THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 Sara Bard Field Wood 
 
®l^ MotlJ) Series. 
 
 UNDERNEATH THE BOUGH 
 
"e/f Book of Verses underneath the Bough, 
 ^ T^g of Wine, a Loaf of Bread— and thou 
 
 Beside me singing in the Wilderness — 
 Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enowT* 
 
UNDERNEATH THE BOUGH 
 
 A BOOK OP VERSES 
 BYMICHAEL FIELD 
 
 IWlland, Maine 
 
 MdcccxcviiJ 
 
Tbis First Edition on 
 Van Gelder paper con- 
 sists of g2§ copies. 
 
 GIFT 
 
 COPYRIGHT 
 
 THOMAS B. MOSHER 
 
 1898 
 
^5 D 
 
 FOR some years my work has heen done 
 for " the younger generation^* — not yet 
 knocking at the door, hut awaited with wel- 
 come. 
 
 {Meanwhile, readers from further England 
 — if they will pardon my so classing them — 
 have given me that joy of listening denied to 
 me in my own island; and to them I offer 
 this hook of lyrics, adding such new songs as 
 I count my sweetest to those of " The Old 
 IVorld Series,** some of which, I have reason 
 to hope, have won place in their hearts. 
 
 MICHAEL FIELD. 
 
 September 8thy 1898. 
 
 316 
 
INVOCATION. 
 
 THEE, ApollOy in a ring 
 IVe encompass^ carolling 
 Of the flowersy fruits and creatures 
 
 That thy features 
 Do express^ and hy thy side 
 Live their life half -deified : 
 Grasshoppers that round thee spring 
 From their mirth no minute sparing ; 
 Hawk and griffin arrow-eyed; 
 Cock the gracious day declaring ; 
 Olive that can only flourish 
 Where the fruiting sunbeams nourish; 
 Laurel that can never fade ^ 
 That in winter doth incline her 
 Lustrous branches to embraid 
 Chaplets for the lyric brow ; 
 The white swan, that fair diviner, 
 IVho in death a bliss descrying 
 Sings her sweetest notes a-dying : 
 These, all these, to thee we vow, 
 IVe thy nymphs who in a ring 
 Dance around thee, carolling. 
 
THE FIRST BOOK OF SONGS 
 
THE TABLE OF THE FIRST BOOK. 
 
 /. Mortal, if thou art beloved 
 
 2. Once, his feet among the roses 
 
 ^. "Let us wreathe the mighty cup 
 
 4. O wind, thou hast thjy kingdom in the trees 
 
 5. Death, men say^ is like a sea 
 
 6. Ah, Eros does not always smite 
 
 7. Wi&o hath ever given 
 
 8. Sometimes I do despatch my heart 
 p. "Down the forest-path I fled 
 
 10. 1 dance and dance ! Another faun 
 
 11. In the moony hrake 
 
 12. Liove doth never know 
 
 i^. Love's wings are wondrous swift 
 
 14. 1/ the sun our white headlands with flame 
 
 75. Yfhen I grow old 
 
 16. Ifelt my leaves fall free 
 
 ly. A calm in the flitting sky 
 
 18. Sweeping, sighing away 
 
 I p. Spring! 
 
 20. Do you see the poppies coming 
 
 21. On the gray dawn-track 
 
 22. In winter sere 
 
 2^. Through hazels and apples 
 
 24. Say, if a gallant rose my bower doth scale 
 
 2^. This rare south-rose that thou didstjtake 
 
 26. Ah me, if I grew sweet to man 
 
 27. V^here winds abound 
 
THE FIRST BOOK OF SONGS. 
 
 MORTAL, if thou art beloved, 
 Life's offences are removed : 
 All the fateful things that checkt thee, 
 Hearten, hallow, and protect thee. 
 Grow'st thou mellow ? What is age ? 
 Tinct on life's illumined page, 
 Where the purple letters glow 
 Deeper, painted long ago. 
 What is sorrow ? Comfort's prime, 
 Love's choice Indian summer-clime. 
 Sickness ? Thou wilt pray it worse 
 For so blessed, balmy nurse. 
 And for death ? When thou art dying 
 'Twill be love beside thee lying. 
 Death is lonesome ? Oh, how brave 
 Shows the foot-frequented grave 1 
 Heaven itself is but the casket 
 For Love's treasure, ere he ask it. 
 Ere with burning heart he follow, 
 Piercing through corruption's hollow. 
 If thou art beloved, oh then 
 Fear no grief of mortal men I 
 
ONCE, his feet among the roses, 
 When the roses were all white, 
 Eros wreathed the faint, wan posies 
 Round Zeus* goblet ; but, ere sipping, 
 'Mid the buds his ankle tripping, 
 Lavished half the vintage bright 
 On the roses, that, fresh-dripping. 
 Flushed the cup for heaven's lipping ; 
 And the god's eyes felt delight 
 That the roses were not white. 
 
 But the sweetest of the roses. 
 By that fiery rain unfed, 
 Coyly still her bosom closes. 
 Still the crimson vesture misses ; 
 Pale 'mid all the purple this is. 
 Love, thy burning wine-drops shed I 
 When her blushes make my blisses. 
 Glowing answer to my kisses, 
 In thy triumph be it said 
 That the roses are all red. 
 
 LET ns wreathe the mighty cup. 
 Then with song we'll lift it up, 
 And, before we drain the glow 
 Of the juice that foams below 
 Flowers and cool leaves round the brim. 
 Let us swell the praise of him 
 Who is tyrant of the heart, 
 Cupid with his flaming dart 1 
 
Pride before his face is bowed, 
 Strength and heedless beauty cowed ; 
 Underneath his fatal wings 
 Bend discrowned the heads of kings ; 
 Maidens blanch beneath his eye 
 And its laughing mastery ; 
 Through each land his arrows sound, 
 By his fetters all are bound. 
 
 OwiND, thou hast thy kingdom in the trees. 
 And all thy royalties 
 Sweep through the land to-day. 
 It is mid June, 
 And thou, with all thine instruments in tune, 
 Thine orchestra 
 Of heaving fields, and heavy, swinging fir, 
 Strikest a lay 
 That doth rehearse 
 Her ancient freedom to the universe. 
 All other sound in awe 
 
 Repeals its law ; 
 The bird is mute, the sea 
 Sucks up its waves, from rain 
 The burthened clouds refrain. 
 To listen to thee in thy leafery. 
 Thou unconfined. 
 Lavish, large, soothing, refluent summer-wind 1 
 
DEATH, men say, is like a sea 
 That engulfs mortality, 
 Treacherous, dreadful, blindingly 
 Full of storm and terror. 
 
 Death is like the deep, warm sand 
 Pleasant when we come to land, 
 Covering up with tender hand 
 The wave's drifted error. 
 
 Life's a tortured, booming gurge 
 Winds of passion strike and urge. 
 And transmute to broken surge 
 Foam-crests of ambition. 
 
 Death's a couch of golden ground. 
 Warm, soft, permeable mound, 
 Where from even memory's sound 
 We shall have remission. 
 
 AH, Eros doth not always smite 
 With cruel, shining dart, 
 Whose bitter point with sudden might 
 
 Rends the unhappy heart — 
 Not thus forever purple-stained, 
 
 And sore with steely touch, 
 Else were its living fountain drained 
 
 Too oft and overmuch. 
 O'er it sometimes the boy will deign 
 
 Sweep the shaft's feathered end ; 
 And friendship rises without pain 
 Where the white plumes descend. 
 
WHO hath ever given 
 Cupid^s head white hair, 
 Or hath put our roses 
 Under the snow*s care ? 
 If such a fool there be 
 We'll cry him God's mercie I 
 
 SOMETIMES I do despatch my heart 
 Among the graves to dwell apart : 
 On some the tablets are erased, 
 Some earthquake-tumbled, some defaced. 
 And some that have forgotten lain 
 A fall of tears makes green again ; 
 And my brave heart can overtread 
 Her brood of hopes, her infant dead. 
 And pass with quickened footsteps by 
 The headstone of hoar memory. 
 
 Till she hath found 
 
 One swelling mound 
 With just her name writ and beloved; 
 From that she cannot be removed. 
 
 DOWN the forest-path I fled. 
 And followed a buzzing bee. 
 Till he clomb a foxglove red. 
 He filled full the nodding cup ; 
 I stood and I laughed to see ; 
 Then closed it and shut him up. 
 Till I laughed and set him free. 
 
1 DANCE and dance ! Another faun 
 A black one, dances on the lawn. 
 He moves with me, and when I lift 
 My heels his feet directly shift : 
 I can't outdance him though I try ; 
 He dances nimbler than I. 
 I toss my head, and so does he ; 
 What tricks he dares to play on me 1 
 I touch the ivy in my hair ; 
 Ivy he has and finger there. 
 The spiteful thing to mock me so I 
 I will outdance him ! Ho, ho, ho I 
 
 IN the moony brake, 
 When we laugh and wake, 
 And our dance begins, 
 Violets hang their chins. 
 
 Fast asleep ; 
 While we laugh and leap. 
 
 Woodbine leaves above, 
 Each a tiny dove. 
 Roost upon the bare 
 Winter stems, and there 
 
 Peaceful cling ; 
 While we shout and sing. 
 
 10 
 
On the rooty earth 
 Ferns of April's birth, 
 Brown and closely furled, 
 Sleep like squirrels curled 
 
 Warm and still ; 
 While we frisk our fill. 
 
 Hark ! our ears have caught 
 Sound of breath and snort 
 Near our beechen tree 
 Mixing carelessly. 
 Sprites, awayl 
 Fly as if 'twere day ! 
 * * * * 
 Silence ! on the ground 
 Set the toadstool round. 
 Of these mortals twain 
 We to talk will deign, 
 Grave and wise, 
 Till the morning rise. 
 
 LOVE doth never know 
 Why it is beloved. 
 And to ask were treason : 
 
 Let the wonder grow 1 
 Were its hopes removed. 
 Were itself disproved 
 
 By cold reason. 
 In its happy season 
 Love would be beloved. 
 
Love's wings are wondrous swift 
 When hanging feathers lift. 
 Why hath Love wings, 
 Great pinions strong of curve ? 
 His wild desires to serve ; 
 To swoop on the prey, 
 And bear it away, 
 Love hath wings. 
 
 Love's wings are golden soft. 
 When dropping from aloft. 
 
 Why hath Love wings, 
 Feathers of glistening fleece ? 
 To soothe with balmy peace, 
 
 And warmth of his breath 
 
 Souls he cherisheth 
 Love hath wings. 
 
 Love's wings are broad of van, 
 Stretched for great travel's span. 
 
 Why hath Love wings. 
 Mail of the sea-bird's might ? 
 From feeble hearts and slight 
 
 To lift him forlorn 
 
 To a fastness of scorn. 
 Love hath wings. 
 
 IS 
 
IF the sun our white headlands with flame 
 Failed to greet, 
 Should we deem he would shroud them in shame ? 
 Nay, blot 
 The sweet 
 Daylight not ; 
 Heaven forgot. 
 
 If soft spring failed the flowers name by name 
 
 To entreat, 
 Should we fear she would harden earth's frame ? 
 
 Her hot 
 
 Breath sweet 
 
 Bloweth not ; 
 
 She forgot. 
 
 From my love if no gay token came, 
 
 Were it meet 
 To think she had slighted love's claim ? 
 
 A knot 
 
 So sweet 
 
 Snappeth not ; 
 
 She forgot. 
 
 If a land full of memories and fame 
 
 At the feet 
 Of a tyrant bowed down, should we blame ? 
 
 A spot 
 
 So sweet 
 
 Sinneth not ; 
 
 It forgot. 
 
 13 
 
WHEN I grow old, 
 I would be bold 
 To ask of heaven this boon : 
 Like the thin-circled and translucent moon, 
 That makes intrusion 
 Unnoted on the morning sky, 
 And with soft eye 
 Watches the thousand, grassy flowers unfold, 
 I would be free. 
 Without confusion 
 Of influence cold, 
 To pause and see 
 The flush of youth in its felicity. 
 
 AN APPLE-FLOWER. 
 
 I FELT my leaves fall free, 
 I felt the wind and sun. 
 At my heart a honey-bee : 
 And life was done. 
 
 A CALM in the flitting sky. 
 And in the calm a moon, 
 A youngling golden : 
 *Mid windy shades an olden 
 Oak-tree whose branches croon 
 As the orb sails by. 
 Heigh ho 1 
 Youth and age, the soft and dry, 
 While breezes blow. 
 
 14 
 
Its crooked arm the oak 
 Points upward to the moon ; 
 
 A sapless member, 
 Which scorching of November 
 And levin shafts of June 
 In their season broke. 
 Heigh ho 1 
 Age is gruff with blight and stroke, 
 While breezes blow. 
 
 But storm has left no trace 
 Upon the blithe new moon. 
 That westward slideth, 
 And on the white wind rideth : 
 It does not weary soon 
 Of the blowing race. 
 Heigh ho 1 
 Youth is free and sweet of face, 
 While breezes blow. 
 
 WIND IN FIR TREES. 
 
 " (Methinks the wind bath spoke aloud.'* 
 
 OTHELLO. 
 
 SWEEPING, sighing away 
 Over the fir-trees gray. 
 Sweeping, grating, sighing away ! 
 As one that seeketh not to find 
 Thou ravest through the pines, O Wind ; 
 Across the pines I hear thee rave 
 Sick as a madman for his grave ; 
 
 IS 
 
And I have caught thee in the West, 
 Coming from thy prayer unblest, 
 Coming from the sun at rest, 
 
 With the tedium in thy cry 
 Of a breath that cannot die, 
 
 With the rancour in thy glee 
 Of a god who has lost his memory 
 In search of the things that were wont to be. 
 
 GRASS IN SPRING. 
 
 SPRING 1 
 The light is stronger, the air is shuddering, 
 The sky is smiling through sun-clouds that shall be 
 showers. 
 And the grass is caught imagining 
 Flowers. 
 
 POPPY SONG. 
 
 Do you see the poppies coming ? 
 Do you see the poppies come ? 
 Do you see the poppies coming, 
 Do you hear their seedy hum ? — 
 Large poppies of the night 
 In their bands of blue and white, 
 Poppies fading from my sight 
 As they come. 
 
 i6 
 
DREAMS. 
 
 ON the gray dawn-track 
 Dreams are hastening back 
 To the years : 
 That is why the air is busy, 
 That is why the eye grows dizzy 
 As the little ghosts from play 
 
 Speed away 
 To the mouldering years. 
 
 IN winter sere, 
 We little men o' the hill 
 No longer duck and peer 
 Up holy daffodil. 
 
 Nor suck the egg 
 
 That the cuckoo lays, 
 
 Nor the angry leg 
 
 Of the chafer wring 
 
 Till the gray-pate sing 
 
 With his stiff amaze : 
 
 No, no, no, no 1 
 To keep ourselves warm in row 
 We run — ta, la, la, lo ! 
 
 A valley's end 
 Is steep and flat at the top, 
 No pathways there may wend 
 Across the sweet-fern crop 
 
 17 
 
As dead as straw ; 
 At the sign-post wiy 
 All the winds see-saw, 
 And with chilly feet 
 We little ones meet 
 On the rim of sky. 
 We start, stay, go, 
 And down to the pool below 
 We mn — ta, la, la, lo 1 
 
 THROUGH hazels and apple 
 My love I led, 
 Where the sunshine dapples 
 
 The strawberry-bed : 
 Did we pluck and eat 
 That mom, my sweet ? 
 
 And back by the alley 
 
 Our path I chose. 
 That we might dally 
 
 By one rare rose : 
 Did we smell at the heart. 
 
 And then depart ? 
 
 A lover, who grapples 
 
 With love, doth live 
 Where roses and apples 
 
 Have naught to give : 
 Did I take my way 
 
 Unfed that day? 
 
 i8 
 
SAY, if a gallant rose my bower doth scale, 
 Higher and higher. 
 And, the' she twine the other side the pale. 
 Toward me doth sigh her 
 Perfume, her damask mouth — 
 Roses will love the south — 
 Can I deny her ? 
 
 I have a lady loves me in despite 
 
 Of bonds that tie her. 
 And bid her honest Corin*s flame requite ; 
 When I espy her, 
 Kisses are near their birth — 
 Love cannot live in dearth — 
 Say, shall I fly her? 
 
 THIS rare south rose that thou didst take 
 And send to me across the snows. 
 Bidding me wear it for thy sake — 
 Oh, deem me not unkind 1 
 I cannot wear it for thy sake, 
 For it has opened me the wild daybreak 
 
 And scented all the wind : 
 In Paestum's seven-petalled rose 
 
 My thirst I slake ; 
 Or warm my senses in a secret bower 
 Of inmost Persia : Beauty has such power 
 She cannot keep a bond ; but doth decree 
 Love in her affluent presence free. 
 
 19 
 
AH me, if I grew sweet to man 
 It was but as a rose that can 
 No longer keep the breath that heaves 
 And swells among its folded leaves. 
 
 The pressing fragrance would unclose 
 The flower, and I became a rose, 
 That unimpeachable and fair 
 Planted an odour in the air. 
 
 No art I used men's love to draw ; 
 I lived but by my being's law, 
 As roses are by heaven designed 
 To bring the honey to the wind. 
 
 I found there is scant sun in spring, 
 I found the blast a riving thing ; 
 Yet even ruined roses can 
 No other than be sweet to man. 
 
 WHERE winds abound, 
 And fields are hilly, 
 Shy daffadilly 
 Looks down on the ground. 
 
 Rose cones of larch 
 Are just beginning ; 
 Though oaks are spinning 
 No oak-leaves in March. 
 
 Spring's at the core. 
 The boughs are sappy : 
 Good to be happy 
 So long, long before 1 
 
THE SECOND BOOK OF SONGS 
 
THE TABLE OF THE SECOND BOOK. 
 
 /. Slowljf we disarray 
 
 2, I stood to hear that hold 
 
 ). Others may drag at memory s fetter 
 
 4. "Bring me life of fickle hreath 
 
 5. Ah me, how sadder than to say farewell 
 
 6. "Deathjfor all thy grasping stealth 
 
 7. laittle Lettice is deady they say 
 
 8. I would not have the wind pass hy 
 p. Solitary Death, make me thy own 
 
 10. Come mete me out my loneliness, wind 
 
 11. I by spells had been beguiled 
 
 12. O Love, bitter, mortal journeying 
 i^. I would not die 
 
 14. They buried him — ah, I have not thought — 
 
 75. S^^ gathered me rue and roses 
 
 16, V^hen thou to death, fond one, wouldst 
 
 fain be starting 
 
 ly. There is a fair white relic in my room 
 
 18. Vain Death, thou hast no staying / 
 
 /p. Vfinds to-day are large and free 
 
 20. H^ with the Gentle Ones is hid from sight 
 
 2 /» Thanatos, thv praise I sing 
 
THE SECOND BOOK OF SONGS. 
 
 SLOWLY we disarray, 
 Our leaves grow few, 
 Few on the bough, and many on the sod : 
 Round him no ruining autumn tempest blew ; 
 Gathered on genial day, 
 He fills, fresh as Apollo's bay, 
 The Hand of God. 
 
 1 STOOD to hear that bold 
 Sentence of grit and mould. 
 Earth to earth ; they thrust 
 On his coffin dust ; 
 Stones struck against his grave : 
 O the old days, the brave I 
 
 Just with a pebble's fall. 
 Grave-digger, you turn all 
 
 Bliss to bereaving ; 
 
 To catch the cleaving 
 Of Atropa's fine shears 
 Would less hurt human ears. 
 
 25 
 
Live senses that death dooms! 
 
 For friendship in dear rooms, 
 Slow-lighting faces, 
 Hand-clasps, embraces. 
 
 Ashes on ashes grind : 
 
 O poor lips left behind I 
 
 Mortality turns round 
 On mortals in that sound : 
 
 Ears are for the knell 
 
 Of a muffled bell: 
 Touch, for clods of earth ; 
 Sight, for torture and dearth. 
 
 OTHERS may drag at memory's fetter. 
 May turn for comfort to the vow 
 Of mortal breath ; I hold it better 
 To learn if verily and how 
 Love knits me with the loved one now. 
 
 Others for solace, sleep-forsaken. 
 May muse upon the days of old ; 
 To me it is delight to waken, 
 To find my Dead, to feel them fold 
 My heart, and for its dross give gold. 
 
 26 
 
BRING me life of fickle breath, 
 Bring me death ; 
 Summon every hope's alloy ; 
 Gather round me what doth most 
 
 Love to boast 
 That it can our bliss deflower 1 
 There is now no mortal power 
 That can feed upon my joy ; 
 Every terror is overthrown : 
 I have found the magic stone, 
 For a dead heart is my own. 
 
 Henceforth is it not pure gold 
 
 To grow old ? 
 Let the hours of parting fleet ! 
 While to think of what befell 
 
 Is to dwell 
 At the mouth o' the honeycomb 
 Where the soul-bee hath its home, 
 Where the soul-bee hives its sweet. 
 And the heaven to come at last ! 
 Bravely may I now forecast 
 Since I hold the loved one fast. 
 
 27 
 
AH me, how sadder than to say farewell 
 It is to meet 
 Dreading that Love hath lost his spell 
 
 And changed his sweet ! 
 I would we were again to part, 
 With that full heart. 
 
 The hawthorn was half-bud, half-flower, 
 
 At our goodbye ; 
 And braver to me since that hour 
 
 Are earth and sky : 
 My God, it were too poor a thing 
 
 To meet this spring. 
 
 Our hearts — life never would have marge 
 
 To bear their tides, 
 Their confluent rush! Lo, death is large 
 
 In boundary-sides ; 
 And our great x^*P^ must be said 
 
 When I am dead. 
 
 28 
 
DEATH, for all thy grasping stealth, 
 Thou dost convey 
 Lands to us of broadest wealth, >; c^-^j^|^»^ ; 
 
 That stretch away 
 Where the sunshine hath no foil, 
 Past the verge of our dark soil, 
 Past the rim where clouds uncoil. 
 
 Mourners, whom thine avarice dooms. 
 
 Once given a space 
 In thy kingdom past the tombs, 
 
 With open face 
 See the smallness of our skies. 
 Large, until a mortal dies 
 And shrinks them to created size, 
 
 O the freedom, that doth spread, 
 
 When life is shown 
 The great countries that the dead 
 
 Have open thrown ; 
 Where at our best leisure, we 
 With a spirit may walk free 
 From terrestrial poverty. 
 
 29 
 
LITTLE Lettice is dead, they say, 
 The brown sweet child that rolled in the hay ; 
 Ah, where shall we find her? 
 For the neighbours pass 
 To the pretty lass, 
 In a linen cere-cloth to wind her. 
 
 If her sister were set to search 
 
 The nettle-green nook beside the church, 
 
 And the way were shown her 
 
 Through the coffin-gate 
 
 To her dead playmate, 
 She would fly too frighted to own her. 
 
 Should she come at a noonday call, 
 Ah, stealthy, stealthy, with no footfall, 
 
 And no laughing chatter. 
 
 To her mother 'twere worse 
 
 Than a barren curse 
 That her own little wench should pat her. 
 
 Little Lettice is dead and gone ! 
 
 The stream by her garden wanders on i 
 
 Through the rushes wider; 
 
 She fretted to know 
 
 How its bright drops grow 
 On the hills, but no hand would guide her. 
 
 30 
 
Little Lattice is dead and lost 1 
 
 Her willow-tree boughs by storm are tossed- 
 
 O the swimming sallows ! — 
 
 Where she crouched to find 
 
 The nest of the wind 
 Like a water-fowPs in the shallows. 
 
 Little Lettice is out of sight 1 
 
 The river-bed and the breeze are bright : 
 
 Ay me, were it sinning 
 
 To dream that she knows 
 
 Where the soft wind rose 
 That her willow-branches is thinning ? 
 
 Little Lettice has lost her name, 
 
 Slipt away from our praise and our blame ; 
 
 Let not love pursue her, 
 
 But conceive her free 
 
 Where the bright drops be 
 On the hills, and no longer rue her I 
 
 31 
 
1 WOULD not have the wind pass by 
 I would not have it rave, 
 I would not have the wind draw nigh 
 That whistled o'er his grave. 
 
 I would not have the rain beat round, 
 I would not hear the rain ; 
 
 There is no comfort in the sound, 
 No comfort for us twain. 
 
 But I would have the snow drift high, 
 And to my house-roof cling, 
 
 So for a night at least we lie 
 Beneath one covering. 
 
 SOLITARY Death, make me thine own. 
 And let us wander the bare fields together ; 
 Yea, thou and I alone, 
 Roving in unembittered unison forever. 
 
 I will not harry thy treasure-graves, 
 I do not ask at thy still hands a lover ; 
 
 My heart within me craves 
 To travel till we twain Time's wilderness discover. 
 
 To sojourn with thee my soul was bred, 
 And I, the courtly sights of life refusing, 
 
 To the wide shadows fled. 
 And mused upon thee often as I fell a-musing. 
 
 32 
 
Escaped from chaos, thy mother Night, 
 In her maiden breast a burthen that awed her. 
 
 By cavern waters white 
 Drew thee her first-born, her unfathered offspring, 
 toward her. 
 
 On dewy plats, near twilight dingle. 
 She oft, to still thee from men's sobs and curses 
 
 In thine ears a-tingle, 
 Pours her cool charms, her weird, reviving chaunt 
 rehearses. 
 
 Though mortals menace thee or elude, 
 And from thy confines break in swift transgression, 
 
 Thou for thyself art sued 
 Of me, I claim thy cloudy purlieus my possession. 
 
 To a lone freshwater, where the sea 
 Stirs the silver flux of the reeds and willows. 
 
 Come thou, and beckon me 
 To lie in the lull of the sand-sequestered billows : 
 
 Then take the life I have called my own 
 And to the liquid universe deliver ; 
 
 Loosening my spirit's zone, 
 Wrap round me as thy limbs the wind, the light, 
 the river. 
 
 33 
 
COME, mete me out my loneliness, o wind, 
 For I would know 
 How far the living who must stay behind 
 Are from the dead who go. 
 
 Eternal Passer-by, I feel there is 
 
 In thee a stir, 
 A strength to span the yawning distances 
 
 From her grave-stone to her. 
 
 I BY spells had been beguiled 
 To a marish country wild, 
 Where a lonely hearted child 
 Crossed me ; and I felt she knew 
 All the way she wandered through, 
 Though the reeds around her blew, 
 And the dusk was in her rear, 
 As I watched her disappear 
 'Mid the flitting umbrage drear. 
 
 THE HALCYON. 
 
 6s T^M Ki5/iaros Avdos dfx^ d\Kv6v€0-<n iroTrjTaL 
 VT]\€yks ^Top ix^^i oi,\(,'jr6p<f>vpos ^lapos 6pvLs. 
 
 Alcman. 
 
 OLOVE, o bitter, mortal journeying 
 By ways that are not told I 
 I would not sing, no song is sweet to me 
 Now thou art gone : 
 
 34 
 
But would, ah would I were the halcyon, 
 That sea-blue bird of spring, 
 So should I bring 
 Fair sister-companies of fleetest wing 
 To bear thee on. 
 Thou being old, 
 With an untroubled heart to carry thee 
 Safe o'er the ridges of the wearying sea. 
 
 I WOULD not die 
 To meet a goodly company ; 
 I was ever, ever shy. 
 And have loved to live retired. 
 That I might con 
 Some mystery scarce pondered on. 
 Oh, this I have desired ! 
 
 No hope to brood 
 
 Where harpers wing on wing intrude. 
 
 Or bold saints with trumpets rude ; 
 
 Where four beasts from turning eyne 
 
 Watch my strange ways : 
 
 But in concealment of deep rays 
 
 May some recess be mine ! 
 
 I never can. 
 
 On earth, though quite escaped from man, 
 
 Put society under ban : 
 
 Buzzing bees swing in a flower. 
 
 Gnats drum and dance. 
 
 The weasel intercepts my trance. 
 
 Birds warble through a bower. 
 
 35 
 
Once Chloe graced 
 
 My suit ; how fondly we embraced ! 
 
 Still my arm was round her waist : 
 
 Chloe dropt her pretty head 
 
 Upon my knee, 
 
 And Love was left alone with me 
 
 Just while she slumbered. 
 
 And once I lay 
 
 In sickness ; I had swooned away, 
 
 For I wandered as at play ; 
 
 It was untethered innocence : 
 
 Naught of my own 
 
 I had, the night was open thrown, 
 
 Sound wrought no more offence. 
 
 Endowed by thee, 
 
 Death, let me enter privacy, 
 
 Unmorose and fellowly 
 
 To mix, with the free pleasure 
 
 Of stars and springs 
 
 And magic, unfamiliar things, 
 
 My beauteous leisure. 
 
 36 
 
THEY buried him — ah, I have not thought- 
 It is thirteen years ago. 
 Whether the years have been long or short 
 
 I shall never know : 
 Only my heart cries out with tears 
 To go to him in his grave, to go 
 To the long, long years. 
 
 SHE mingled me rue and roses, 
 And I found my bliss complete : 
 The roses are gone. 
 But the rue lives on. 
 The bitter that lived with the sweet. 
 
 Life will mingle you rue and roses ; 
 The roses will fall at your feet : 
 
 But deep in the rue 
 
 That their leaves bestrew 
 The bitter will smell of the sweet. 
 
 WHEN thou to death, fond one, wouldst fain be 
 starting, 
 I did not pray 
 That thou shouldst stay ; 
 Alone I lay 
 And dreamed and wept and watched thee on thy way. 
 
 37 
 
But now thou dost return, yea, after parting, 
 
 And me embrace, 
 
 Our souls enlace ; 
 
 Ask thou no grace ; 
 Thou shalt be aye confined to this place. 
 
 Alone, alone I lie, ah, bitter smarting! 
 
 Thou to the last 
 
 Didst cling, kiss fast, 
 
 Yet art thou past 
 Beyond me, in the hollow of a blast. 
 
 THERE is a fair, white relic in my room : 
 God, how I love it 1 
 
 Twine, twine 
 Green keys of sycamine 
 Round and above it. 
 Then lay it softly in my heart's new tomb. 
 
 Ah, mourning friends, these sullen sighs and deep 
 
 No longer breathe me ! 
 Sing, sing 
 
 Praise of the royal thing 
 
 Death doth bequeath me, ^ 
 
 And carve me in my memory to keep ! 
 
 38 
 
VAIN Death, thou hast no staying, 
 Thou dost not lag behind 
 Dear Life in thy decaying ; 
 An instant thou dost claim 
 My Dahlia's frame ; 
 But this corruption that men call thy preying 
 Is love that blows thee to the wind. 
 
 WINDS to-day are large and free, 
 Winds to-day are westerly ; 
 From the land they seem to blow 
 Whence the sap begins to flow 
 And the dimpled light to spread, 
 From the country of the dead. 
 
 Ah, it is a wild, sweet land 
 
 Where the coming May is planned, 
 
 Where such influences throb 
 
 As our frosts can never rob 
 
 Of their triumph, when they bound 
 
 Through the tree and from the ground. 
 
 Great within me is my soul. 
 Great to journey to its goal. 
 To the country of the dead ; 
 For the cornel-tips are red, 
 And a passion rich in strife 
 Drives me toward the home of life. 
 
 39 
 
Oh, to keep the spring with them 
 Who have flushed the cornel-stem, 
 Who imagine at its source 
 All the year*s delicious course, 
 Then express by wind and light 
 Something of their rapture's height ! 
 
 UNCONSCIOUSNESS. 
 
 HE with the Gentle Ones is hid from sight : 
 We may not follow. He hath dwelt with woes 
 So dread, he lays his confidence in those 
 Men shrink from, who remember and requite. 
 O comfort him, sweet daughters of the Night, 
 For fear of whom man's thought doth softly tread ; 
 Within your grove let him be deeply led 
 To reconciliation and repose. 
 
 40 
 
THANATOS, thy praise I sing, 
 Thou immortal, youthful king 1 
 Glorious offerings I will bring ; 
 For men say thou hast no shrine, 
 And I find thou art divine 
 As no other god : thy rage 
 Doth preserve the Golden Age, 
 What we blame is thy delay ; 
 Cut the flowers ere they decay 1 
 
 Come, we would not derogate, 
 Age and nipping pains we hate. 
 Take us at our best estate : 
 While the head bums with the crown, 
 In the battle strike us down ! 
 At the bride-feast do not think 
 From thy summons we should shrink ; 
 We would give our latest kiss 
 To a life still warm with bliss. 
 
 Come and take us to thy train 
 Of dead maidens on the plain 
 Where white lilies have no stain ; 
 Take us to the youths, that thou 
 Lov'st to choose, of fervid brow, 
 Unto whom thy dreaded name 
 Hath been simply known as Fame : 
 With these unpolluted things 
 Be our endless revellings. 
 
THE THIRD BOOK OF SONGS 
 
THE TABLE OF THE THIRD BOOK. 
 
 /. V^hen high Zeus first peopled earth 
 
 2. Methinks rny love to thee doth grow 
 
 ^. Thou must not leave me 
 
 4. It was deep April and the morn 
 
 5. Apollo and the Muses taught thee not 
 
 6. There comes a change in her breath 
 
 7. A girl 
 
 8. Our myrtle is in flower 
 
 9. Yiaveyou seen the olives at set of sun 
 JO, She lies asleep : I watching do not dare 
 
 11, O sweety all sweety the body as the shyer 
 
 12. yiine is the eddying foam and the broken 
 
 current 
 i^. Sweet of my poet how sweet are the eyesy 
 
 the eyelids 
 14, Though I sing high and chaunt above her 
 75. Shall there ever be a morn 
 16, I love her with the seasons y with the winds 
 
".ocKf g:.. 
 
THE THIRD BOOK OF SONGS. 
 
 WHEN high Zeus first peopled earth, 
 As sages say, 
 All were children of one birth, 
 Helpless nurslings. Doves and bees 
 Tended their soft infancies : 
 Hand to hand they tossed the ball, 
 And none smiled to see the play, 
 Nor stood aside 
 In pride 
 And pleasure of their youthful day. 
 
 Then all waxed gray, 
 Mourning in companies the winter dearth : 
 Whatever they saw befall 
 Their neighbours, they 
 Felt in themselves ; so lay 
 On life a pall. 
 
 Zeus at the confusion smiled, 
 
 And said, " From hence 
 Man by change must be beguiled ; 
 Age with royalties of death. 
 Childhood sweeter than its breath, 
 
 47 
 
Will be won, if we provide 
 Generation's difference." 
 
 Wisely he planned ; 
 
 The tiny hand 
 In eld*s weak palm found providence, 
 
 And each through influence 
 Of things beholden and not borne grew mild ; 
 Youths by the old man's side 
 
 Their turbulence 
 
 To crystal sense 
 
 Saw clarified. 
 
 Dear, is not the story's truth 
 
 Most manifest ? 
 Had our lives been twined, forsooth, 
 We had never had one heart : 
 By Time set a space apart, 
 We are bound by such close ties 
 None can tell of either breast 
 The native sigh 
 Who try 
 To learn with whom the Muse is guest. 
 
 How sovereignly I*m blest 
 To see and smell the rose of my own youth 
 In thee : how pleasant lies 
 
 My life, at rest 
 From dream, its hope expressed 
 Before mine eyes. 
 
 48 
 
METHINKS my love to thee doth grow, 
 And this the sign : 
 I see the Spirit claim thee, 
 And do not blame thee. 
 Nor break intrusive on the Holy Ground 
 Where thou of God art found. 
 
 I watch the fire 
 Leap up, and do not bring 
 Fresh water from the spring 
 To keep it from up-flaming higher 
 Than my chilled hands require 
 
 For cherishing. 
 
 I see thy soul turn to her hidden grot, 
 
 And follow not ; 
 Content thou shouldst prefer 
 
 To be with her. 
 The heavenly Muse, than ever find in me 
 
 Best company. 
 
 So brave my love is grown, 
 I joy to find thee sought 
 
 By some great thought ; 
 And am content alone 
 To eat lifers common fare, 
 
 While thou prepare 
 To be my royal moment's guest : 
 
 Live to the Best 1 
 
 49 
 
THOU must not leave me ! 
 Though 'tis a mournful land 
 Through which I travel, 
 I will but guide thee, hand in hand. 
 To mysteries thou must in art unravel. 
 When thou a little way art gone, 
 Ere the grove's steep descent 
 Darkening can grieve thee, 
 Thou backward to the sweet stars shalt be sent ; 
 While I plod on 
 To Acheron. 
 
 IT was deep April, and the morn 
 Shakspere was born ; 
 The world was on us, pressing sore ; 
 My Love and I took hands and swore, 
 
 Against the world, to be 
 Poets and lovers evermore, 
 To laugh and dream on Lethe's shore. 
 To sing to Charon in his boat. 
 Heartening the timid souls afloat ; 
 Of judgment never to take heed. 
 But to those fast-locked souls to speed, 
 Who never from Apollo fled. 
 Who spent no hour among the dead ; 
 
 Continually 
 
 With them to dwell. 
 Indifferent to heaven and hell. 
 
 SO 
 
Tots fxkv &0LhiiLS^ Toh 5* a9 daKp^^wv 
 Biov dfi^Xotiirbv trap^x^^^^^' 
 
 APOLLO and the Muses taught thee not 
 Thy mighty strain, enchantment to the mind, 
 Thralling the heart by spell of holy fears ; 
 Awful thou sought'st Erinys* sacred grot ; 
 And the Eternal Goddess, well inclined, 
 Hath given thee songs, for the dull life of tears. 
 
 THERE comes a change in her breath, 
 A change that saith 
 She is breathing in her sleep. 
 Breathing, breathing and yet so low : 
 O life at ebb, O life at flow. 
 Her life, her breath ! 
 
 A GIRL, 
 Her soulI a deep-wave pearl 
 Dim, lucent of all lovely mysteries ; 
 A face flowered for heart's ease, 
 A brow's grace soft as seas 
 Seen through faint forest-trees : 
 A mouth, the lips apart. 
 Like aspen-leaflets trembling in the breeze 
 From her tempestuous heart. 
 Such : and our souls so knit, 
 I leave a page half-writ — 
 The work begun 
 Will be to heaven's conception done, 
 If she come to it. 
 
 SI 
 
OUR myrtle is in flower ; 
 Behold Love's power 1 
 The glorious stamens* crowded force unfurled, 
 
 Cirque beyond cirque 
 At breathing, bee-like, and harmonious work ; 
 The rose-patched petals backward curled, 
 
 Falling away 
 To let fecundity have perfect play. 
 
 O flower, dear to the eyes 
 
 Of Aphrodite, rise 
 As she at once to bare, audacious bliss ; 
 
 And bid us near 
 Your prodigal, delicious hemisphere. 
 Where thousand kisses breed the kiss 
 
 That fills the room 
 With languor of an acid, dark perfume 1 
 
 FORSAKING. 
 
 HAVE you seen the olives at set of sun, 
 How their fiery maze. 
 That tossed him his sparkles, snatched his rays. 
 Becomes a region of limitless grays. 
 Dead, bough on bough. 
 For lack of the sun ? 
 Love, this is how 
 Living would be if thy life' were ran : 
 Leave me not, thou ! 
 
 52 
 
A PRAYER. 
 
 SHE lies asleep : I, watching, do not dare 
 Pray for her dole or bliss : 
 Give the sweet face whatever, being there. 
 Thou needs must kiss I 
 
 SWEET-BRIAR IN ROSE. 
 
 SO sweet, all sweet, — the body as the shyer 
 Sweet seiises, and the Spirit sweet as those ; 
 For me the fragrance of a whole sweet-briar. 
 Beside the rose 1 
 
 METRUM PRAXILLAE. 
 
 STREAM AND POOL. 
 
 MINE is the eddying foam and the broken current. 
 Thine the serene-flowing tide, the unshattered 
 rhythm ; 
 Light touches me on the surface with glints of sunshine. 
 Dives in thy bosom disclosing a mystic river : 
 Ruffling, the wind takes the crest of my waves resurgent. 
 Stretches his pinions at poise on thy even ripples : 
 What is my song but the tumult of chafing forces. 
 What is thy silence. Beloved, but enchanted music I 
 
 53 
 
METRUM PRAXILLAE. 
 
 SWEET of my Poet how sweet are the eyes, the 
 eye-lids, 
 Open as clear to the sun as the flowers of noon-tide ; 
 Honeyed the light they secure in their shaded amber, 
 Filling the sense with desire to inhale their fragrance, 
 Linger, and feast at their brink as at brink of roses. 
 
 POWER IN SILENCE. 
 
 THOUGH I sing high, and chaunt above her, 
 Praising my girl. 
 It were not right 
 To reckon her the poorer lover ; 
 
 She does not love me less 
 For her royal, jewelled speechlessness, 
 She is the sapphire, she the light. 
 The music in the pearl. 
 
 II. 
 
 Not from pert birds we learn the spring-tide 
 
 From open sky. 
 
 What speaks to us 
 Closer than far distances that hide 
 In woods, what is more dear 
 Than a cherry-bough, bees feeding near 
 In the soft, proffered blooms ? Lo, I 
 Am fed and honoured thus. 
 
 54 
 
She has the star's own pulse ; its throbbing 
 
 Is a quick light. 
 She is a dove 
 My soul draws to its breast ; her sobbing 
 
 Is for the warm dark there 1 
 In the heat of her wings I would not care 
 My close-housed bird should take her flight 
 
 To magnify our love. 
 
 DAYBREAK. 
 
 SHALL there ever be a morn 
 I might breathe beside her, 
 And yet choose to wake forlorn, 
 And yet choose to wake in death ? 
 Eros, while my Love has breath 
 I will breathe beside her. 
 
 CONSTANCY. 
 '* I am pure! I am pure I I am pure I" 
 
 I LOVE her with the seasons, with the winds, 
 As the stars worship, as anemones 
 Shudder in secret for the sun, as bees 
 Buzz round an open flower : in all kinds 
 My love is perfect, and in each she finds 
 Herself the goal ; then why, intent to tease 
 And rob her delicate spirit of its ease 
 Hastes she to range me with inconstant minds ? 
 
 55 
 
I 
 
 If she should die, if I were left at large 
 
 On earth without her — I, on earth, the same 
 
 Quick mortal with a thousand cries, her spell 
 
 She fears would break. And I confront the charge. 
 
 As sorrowing, and as careless of my fame, 
 
 As Christ intact before the infidel. 
 
THE FOURTH BOOK OF SONGS 
 
THE TABLE OF THE FOURTH BOOK. 
 
 /. A shady silence fills 
 
 2. The iris wasjyellowy the moon was pale 
 
 ^. In winter i afternoons are short 
 
 4. A valley of oak-trees 
 
 5. She was a royal lady horn 
 
 6. 'Leda was weary of her state j the crown 
 
 was heaxy on her head 
 
 7. Ai&, hov3 beautiful is youth 
 
THE FOURTH BOOK OF SONGS. 
 
 A SHADY silence fills, 
 At deep mid-eventide, 
 The rockless land of hills 
 
 Where two slow rivers glide. 
 The gnats beneath the gloom 
 
 Have failed in song, 
 Yet something through the combe 
 
 Comes like a sound along. 
 Though very far as yet, 
 
 Though no one is in sight. 
 Nor could a mortal set 
 Such alien echoes moving through the night. 
 
 'Tis not an hour to fear : 
 
 The sun is gone to bed, 
 The clouds from dusk are clear. 
 
 And there are overhead 
 But one or two large stars, 
 
 A bat or two. 
 Yet, hark 1 a jangle mars 
 
 The peaceful mountain-view, 
 
 6i 
 
Like the far cry of hounds 
 Chasing a distant prey : 
 The chime of yelping sounds — 
 Oh, will it sink, or will it swell this way ? 
 
 It comes as comes the wind. 
 
 With little noise at first. 
 Exultantly combined, 
 
 Halloes and bays outburst 
 Upon that solitude 
 
 Where two streams meet : 
 Then in a scramble rude 
 
 Of shoulders, ears, and feet 
 The banhounds rush along, 
 
 And drive before their jaws 
 A wincing, naked throng 
 At flight from heated breath and thorny claws. 
 
 These are the souls that moan 
 
 Because upon their birth 
 God's water was not thrown ; 
 
 Or those who left the earth 
 Impenitent, unblessed. 
 Now all must fly. 
 While summer is at rest. 
 
 And, hunted furiously. 
 Be caught and bitten through 
 
 By dogs of faery-breed. 
 Sleek creatures, ebon-blue. 
 With lusting teeth and fore-ordained speed. 
 
 62 
 
They scour the mountain side, 
 
 The upland township, then 
 Skirt the dark valley wide, 
 
 A cloud of dogs and men : 
 Behind, tall ladies race. 
 
 Each dressed in green. 
 Each with a smile-lit face 
 
 And presence of a queen, 
 Who breathe from steely lips. 
 
 Clap when a soul is caught. 
 And urge, with corded whips. 
 The stragglers of the pack to fiendish sport. 
 
 Their dogs have ceased to whine ; 
 
 The whining doth not cease. 
 One cannot watch the kine, 
 
 That chew their cud in peace ; 
 For still the lengthy curs. 
 
 It almost seems. 
 Phantasmal haunt the firs, 
 
 Haunt the two voiceless streams : 
 The sprites themselves have ghosts 
 
 That it is hard to lay, 
 And echoes walk in hosts 
 Long after the live echoes pass away. 
 
 63 
 
THE iris was yellow, the moon was pale, 
 In the air it was stiller than snow, 
 There was even light through the vale, 
 But a vaporous sheet 
 Clung about my feet. 
 And I dared no further go. 
 I had passed the pond, I could see the stile. 
 The path was plain for more than a mile. 
 Yet I dared no further go. 
 
 The iris-beds shone in my face, when, whist I 
 
 A noiseless music began to blow, 
 A music that moved through the mist. 
 That had not begun. 
 That would never be done, 
 With that music I must go : 
 And I found myself in the heart of the tune. 
 Wheeling round to the whirr of the moon, 
 With the sheets of mist below. 
 
 In my hands how warm were the little hands. 
 Strange, little hands that I did not know : 
 I did not think of the elvan bands, 
 Nor of anything 
 In that whirling ring — ' 
 Here a cock began to crow 1 
 The little hands dropped that had clung so tight, 
 And I saw again by the pale dawnlight 
 The iris-heads in a row. 
 
 64 
 
A BALLAD. 
 
 IN winter, afternoons are short ; 
 It was a winter afternoon. 
 The milking was already done ; 
 I took my man, I took my gun. 
 That we might have some sport. 
 
 We stooped behind the tallest brake ; 
 There was a bush of golden furze ; 
 The furze has scent so rich and full 
 It makes the sense a little dull : 
 I hardly felt awake. 
 
 Oh, could it be the whirr of game, 
 That sudden, little spring of noise ! 
 Robin was shouting in the wind ; 
 He must have left me far behind, 
 So faint his whistle came. 
 
 I felt the bushes with my hand : 
 There was a certain furrowed nook — 
 The gorse with fire was black and brown. 
 But there the music drew me down 
 Into a clear, white land. 
 
 There was more grass than I could see, 
 The grass was marked with pale, green rings ; 
 And oh, the sudden joy I felt 
 To see them dancing at full pelt, 
 The whole Fair Family. 
 
 65 
 
We did not touch the pale, green rings, 
 I think we eddied through the air ; 
 A swirl of dew was in my face, 
 And, looking downward, I could trace 
 The mark of pale, green rings. 
 
 The measure scarcely was begun ; 
 I could have danced a hundred years I 
 But Robin, he would surely scoff — 
 Straightway I broke the measure off : 
 My eyes blinked in the sun. 
 
 If Robin should be come to harm 1 
 I looked for him to left, to right : 
 In winter, afternoons are short, 
 It was too late to think of sport ; 
 I turned back to the farm. 
 
 My mother all the tale should know. 
 How thick the trees above the hedge ! 
 There was a pond that I must pass ; 
 I looked in it as in a glass ; 
 My hair was white as snow. 
 
 The servants saw me pass and smiled. 
 But that was not the worst, for when 
 I looked in at the parlour door 
 The children rose up from the floor : 
 I had no wife or child. 
 
 They gathered round me in a flock ; 
 The mistress jeered. But who was he. 
 
 66 
 
That old man with the bald, bent head ? 
 Oh, he would know I had been dead, 
 He would not feel the shock. 
 
 His master was away from home, 
 He said, and rose to give me food ; 
 " But my old master has been lost 
 These fifty years." A terror crost 
 His breast, and he was dumb. 
 
 I could not touch the wheaten bread, 
 So plain I saw the clear, white land. 
 
 cursed, cursed elfin-race. 
 Mid living men I have no place, 
 
 And yet I am not dead. 
 
 1 travel on from town to town. 
 But always by a dusty road. 
 
 By market-streets, by booths and fairs ; 
 I have great terror of the snares 
 Upon the furzy down. 
 
 But I must see my home once more. 
 Nor fear to eat the wheaten bread. 
 Oh, some day I must see my friend. 
 And eat with him, and make an end, 
 For Robin is fourscore. 
 
 67 
 
A VALLEY of oak-trees, 
 A streamlet between them 
 As twisted as these ; 
 Few mortals have seen them, 
 Or crossed the low bridge 
 From oak-ridge to oak-ridge. 
 Why is there a bridge 
 Where no one can heed it. 
 Or traveller need it. 
 Small bridge between small oak-trees ? 
 
 The Dryads have homesteads, 
 
 And cousins and neighbours : 
 
 A Dryad, who weds 
 
 With a Faun, often labours 
 
 To reach her own folk 
 
 In some far away oak ; 
 
 For she loves the old folk 
 
 Of the glade where she tarried 
 
 Before she was married ; 
 
 And then on the bridge she treads. 
 
 Or one, who with boldness 
 
 Is wooed by a satyr. 
 
 Her sandals will press 
 
 On the boards with the patter 
 
 Of leaves in the wind ; 
 
 And looking behind, 
 
 68 
 
Half-scared by the wind, 
 Her face coy and simple 
 She hides mid her wimple, 
 And runs in her floating dress. 
 
 Thus often and sweetly 
 The bridge hath united, 
 Hath helped those who fly, 
 Hath brought the invited 
 And sped the late guest. 
 From east and from west 
 Pass lover and guest, 
 While the bridge is unbroken 
 In the countryside oaken. 
 And Dryads and Fauns live by. 
 
 A BALLAD. 
 
 SHE was a royal lady born. 
 Who loved a shepherd-lad ; 
 To bring the smile into his face 
 Was all the care she had. 
 
 His murderers brought a bloody crook 
 To show her of their deed : 
 
 She eyed it with a queenly eye ; 
 And leapt into the mead. 
 
 And there she settled with the lambs. 
 And felt their woolly fleece ; 
 
 It was their cry among the hills 
 That brought her to her peace. 
 
 69 
 
And when at night she folded them, 
 
 Outside the wattle-fold 
 She took her lute and sang to them 
 
 To keep them from the cold. 
 
 She was a happy innocent 
 
 Whom men had sought to spite. 
 
 Alack, no sovereign lady lives 
 A life of such delight. 
 
 For no one crossed her any more, 
 
 Or sought to bend her will ; 
 She watched the ewes at lambing-time, 
 
 And in the winter chill. 
 
 And when her flock was gathered far 
 
 One day beside the brook, 
 The shepherds found that she had died. 
 
 Her arms about her crook. 
 
 She had no memories to forget, 
 
 Nor any sins to weep ; 
 O God, that I might be like her, 
 
 And live among the sheep 1 
 
 70 
 
LEDA was wearied of her state, the crown 
 was heavy on her head ; 
 She put the crown away, 
 And ran down to the river-bed 
 For a whole holiday. 
 
 She came to draw free, lonely breaths beside 
 the mellow, autumn pools ; 
 Counting their starry drops. 
 She mused on the lone god who rules 
 Above the mountain-tops. 
 
 And, as she worshipped him with secret heart, 
 among the willow-trees 
 She felt how something sailed 
 And gathered round her as a breeze : 
 The breath within her failed. 
 
 There were white feathers on her breast when 
 she awoke ; the water stirred 
 With motion of white wings, 
 And in her ear that note she heard 
 The swan a-dying sings. 
 
 71 
 
TRIUMPH OF BACCHUS AND ARIADNE. 
 
 FROM LORENZO DI MBDICI. 
 
 " Quant* h bella giovinezza." 
 
 AH, how beautiful is youth, 
 Youth that fleets so fast away 1 
 He who would be gay, forsooth. 
 Let him hasten to be gay ! 
 This is Bacchus we are seeing, 
 Ariadne — ^how they glow I 
 Always happy and agreeing. 
 Since 'tis plain that nothing matters 
 While they love each other so ; 
 And these others, nymphs and satyrs, 
 Dance beside them all the way : 
 He who would be gay, forsooth, 
 Let him hasten to be gay. 
 
 See 1 these little fauns, a-bubble 
 With pure mischief, muse and plot 
 How to get the nymphs in trouble. 
 And a thousand traps have baited 
 Mid the bushes, in the grot ; 
 Now by Bacchus* heat elated 
 They are skipping all the way : 
 He who would be gay, forsooth, 
 Let him hasten to be gay. 
 
 72 
 
And the tricksome nymphs discover 
 It is nice to be pursued, 
 Caught and worried by a lover ; 
 Who should frown at Love's ensnaring 
 Were a thankless creature rude ; 
 So they mingle, pleasure sharing, 
 Making gambol all the way : 
 He who would be gay, forsooth. 
 Let him hasten to be gay. 
 
 On an ass Silenus hoary 
 Rides, with all his flesh and years, 
 Drunken, steeped in Bacchic glory. 
 At his figure's backward swaying 
 He is foremost in his jeers ; 
 And at whiles, in snatches singing 
 With the others, cheers the way : 
 He who would be gay, forsooth. 
 Let him hasten to be gay. 
 
 This is Midas : as they tell us, 
 
 All he touches turns to gold, 
 
 But his gift scarce makes us jealous ; 
 
 For what good is there in treasure. 
 
 Treasure more than man can hold. 
 
 If he cannot take his pleasure, 
 
 Being thirsty all the way ? 
 
 He who would be gay, forsooth, 
 
 Let him hasten to be gay. 
 
 73 
 
Now all ears be set a-tingle, 
 Open, quick to every bliss 1 
 Young and old together mingle, 
 Young nor old possess the morrow, 
 'Tis to-day we meet and kiss ; 
 We must drop our grief, for sorrow 
 Would pollute this holy way : 
 He who would be gay, forsooth, 
 Let him hasten to be gay. 
 
 Youth and maiden, swell the chorus 1 
 In our hearts how warm and sweet 
 Thus to feel the gods are for us. 
 Loving music, loving dances. 
 Merry with our moving feet ! 
 Let misfortune as it chances 
 Strike across us on our way : 
 He who would be gay, forsooth, 
 Let him hasten to be gay. 
 Ah, how beautiful is youth, 
 Youth that fleets so fast away I 
 
THE FIFTH BOOK OF SONGS 
 
THE TABLE OF THE FIFTH BOOK. 
 
 /. ^he fled from love, her suit was granted 
 
 2 . A land of riotous harvest and of sweat 
 
 ^, A nightingale wakes me. Think of this 
 
 4. Two lovers came; of many a common thing 
 
 5. W^ met 
 
 6. As two fair vessels side hy side 
 
 7. "Dost thou not hear ? Amid dun, lonely hills 
 
 8. A train 
 
 9. The tips of the hills rise up, like curled 
 
 10. The love that breeds 
 
 1 1. Full summer and at noon ; from a waste bed 
 i2> Your rose is dead 
 
 i^. Ijooky in the early light 
 
 14. There is a month between the swath and sheaf 
 
 75. The lady I have vowed to paint 
 
 16. W^ meet» I cannot look up; I hear 
 
 ly. I have found her power 
 
 1 8' A branch of wild-rose buds 
 
 1 p. In a vase of gold 
 
 20. lilies, are you come 
 
 21. They are terribly white 
 
 22. I live in the world for his sake 
 
 2^. I hear thine iterating voice inflight 
 
 24. Gay lucidity 
 
 2^, Stars at break of day 
 
 26, H/s ship has touched the land: what curses 
 
 2 J. Ijife was a rose, a rose to me 
 
 28. As the young phcenix, duteous to his sire 
 
THE FIFTH BOOK OF SONGS. 
 
 APOLLO*S TRIUMPH. 
 
 SHE fled from love, her suit was granted, 
 Daphne was changed into a laurel-tree. 
 But after, with so keen a zest she panted 
 To yield her sweets, and, in despair, 
 Cast such engrossing odours through the air, 
 Apollo, breathing them, had all he wanted. 
 
 ALAND of riotous harvest and of sweat, 
 A land where men pull down the boughs to get 
 Plump clusters and then ravage them, a land 
 Where some coarse mystery breeds that must expand ; 
 A festival as ominous as fate, 
 A holiday that will not satiate. 
 Such laughter as must leap up to a creed ; 
 More clusters and more crushings and more speed, 
 Pressure of bubbling fruit on open lips. 
 Squashing and spirts and juicy finger-tips ! 
 For this sun-smothered champaign were accurst. 
 Should Bacchus pass, with glazing eyes, athirst. 
 
 79 
 
A NIGHTINGALE wakes me. Think of this ! ■ 
 While she sings so loud, 
 A woman is lying in her shroud 
 To whom a lover has never vowed : 
 O wrong in the world, and by God allowed ! 
 
 Ah me, a girl to be dead, and miss 
 
 That high-and-away, that clang of pain, 
 The way Love trebles his sweets again, 
 And then feels it vain, 
 
 Jarjarral and keeps to the mocking strain! 
 
 Two lovers came ; of many a common thing 
 We talked ; then in a ring 
 Drew toward the hearth ; the winter daylight died, 
 And she was at his side ; 
 
 He took, he stroked her hand. 
 That we might know 
 It is just so 
 Love loves, the cadence of our talk grew low, 
 The fire shot forth a brand. 
 
 Then we forgot the lovers ; for the room 
 Was filling with a doom, 
 The pressure of a Presence that we felt 
 Had power with them that dwelt 
 In many a distant land 
 And with the dead, 
 No word we said 
 But in a stupor watched the firelight shed 
 Glow on the fondled hand. 
 
 80 
 
MARIONETTES. 
 
 WE met 
 After a year. I shall never forget 
 How odd it was for our eyes to meet, 
 For we had to repeat 
 In our glances the words that we had said 
 In days when, as our lashes lifted 
 Or drooped, the universe was shifted. 
 We had not closed with the past, then why 
 Did the sense come over us as a fetter 
 That all we did speaking eye to eye 
 Had been done before and so much better ? 
 I think — but there's no saying — 
 What made us so hateful was the rage 
 Of our souls at finding ourselves a stage 
 Where marionettes were playing : 
 For a great actor once had trod 
 Those boards and played the god. 
 
 As two fair vessels side by side, 
 No bond had tied 
 Our floating peace ; 
 We thought that it would never cease, 
 But like swan-creatures we should always glide : 
 And this is love 
 We sighed. 
 
 8i 
 
As two grim vessels side by side, 
 - Through wind and tide 
 War grappled us, 
 With bond as strong as death, and thus 
 We drove on mortally allied : 
 And this is hate 
 We cried. 
 
 AN iEOLIAN HARP. 
 
 DOST thou not hear ? Amid dun, lonely hills 
 Far off a melancholy music shrills, 
 As for a joy that no fruition fills. 
 
 Who live in that far country of the wind ? 
 
 The unclaimed hopes, the powers but half -divined, 
 
 The shy, heroic passions of mankind. 
 
 And all are young in those reverberant bands ; 
 None marshals them, no mellow voice commands ; 
 They whirl and eddy as the shifting sands. 
 
 There, there is ruin, and no ivy clings ; 
 There pass the mourners for untimely things. 
 There breaks the stricken cry of crownless kings. 
 
 But ever and anon there spreads a boom 
 Of wonder through the air, arraigning doom 
 With ineffectual plaint as from a tomb. 
 
 82 
 
A TRAIN 
 That traverses Europe's central plain 1 — 
 Thousands of miles through the moulded furrows 
 Twinkling in sunset ; as night grows brown 
 
 A Power comes down, 
 Stretches its wings on the infinite plain, 
 Strains to the earth : one bows to its reign, 
 And prays and prays through the thousand furrows 
 
 For a heart subdued 
 To the heart of that infinite solitude. 
 
 A SUPPOSITION. 
 
 THE tips of the hills rise up, like curled 
 Waves on the verge, from Gallow Hill : 
 Rim on rim what a wide, round world 
 The man to be hanged must have looked on, till 
 It closed up tight in the grip of the noose. 
 To think that just on a day like this — 
 Harvest in valley, sun profuse — 
 Some six of one's fellows should deprive 
 A soul of the joy of being alive, 
 And watching the sun and the mountains kiss 1 
 But what if his captors after all 
 Were baulked of putting their man in thrall, 
 And, just when they choked him, eye and breath. 
 Their victim were sailing out clear to death. 
 No longer to blink in the flashing sun. 
 To be in the light, in the very run. 
 
 83 
 
And reach past the mountains curling rim ; — 
 If, while the troopers were burying him, 
 With thought of hell and the judgment grim, 
 He were stretching his limbs from life's fetter-curse 
 To rest in the golden universe ? 
 
 UNBOSOMING. 
 
 THE love that breeds 
 In my heart for thee 1 
 As the iris is full, brimful of seeds, 
 And all that it flowered for among the reeds 
 Is packed in a thousand vermilion-beads 
 That push, and riot, and squeeze, and clip, 
 Till they burst the sides of the silver scrip, 
 And at last we see 
 
 What the bloom, with its tremulous, bowery fold 
 Of zephyr-petal at heart did hold : 
 So my breast is rent 
 
 With the burthen and strain of its great content ; 
 For the summer of fragrance and sighs is dead, 
 The harvest-secret is burning red. 
 And I would give thee, after my kind. 
 The final issues of heart and mind. 
 
 84 
 
FULL summer and at noon ; from a waste bed 
 Convolvulus, musk-mallow, poppies spread 
 The triumph of the sunshine overhead. 
 
 Blue on refulgent ash-trees lies the heat ; 
 
 It tingles on the hedge-rows ; the young wheat 
 
 Sleeps, warm in golden verdure, at my feet. 
 
 The pale, sweet grasses of the hayfield blink ; 
 The heath-moors, as the bees of honey drink. 
 Suck the deep bosom of the day. To think 
 
 Of all that beauty by the light defined 
 
 None shares my vision 1 Sharply on my mind 
 
 Presses the sorrow : fern and flower are blind. 
 
 YOUR rose is dead-, 
 They said. 
 The Grand Mogul — for so her splendour 
 Exceeded, masterful, it seemed her due 
 By dominant male titles to commend her : 
 
 But I, her lover, knew 
 That myriad-coloured blackness, wrought with fire. 
 Was woman to the rage of my desire. 
 
 My rose was dead ? She lay 
 Against the sulphur, lemon and blush-gray 
 Of younger blooms, transformed, morose. 
 Her shrivelling petals gathered round her close, 
 And where before, 
 
 8s 
 
Coils twisted thickest at her core 
 A round, black hollow : it had come to pass 
 Hints of tobacco, leather, brass, 
 Confounded, gave her texture and her colour. 
 I watched her, as I watched her, growing duller, 
 
 Majestic in recession 
 
 From flesh to mould. 
 My rose is dead — I echo the confession. 
 
 And they pass to pluck another ; 
 ^►While I, drawn on to vague, prodigious pleasure, 
 
 Fondle my treasure. 
 
 sweet, let death prevail 
 
 Upon you, as your nervous outlines thicken 
 And totter, as your crimsons stale, 
 
 1 feel fresh rhythms quicken. 
 
 Fresh music follows you. Corrupt, grow old, 
 
 Drop inwardly to ashes, smother 
 
 Your burning spices, and entoil 
 
 My senses till you sink a clod of fragrant soil 1 
 
 THE DEPTHS OF THE GRASS. 
 
 LOOK, in the early light, 
 Down to the infinite 
 Depths at the deep grass-roots ; 
 Where the sun shoots 
 In golden veins, as looking through 
 A dear pool one sees it do ; 
 Where campion drifts 
 Its bladders, iris-brinded, through the rifts 
 Of rising, falling seed 
 
 86 
 
That the winds lightly scour — 
 Down to the matted earth where over 
 And over again crow's-foot and clover 
 
 And pink bindweed 
 
 Dimly, steadily flower. 
 
 JULY. 
 
 THERE is a month between the swath and sheaf 
 When grass is gone 
 And com still grassy, 
 
 When limes are massy 
 With hanging leaf 
 And pollen-coloured blooms whereon 
 Bees are voices we can hear, 
 So hugely dumb 
 This silent month of the attaining year. 
 The white-faced roses slowly disappear 
 From field and hedgerow, and no more flowers come : 
 Earth lies in strain of powers 
 Too terrible for flowers : 
 And would we know 
 
 Her burthen we must go 
 Forth from the vale, and, ere the sunstrokes slacken. 
 Stand at a moorland's edge and gaze 
 Across the hush and blaze 
 Of the clear-burning, verdant summer bracken ; 
 For in that silver flame 
 Is writ July's own name — 
 The ineffectual, numbed sweet 
 Of passion at its heat. 
 
 87 
 
THE lady I have vowed to paint 
 Has contour of a rose, 
 No rigid shadow of a saint 
 
 Upon the wall she throws; 
 Her tints so softly lie 
 Against the air they almost vie 
 With the sea*s outline smooth against the sky. 
 
 To those whom damask hues beguile 
 
 Her praise I do not speak, 
 I find her colour in the smile 
 
 Warm on her warm, blond cheek : 
 
 Then to the eyes away 
 It spreads, those eyes of mystic gray 
 That with mirage of their own vision play. 
 
 Her h^r, about her brow, bums bright. 
 
 Her tresses are the gold 
 That in a missal keeps the light 
 
 Solemn and pure. Behold 
 Her lashes* glimmerings 
 Have the dove*s secret springs 
 Of amber sunshine when she spreads her wings. 
 
 88 
 
WE meet. I cannot look up ; I hear 
 He hopes that the rainy fog will clear : 
 With a flushing cheek, I hope it may, 
 And at last I seek his eyes. 
 Oh, to greet such skies — 
 The delicate, violet, thunder gray, 
 Behind, a spirit at mortal play ! 
 Who cares that the fog should roll away ? 
 
 I HAVE found her power I 
 From her roving eyes 
 Just a gift of blue, 
 That away she threw 
 As a girl may throw a flower. 
 I am weary of glances ; 
 This blue enhances 
 My life : I have found her power. 
 
 ONE BRANCH. 
 
 A BRANCH of wild-rose buds 
 In sunny studs 
 Of orange-red, flecked by the warm, diffused, 
 
 Violet flowers, 
 Breathing a breath transfused 
 
 As if with showers 
 Of the first dew that fell 
 When all things done were well. 
 
 89 
 
IN a vase of gold 
 And scarlet, how cold 
 The flicker of wrinkled grays 
 In this iris-sheaf ! My eyes fill with wonder 
 At the tossed, moist light, at the withered scales under 
 And among the uncertain sprays. 
 
 The wavings of white 
 On the cloudy light, 
 And the finger-marks of pearl ; 
 The facets of crystal, the golden feather, 
 The way that the petals fold over together, 
 The way that the buds unfurl ! 
 
 TIGER-LILIES. 
 
 LILIES, are you come ! 
 I quail before you as your buds upswell ; 
 It is the miracle 
 Of fire and sculpture in your brazen urns 
 
 That strikes me dumb, — 
 Fire of midsummer that burns, 
 
 And as it passes. 
 Flinging rich sparkles on its own clear blaze, 
 Wreathes with the wreathing tongues and rays, 
 Great tiger-lilies, of your deep-cleft masses I 
 It is the wonder 
 I am laid under 
 By the firm heaves 
 And overtumbling edges of your liberal leaves. 
 
T* 
 
 CYCLAMENS. 
 
 ^HEY are terribly white: 
 
 There is snow on the ground, 
 And a moon on the snow at night ; 
 The sky is cut by the winter light ; 
 Yet I, who have all these things in ken, 
 Am struck to the heart by the chiselled white 
 Of this handful of cyclamen. 
 
 I LIVE in the world for his sake. 
 For the eyes that sleep and wake, 
 I live in the world for his eyes : 
 Earth's kingdoms may pass away, 
 I heed not these things of clay, 
 But I live, I love, I pray 
 From the light of his eyes. 
 
 TO A CUCKOO HEARD IN EARLY MORNING, 
 
 I HEAR thine iterating voice in flight, 
 Cuckoo, while every wood-bird's song is furled. 
 To rise like thee ! to take my range of light. 
 And spread unravished echoes through the world ! 
 
 91 
 
FEBRUARY. 
 
 GAY lucidity, 
 Not yet sunshine, in the air; 
 Tinglingsecrets hidden everywhere, 
 Each at watch for each ; 
 Sap within the hillside beech. 
 Not a leaf to see. 
 
 STARS AT DAWN. 
 
 STARS at break of day 
 Rushing to your rhythmic play 
 Round the sun so far away, 
 Pray for me as ye dance and bound, 
 Skimming the sky with a lovely sound. 
 Pray for me, as in a ring 
 To the crystal light ye sing, 
 That the image of your glee 
 May at heart give peace to me 1 
 
 TOUCHING THE LAND. 
 
 HIS ship has touched the land: what curses 
 Rise in my heart to feel him there 1 
 His ship is sailing on to verses 
 Of lyric passion and of prayer. 
 
 92 
 
LIFE was a rose, a rose to me 
 Through which the lucid blood flowed free, 
 Through which the sunlight slanted : 
 The inner circle was a flower enchanted, 
 And that some enemy 
 Has rifled from the core ; 
 I smell my rose no more ; 
 The zest of the intricacy is gone. 
 And the wide leaves flower on. 
 
 RENEWAL. 
 
 As the young phoenix, duteous to his sire, 
 Lifts in his beak the creature he has been, 
 And, laying o*er the corse broad vans for screen, 
 Bears it to solitudes, erects a pyre. 
 And, soon as it is wasted by the fire. 
 Grides with disdainful claw the ashes clean, 
 Then spreading unencumbered wings serene 
 Mounts to the aether with renewed desire : 
 
 So joyously I lift myself above 
 
 The life I buried in hot flames to-day ; 
 
 The flames themselves are dead — and I can range 
 
 Alone through the untarnished sky I love, 
 
 And trust myself, as from the grave one may, 
 
 To the enchanting miracles of change. 
 
PRINTED BY 
 
 SMITH 6f SALE 
 
 PORTLAND 
 
 MAINE