXXX'12 If true count is kept of human dates In this bower of fruit and greenery, To-day by the grace of kindly fates I hold ray Tercentenary ; So long ago in the mountain-town, Where Brenta murmurs sweetly, Francesco laid his paint-brush down. The last S framed completely : ' Franciscus Bass,' the letters run On the wall the lemons shelter. Where the rabbit rests, his day's play done, Tired out with helter-skelter ; While Jacko munches a quiet pear Safe hid beneath the table. And cat and stag in the corner stare, Like the beasts in an Aesop's Fable. 63 For Francesco loved the mirth and pranks Of healthy out-door creatures ; Not his for a place in high-art ranks To paint Madonna's features ; And the broad blue hills and sunset sky With a picnic party stately Were more to him than Heaven's company Of Saints, who smile sedately. Who plays with Fortune must bear her frowns, Or perish — Ah ! the pity Francesco left these sunlit downs. This bright Bassano city, To paint some wall of a Doge's room By the side of Tintoretto, To spend his soul and find his doom In a dark Venetian Ghetto. 64 A PORTRAIT OF AN INFANTE AT VIENNA, BY VELAZQUEZ A Child of Spain with eyes that seem to say ' Home is not here, my home is far away' — Velazquez drew him, trotting on the floor, When he was three years old : he died at four. 65 ALLA DOGANA^s Red, White, and Green ; to you Whose eyes prefer the blue French Tricolor, a rag, A gaudy rag, nnay be. Ah ! but to me this flag Says the word, Italy. Picture it as you please ; Take as my pictures these. The white of summer seas Lapping the rough red knees Of rocks, whereon no breeze Stirs the stiff cypresses. 66 Against the lingering snow, Above the ' Three Lakes ' flow, Rose-hedges — one red glow Round green Bellagio. Between the day and night, Below the first red light, Above the pines' green night, Carrara's marble height That needs no snow for white. The vine-roofed Tuscan plain, The mild majestic twain, Milk-white, without a stain, Yoke-fellows of the wain That spills its gold-red grain. Castel Fusano's glade, The mile-long myrtle shade, Beneath whose boughs embayed 67 Red cyclamen delayed Soft-falling steps that strayed On, where white wavelets played. While winter's blast was keen, Above the Pincian green, Red oak-copses between, The sight by Horace seen, Soracte's silver sheen. Past the short snow-time's chills New life Campagna thrills, White mist of blossom fills The hollows of Rome's hills ; On ruined rampart-walls. On red imperial halls, Spring's fairy mantle falls. The villa where we lay Above the Appian Way, 68 Shines white through glistening grey Of olive-boughs, that sway To April winds' rough play ; And then the flowers array, Our garden -grove's display, Red, white and green of May ! White towns, green woods and leas ; Red hills, white snows, or seas ; Picture it as you please. My Italy is these. 69 TO A GOOD DOG COILTIE, to you these rhymes I send, My trusty, well-beloved friend ; Seven years ago, to us you came In winter's gloom a living flame, A golden Collie, with a face That won in every heart a place, Such wistful fellow-feeling flies To greet mankind from your brown eyes. Born in some misty Highland glen You did not scorn the haunts of men. But left the service of the crook For one who carries bag or book. Content to honour, love, obey A Southron master, gaunt and grey, Resigned, in place of silly sheep, Olivia's company to keep, Or held in awe by Celia's frown Demurely pace the streets of town. 70 While on far Asian heights I stray, I miss you, Coiltie, every day, I miss your morning call, your head And paws laid softly on my bed ; At meals I miss upon my chair The nose that warns me you are there, And urges, eloquently dumb, 'The dog expects his master's crumb' ; I miss you on my daily walk, When you do everything but talk. (Two hints : it 's better not to bark At all the sparrows in the Park ; Nor ought a grown-up dog to run For home, each time he hears a gun.) I miss you more than I can say ; Do you miss me, perhaps, once a day, And think as round the house you roam, ' Master is long away from home ; When shall I run to meet the train And leap to kiss his face again ? ' 71 Love on, dear dog, since dogs and men Who love and would be loved again. Sent here, we know not whence or why. To live a little while and die, Must trust that somewhere love's expense In nature finds its recompense. Who knows ? The Head of Life's great school May govern by some kindly rule, And dogs who give themselves to men. Such dogs as you, good Coiltie, when The dread examiners shall prove Our talents at the next Remove, May hear a voice cry — ' Faithful heart On earth who chose the better part. Your service was not all in vain. The Head decrees you live again ; St. Francis in the form above Keeps you a place near those you love.' Meantime his memory to jog I send my doggrel to my dog. 72 L E V I O R A FABULA NARRATUR ! 'A British guaboat has visited the Island of Bali-lulu and inflicted an adequate chastisement on the native villages whose inhabitants recently massacred a part of the crew of the trading steamer "Albatross."' Daily Paper. We live as the fair folk, erewhile Who dwelt on some Pacific Isle, Encompassed by the ocean's smile. No flaw in that wide ocean's sheen Beyond their isle's eternal green The farthest-sighted seers had seen. Their isle the world ! These wise men knew This fact of facts — and proved it too. Since never came a strange canoe. The islanders were — and were not — Their end a feast ; the common lot Was the ancestral cooking-pot. 75 One sunrise in that coral bay A smoke-emitting monster lay That turned about as if in play, Then snorted and grew still as dead, While from its belly forth it shed Men white, tattooless, underfed. The wise men all along the strand Cried ' Lo, our brothers ! this the band Who never made again the land ; * Cast out upon the salt sea-wave. Where on the reef the breakers rave ; They come to beg a human grave ; * Let them receive interment fit.' The white men on the head they hit, And made a merry night of it. 76 Moons waxed and waned, till in that bay A second, greater, monster lay, That cast forth smoke another way ; The lightnings flashed out from her side, Her thunder echoed far and wide ; Those wise men sang some songs — and died. You surely. Sir, don't ask of me The moral of my tale ? De te, De nobis, fabtda. You see? The islanders of that far isle, Poor savages, they make you smile ; What does Mars think of us the while ? Now up and down, now to and fro, A camera obscura show, Our tiny, coloured figures go ; 77 We fill a little space between The vast To-be, the great Has-been, A little space before a screen. Our wise men take Creation's shape With their own brains for measuring tape, Brains they derive from some great ape. From shelf to counter brisk they hop, Our Scientists, who will not stop. Like Shoemakers, within their shop. Meantime our earth-isle spins in space, Yet never have we seen the face Of Beings from another place. And should they come, can we deny The world again might hear the cry It heard of old time — Crucify ! 78 AN EGYPTIAN VALENTINE, a.d. 1868 You ask me, — ' In my pages, Please, won 't you something write ? ' There only wits and sages Should scatter fancies bright ; Yet to refuse were treason. And, since the present season Gives for my rhymes a reason, These stanzas I indite. Though far from hearth and altar In heathen lands we roam. Our worship must not falter To saints we leave at home, Nor swiftly while we follow The summer-seeking swallow Need Valentines ring hollow Across the Nile's brown foam. 79 Three weeks of cloudless weather Have flown since first we met To sunward sail together, Free from all toil and fret ; And till Youth's latest ember Dies out in Life's December, We 've something to remember, If much we must forget. Far off in the hereafter Fair visions will arise, Bright eyes that brim with laughter. Quaint questions, quick replies, Gay voices that implore us To tell the myth of Horus, Or join some new-world chorus To younger deities. Too soon these golden hours For me must turn to grey ; 80 No more you'll scatter showers Of song along our way, No more, beneath the awning, Carol at eve, at dawning Trill to late birds a warning None dares to disobey. No more from Jews, who cozen The guileless Feringhees, We 'II buy up by the dozen Most dubious scarabees ; Or haunt bazaars together To find an ostrich feather, Or shoes of brightest leather A dainty foot to squeeze. No more in Pharaoh 's porches We '11 wander where you please. Or grope through tombs with torches. Or climb on Sphinxes' knees ; F 8i No more, time's flight forgetting, Watch the red sun's slow setting And the first moonbeams fretting The old Pyramid^s. To-morrow's dawn will scatter The crew that 's here to-day ; Some lives will seem much flatter ; But you ! — I hear you say, 'The time we've had was splendid ; I 'm sorry that it 's ended ; Don 't break what can't be mended, When I am far away.' 82 LA BELLE ERNESTINE ^^ I Round your beauty 's early days What a dazzling halo plays, Poets', wits', and painters' praise, Belle Ernestine ! In your kind and comely mien Still we see what they have seen ; Kindliness keeps beauty green. Belle Ernestine ; Green till beauty hence is gone, Gone with those for whom it shone, Immortality to don. Belle Ernestine. Charms that famous bards have sung. Famous hands on canvas flung. These remain for ever young, Belle Ernestine. 83 These in their perennial bloom No museum shall entomb ; Leave to Saints such ghastly doom, Belle Ernestine. Genius with its touch divine Makes St. Jouain's inn a shrine, Links you to its deathless line, Belle Ernestine. II Had Ulysses his bark run aground On this dim Hyperborean shore, He'd have reckoned the earth was too round, And have sailed on its edges no more ; And Penelope never had found Her husband in rags at the door, A beggar — it may be, a bore ! 84 Since Calypso the hero could screen For months in a damp, hollow cave, Where he lodged— like a Jack i' the Green, The Divine One of Goddesses' slave, We may guess ' chez la belle Ernestine' He'd have thought little more of the wave, Or how heroes ought to behave ! For her cave 's better furnished by far Than any Greek islands can boast, And no nymph from Troytown to Navarre Could make so enchanting a host As the beauty, who beams as the star Of our dim Hyperborean coast ; La belle Ernesline—Dnnk the toast. 85 TO LADIKS WHO GARDEN Our Mother Eve contrived, we read, Mankind of Paradise to cozen ; Her daughters, to repair her deed, Make Paradises by the dozen ! In the fair gardens you create No cruel ambushes he hidden. No behed angel bars the gate, No serpent rustles in unbidden. Within each flowery, fragrant space You fashion for some happy master Old Satan finds no lurking place, No lure to lead us to disaster. Here, ladies, lies your proper sphere. Not cloistered in a Woman's College ; The Tree of Life to all is dear. We'll do without the Tree of Knowledge. 86 PROSERPINAE APUD HESPERIDES Most gracious Lady, spare at least Five minutes for this doleful ditty Before you sail, where West is East, To the great heart of New York City ; Think of the turmoil and the glare, The fevered crowd who toil for treasure, Where fifty Babels rend the air, And Man has lost his sense of measure ; Where Wall Street mobs proclaim all day The praise of the Almighty Dollar, And no one has the time to play, Since every neck has got its collar. Like Proserpine, when fields are gay. And summer makes the World diviner, You come, and then you steam away. For Pluto's car is now a Liner ! 87 Fame tells us New Hesperides, Beyond the Ocean's utmost borders, In lands untouched by Hercules, Await impatiently your orders. We hear of Pergolas, Parterres, Of wondrous floral combinations, A mistress-hand that greatly dares In hitherto undreamt creations ; That lays out long, lime-scented walks, Divided by arched, stately hedges, Pleached alleys, fit for private talks, Where fountains leap o'er marble ledges, Where gazing down each blooming aisle Some Dollar-King of Stocks and Changes Proclaims the glories of Versailles Eclipsed by those your Art arranges. 88 Yet in those lands beyond the Seas, On which you plant your New World Gardens, The shrubs and trees are apt to freeze, And every pool in winter hardens. Why spend such skill to decorate The precincts of an icy Hades ? When frosts are keen, your Empire State Is not a place for plants — or ladies 1 Why help the untutored Millionaire To fashion Nature to his pleasure? His garden may be rich and rare, His heart will still be with his treasure. Perpend then, ere you steam away. The simple moral of my ditty, What all you leave behind you say, — ' It's much too far to New York City ! ' 89 RUSTICUS EXPFXTAT You 'VR surely had enough of Town, Tlie Park, the Parties, and the Play, The Luncheons and the Teas ! Come down To see your friends, and come to stay ; Come, leave the City's noise and glare, The crowd who toil for gain or pleasure ; Come, and in our soft Sussex air Learn to endure a life of leisure ; Come in the heyday of the year. Come in this season of fair weather, Before a single leaf is sere, Before the bloom is off the heather. We '11 show you groves, where ruddy firs Are courted by slim, quivering birches. Where in the fern the pheasant stirs, And on the boughs the pigeon perches ; 90 Where beeches, some old woodman's axe Checked in their skyward aspirations, Spread wide across the Forest tracks. And furnish squirrels' daily rations ; Where chestnuts, round whose branches bare In spring a host of bluebells rallies, With tasselled bloom perfume the air, And whisper of Italian valleys ; Where the gnarled yew-tree views with scorn The conies past his bole who patter, Dreaming of limbs from off him torn The foe at Agincourt to scatter ; Where oaks, whose fathers swept the seas Our shores from ' Boney ' to deliver. Stand, stiff and proud, against the breeze That makes their gentler kindred shiver ; 91 Where on the open, hedge-girt slopes The heavy hay-carts roll and rumble, While long-limbed yokels strain the ropes, And round the wheels the children tumble ; Where on the hill the old, grey spire, Beneath whose shadow dreams the village, Stands up, a sign for half the Shire, And looks across the Wealden tillage, Looks where in one long line the Downs March, like an army, close together, To sheltering thorps and sleepy towns A screen from winter and rough weather ; From Duncton Down to Beachy Head They leap above the lowland acres, Green combes that hold the shepherd's stead, White cliffs that front the curling breakers ; 92 Long ridges of short, sheepcropt turf, Bold bluffs on which the copses clamber, Where Adur loiters to the surf, And Chanctonbury shelters Bramber : Blue on the blueness, gold on gold, While summer shines, while winter lowers, They frame our landscape, fold on fold, Friends of the sunshine and the showers : When the first shepherd calls his tyke. The autumn mists lie low and level About their knees, and flood the Dyke That has for godfather, the Devil. A silver lake the meadows veils, Tall trees, like fairy isles, peep over. While high in air, up-channel, sails A fleet of cloud-ships bound for Dover. 93 No ladders these to scale the sky, Our Downs were made for human uses, Not theirs to vie with Sinai, Or house Apollo and his Muses ; Not theirs, like Alps and Himalay, To converse with the constellations. To catch the gleam of deathless day, And light the darkness of the nations ; Yet grudge them not their meed of praise, A weathersign for simple people, Who love to tread the ancient ways. And sleep beneath the parish steeple. My song is sung : make no delay ; To waste your summer were a pity ; To-morrow we begin our hay ; It's better here than in the City ! 94 VALE 15 Farewell, the parting guest we speed Whose word admits of no denial ; Partings are sad, but since they lead To meetings, we endure the trial ; Go, if you will, but bear in mind In winter London skies grow murky, And that by contract, sealed and signed, You help us eat our Christmas turkey. When the last bloom is on the spray, When brooklets babble in the dingle. When paths are wet, and skies are grey, We keep your place within the ingle. There, while the logs begin to blaze. We '11 lay our memories together, Or call on friends of other days, Old friends bound up in cloth or leather. 95 World-politics, domestic spites, The jars of Church and Chapel scorning, We '11 wander to the sacred heights Where poets walk with Death and Morning ; Next, view the mirror held to life. By novelists of high endeavour, Who paint afresh the joy and strife Of hearts that meet and hearts that sever ; Till, when our modern pens engage Their puppets in a hopeless ravel, We turn to some large, pictured page, And in our chairs securely travel. We'll talk of Alps and Apennines, The Caucasus, the Pyrenean, Of snows that glisten through the vines, Of peaks that pierce the Empyrean. 96 Let others play with Kings and Knaves ; We'll cross once more the famous passes, Sleep in the well-remembered caves, Bestride aretes and leap crevasses ; We 'II hew the ice, a patient band, Though steep the crest, we '11 overcome it, To grasp a guide's and comrade's hand Victorious on the virgin summit ; Then, should some scofifer dare to hint The conversation lacks variety, I '11 toss him coin from Shakespeare's mint, — ' But this is worshipful society ! ' * We both have ' mounting spirits ' ; those Who 've sought the Hills and loved them madly From fellow-victims of the snows Must suffer, — and will suffer gladly. * King John, Act i. Scene i. G 97 A REFUSAL I I SCRIBBLE off these hasty lines Where, harboured by the Apennines, I watch below, a grey-green gleam. The course of Arno's arrowy stream. A country mouse, whom no one heeds, A modest villa meets my needs : To make my leisure all my own — I 've tampered with the telephone. A motor quickly runs me down To the old gates of Florence Town, Or brings me back, when twilight falls. To Faesulae's Etruscan walls. Happy is he who sees each night The sunset on Carrara's height, And neither perpetrates, nor hears, Speeches for after-dinner ears. 98 To each his due : to you the palm And dust ; to me this rural calm, And under the grey olive trees A life of not inglorious ease. II Haec ego committo chartis ubi, garrulus amnis, Caeruleis clivos dividit Arnus aquis : Contentus modica villa sub montibus altis Rura colo, dominus temporis ipse mei ; Me juvat Etruscam curru descendere ad urbem, Aut Apenninum pervolitare jugum ; Felix sole fruor ; me taedet inania verba Audire, et pransis digna placere loqui. Cuique suum, urbano tibi sit cum pulvere palma, At mihi sub fagi fronde beata quies. 99 AT THE BAR 16 A Weald Pastoral {Circa 1890) They be strange, these London Misses, that are alius up and down, One night here in the village, the next run off to the Town, They're no kind of Quality Folk, for they've nought but a house in the street, And they keep no Man on the place, and they hire when they spare their feet. Then they mope the best of the day, and they bang their piano all night. But, bless you, no Christian tunes, or else they don't get them right, So they played at the Penny Reading queer music with that Old Play Squire read, about meddling Fairies, which Shakespeare wrote, some say, 100 The Shakespeare they call a Poet ; he 's dead, but there's one on the Hill ; I don't think nought o' neither, but he goes on writing still. Well ; they 've crowded a cottage with infants, the sort that is hard to rear, I might send them Sally, our tenth, and keep back more for my beer, But my Missus would never abide it, she'd sooner the House by far Than have Sally brought up promiscuous with only a Miss for a Ma ! Next ; they've set up a heathen idol, a Philistine couldn't be bolder. With no clothes at all to her back and her arms cut short at the shoulder : There's Schoolmaster holds— he do— that She's nought but 'a harmless bust,' But the Worship of Idols, we're told, brings murrain and mildew and rust, lOI And I sez to myself, sez I, when I sees the half of our hay gone Along of these dratted rains ; This comes, may be, of that Dagon ! Then we had what they call a Mission, and the Army 's been in the Street, With drums and tinkling cymbals, and Hymns that to hear 's a treat ; But the preacher may preach how he, that was once but a wicked lad, Found all of a heap Salvation, and went no more to the bad ; He may tell how he 's got Truth, and the rest hold nothing but hes. She minds his babble no more than the buzzing of summer flies ; The Army Lasses may hop, like the crows that follow the plough, And pick up souls for worms, She takes no count of their row, 1 02 Just sits there straight as a Queen with a sort of a smile on Her face ; They may sing what Hymns they will, they won't sing Her from Her place : So She bides ; but these London Misses, come Martinmas, off they 'II clear And leave us their infants and idol, which well we could spare them, here : But it's dry work telling of such : Jim, fetch us a mug of beer. lo^ THE OLD MOUNTAINEER TO HIS GUIDE.* Glorious climbing weather, A dear northern breeze, Of cloud not a feather, Snows on the freeze : One more great climb together, Old comrade, if you please. You 're rather an old bell-wether To lead upon heights like these ; I 'ra near the end of my tether. Shall soon grow stiff in the knees : One last 'new peak' together. Dear Frangois, if you please. * With apologies to the Shade of the writer of the Eton Boating Song. 104 MOUNTAIN MIDGETS, OR THIRTY YEARS AFTER, a.d. 1887 1^ {An Original Member of the Alpine Club speaks!) I WAS with the men who conquered all the Alps, and climbing higher Watched, from Caucasus or Andes, Phosphor soaring like a fire ; But successors of De Saussure ! You, pre- sumably with souls. Who treat Heaven's nearest neighbours as the pit-bear treats his poles, Show your foolish ' forms ' upon them, ' cutting records ' as you run, Craving from the crowd that jeers you, notoriety — your bun ! 105 Lads, who love an 'Alpine centre' and an inn that 's full of people, Where the tourists gape in wonder while their Jack beflags his steeple : Stars, who twinkle with your axes, while girls ' wonder what you are,' Through a village that's the image of a Charity Bazaar : Lads, whose prate is never-ceasing, till the table ifJioie is crammed With the gendarmes you have collared, and the cols you 've spiized or kammed! Not for you the friendly Wirthschaft where the Pfarrer plays the host, Or the vine-hung Ostcria, where the bowls go rattling most ; 1 06 Not for you the liquid splendour of the sunset, as it dies, Not for you the silver silence and the spaces of the skies. Known of men who in the old time lodged in hollows of the rocks. Ere those Circe's styes, the Club-huts, har- boured touristdom in flocks. There you lie beside your porters in tobacco fumes enfurled, Thinking more of cold plum-pudding than 'the glories of the world.' There you ponder with your fellows on the little left ' to do,' Plotting darkly Expeditions that may, partially, be New ; 107 Boasting lightly, while the brightly beading Bouvier brims the glasses, How you'll 'romp up' avalanche tracks and you '11 rollick in crevasses ; Dreaming fondly of the glory that such azure feats must get. When your guide narrates the story in the Grindelmatt Gazette ; Gloating grimly on the feelings Hobbs and Nobbs will strive to smother. When they learn the Gross Narr Nadel has been just 'bagged' by another : Hobbs and Nobbs, who slily stealing to our Griin Alp telescope. May find solace in revealing how you faltered on the rope. lo8 Mountain Midgets — thus I hail you, who to httleness your own Fain would drag down Nature's Greatest, leave earth's minster-spires alone ! Yet in vain an old man preaches. What is brought shall still be found, Still the raw, relentless athlete make the Alps his running-ground. Still the Greater breed the Lesser on through infinite degrees, And the Mountains have their Midgets — as the glaciers have their fleas. 109 THREE IN BURMA, a.d. 1900 Farewell : in split brandies and sodas Let us drink to the happy Burmese, To the Land of Ten Thousand Pagodas With its gilded paviUons and Tees : Farewell to the guardian griffins, Who crouch at the foot of the stairs, And eat, we are told, for their tiffins Bad people who won't say their prayers. Here's a health to the 'petticoat Johnny,' A heathen in whom there 's no guile. To the damsels in pink, blithe and bonny. Who smoke cigarettes by the mile : Here's a health to the Poongye in yellow Who walks round the town with his bowl, He's really a capital fellow, Though he thinks far too much of his soul, no To each Boddhisatva and Buddha, Enthroned amid can'ing and glass, Who the secret of Hfe understood, a Full bumper, and let the drink pass. For they certainly showed the nie7is sana When they laid down as part of their plan, ' Since at last we must enter Nirvana Let 's be happy as long as we can.' Ill SING CUCKOO ! To be in England now that April 's here ! To feel fast-dripping mists continually Venting their spleen out of a wintry sky, While the wise trees, mindful of yester-year, Delay their darling buds in prudent fear Of something worse to happen by and by, While the pale primrose hides a tearful eye Deep in the hedge, and all the world is sere: Till the vane shifts ; then bitter, fierce and dry, A cruel blast, born of the sullen east. Scorches the chestnut-leaves, and twists awry Tempers alike of plant and bird and beast : Such Easter joys let sodden songsters sing : I keep my cuckoo for a Roman spring. 112 ENVOI The Book to Its Mistress When you espy me on your shelf Perched, like a small, brown, friendly elf, Lest out of sight prove out of mind, Be, as you always have been, kind, And wing a message through the air To him who gave me to your care ; A ready ear you 're sure to find, Love is not deaf, though often blind. H 113 NOTES 1 0« High Down, Freshwater. — The old wooden beacon on High Down, which forms part of the manor of Farringford, has been replaced by a lofty lona Cross of Cornish granite erected in memory of the poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson. It is recognised by the Admiralty as one of the landmarks for ships entering the Solent. - Vox Montium. — The hills behind Grasse are in winter of an amber hue, deep or pale, according to the light falling on them. The Siagne has its source among them in a great fountain, like that of the Baradanear Damascus, and its waters are carried off and subdivided in canals, which supply Cannes and fertilise the coastlands. 3 O dea certt! — The landscape of the verses is that of the coast of E.xmoor. * In Val Maggia. — The stream of Val Maggia, which falls into Lago Maggiore near Locarno in Canton Ticino, is singular among Alpine torrents for its com- bination of exquisite clearness and deep colour. At the Ponte Brolla it passes through a gorge, where its peacock- coloured pools are framed in basins of white granite. 115 To F. J. Z?.— Fran9ois Joseph Ddvouassoud (1832- 1905) was the first Alpine guide to travel in the East and visit the Caucasus. He led in the first ascents of Kasbek, Elbruz, and Tetnuld. The cottage in which he lived lies on the shady side of the Chamonix Valley close to the path to Mont Blanc, and for some weeks in mid-winter is cut off from all sunshine. 6 ToM.A. C— Michel AlphonseCouttet(i8o2-i887), was a type of the earlier generation of Chamonix guides, who travelled extensively in the Alps as well as climbed Mont Blanc. Jean Baptiste Croz, a great guide, was killed on the first ascent of the Matterhorn in 1865. Jacques Balmat made with Dr. Paccard the first ascent of Mont Blanc, and subsequently became famous as the guide of De Saussure. 7 Defrofitndis.— The landscape of these lines is that of the coast of Exmoor. 8 The Sotigofthe Himalayan Fairies.— The tribes in the mountains beyond Kashmir believe that among the frozen recesses of the Karakoram dwell hosts of bright spirits, and that at the hour of evening prayer the belated wayfarer may hear them as they pass up to worship in the inmost sanctuaries of the eternal snows. 9 View a?id Vision .—The following passage may serve as a text, or motto, for these verses :— EiV^ ^ot, ^^i?. ttoC 116 XOes ^fiev ; 6 8k, ev tJ ttcSiw, ^4>V- Trj/j.epov' Se, cj Ad/ii, TToO ; eV tw KavKacrui, dTrev, ft /liJ; (fiavroO fK\^\Tj(T/J.ar Trdre iv kutw /xdXXov r/oda ; ird\i.v ifpero' 6 5k, Tovro fiey, ^T], ov5e eirepuiTav d^iov. X^ey /j.kv yap did KoiX-qs r^y 7?'5s eKiropevS/jLeOa, Tyjfiepov de Trpoj tQ) oi'pavu) eiyp.€V . . . tL ovv Tjyrj, ^(p-q, TrapaWaTTeii' rds oSoiis aW'/jXivv, rj tL rrj/xepov nXiov eluai cot roO Xdes ; OTL x^f 5. ^0'7i f^ddi^ov ovirep noXXoi, TTjp.epov dk ovTrep oXiyoL. — Philostratus, De vita Apollonii Tyanetisis, lib. ii. cap. v. These lines attempt to embody two distinct impres- sions known to most lovers of high mountains ; the glow of a distant landscape in the moments succeeding sunset, and the strange and mystical sensation produced by the starry vault when seen from some high bivouac among the eternal snows. The Caucasus is still so little known that local allu- sions call for brief elucidation. The picture of Suanetia here given is exact in all its details. Mestia, one of the Suanetian villages, has over seventy towers built for self-defence in days when the whole valley was given over to petty feud and warfare. Murder among the natives is still common, and the murderer finds refuge in the forests, which stretch westward under the great chain to the Land of the Karatshai. Lilies and roses of several varieties grow on the moraines, and under the highest peaks of the Laila a glacier falls in frequent avalanches, which rest within a few hundred yards of 117 beds of yellow lilies, some of which show not fewer than fourteen blossoms on a single stalk. The forests are in early summer golden with the Azalea Pontica, and the Rhododendron Caucasicnm covers the slopes above the highest timber with its blossoms, the colour of cream stained by crushed strawberries. The double-headed giant of Suanetian mountains is justly named Ushba — the Stormpeak. The Phasis is now known as the Rion ; Kytcia has hardly changed its name in becoming Kutais. 1" In Saint Peter i of Rome. — These lines were sug- gested by finding St. Peter's on an early May morning apparently empty. 11 W.F. D. , 1888.— W. F. Donkin perished while climb- ing in the Caucasus with H. Fox and two Swiss guides. Their bodies have never been found. Donkin was a man of many accomplishments ; amongst these he was one of the first mountain photographers. His views hung conspicuously for many years in a shop-window on the north side of the Strand. 12 Oil a Picture. — Francesco da Ponte di Bassano (1550-15Q1), a son of the better known Jacopo, went mad and flung himself out of a window in Titian's house in Venice under the delusion that he was pursued by Sbirri. This family of painters took their name from their home, which stood beside the covered wooden bridge 118 over the Brenta, the finest of its kind on the south side of the Alps. 12 Alia Dogana. — The three arms of Lago di Como are known locally as the Tre Laghi. 1* La Belle Ernestine. — Theinnat St. Jouain, avillage on the coast of Normandy, between Havre and Etretat, was some forty years ago a frequent resort of French artists, poets, musicians, men of letters, painters. Some one set the fashion, and each visitor in turn wrote verses, or left a sketch, a bar of music, or a curio addressed to the handsome daughter of the house. Up to the latter years of the nineteenth century the custom was honoured by every minor celebrity — or nonentity — who took a meal under the inn-orchard, although ' La Belle Ernestine ' had become a wife and a landlady, who preserved her trophies (amongst them an object pur- porting to be the nose of a female saint) in a room she, somewhat unsentimentally, styled her ' Musde.' The preceding rhymes, strung together on a bo.x-seat during the drive back across the Norman downs to Etretat, will not be found in any of Ernestine's albums. 15 Vale, — See Shakespeare, King John, Act I. Scene i — ' And talking of the Alps and Apennines, The Pyrenean and the river Po, It draws toward supper in conclusion so. But this is worshipful society, And fits the mounting spirit.' 119 1" y4/ the Bar. — These rhymes are ' founded on fact.' A fly-driver once said of Tennyson, ' Call him a great man ! Why, he doesn't keep but one man and him not in the house.' A ploughman commented, ' I hear the new Squire do be a poet : I 've he'erd of a poet called Shakespeare. I don't think nought of neither.' The final words are, I believe, to be taken not as a criticism, but as an avowal of ignorance. Some ladies who had a house in a Surrey village found the distrust created by their love of classical music and establishment of a ' Children's Home' sensibly increased when they placed in their conservatory, in a position visible to passers-by, a plaster cast of the head and shoulders of the Venus of Milo. 1' Mountain Midgets. — These lines are supposed to be spoken by an Original Member of the Alpine Club, which was founded in 1857. Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty at the Edinburgh University Press This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. » JUL2<) tU63 199= lOM-1 1-5'J'2^5)470 remington rand inc.: 3 1158 01046 5^ University of California SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388 Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed. MAR 1 1998„ ITY