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 JNIVERSITY OF CA RIVERSIDE. L BRARY 
 
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 10 VENUCCL SINGER
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 RIVERSIDE
 
 COSMO VENUCCI, SINGER 
 
 AND OTHER POEMS
 
 COSMO VENUCCI, SINGER 
 
 AND OTHER POEMS 
 
 BY 
 
 MAY EARLE 
 
 LONDON 
 KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO. 
 
 1890
 
 PS 
 
 (The rights of translation and of reproduction are reserved?)
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 fACiS 
 
 COSMO VENUCCI, SINGER ... ... ... ... i 
 
 A PHASE OF AGNOSTICISM ... ... ... 66 
 
 Two IN PALERMO ... ... ... ... ... 91 
 
 FRIENDS ... ... ... ... ... 97 
 
 THE SUICIDE'S WIFE ... ... ... ... 102 
 
 SUNSET IN THE SOUTH ... ... ... ... no 
 
 "LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI " ... ... ... 112 
 
 AFTER MARRIAGE ... ... ... ... 117 
 
 A BROKEN FRIENDSHIP ... ... ... ... 122 
 
 MONODY OF DOUBT ... ... ... ... 125 
 
 SONG OF THE SPIRIT OF NATURE ... ... ... 129 
 
 IN LESBOS ... ... ... ... 132 
 
 SONNETS TO MY MASTER ... ... ... ... 137
 
 COSMO VENUCCI, SINGER, 
 
 ERRATA. 
 
 Page 10, line 3, for "art" rend "Art." 
 
 15 6, for "cicada's" read "cicalas'." 
 
 ,, 26 ,,20, for "treasures" read "treasuries." 
 
 ,, 47 6, for "Beloved" read "Beloved." 
 
 ,, 59 ,, 8, dehle full-stop after "above." 
 
 100 ,, n, for "breaks" read "break." 
 
 '33 i '9i for "To Paean" read " lo Paean."
 
 COSMO VENUCCI, SINGER.
 
 PRELUDE. 
 
 AGAINST the golden maize that hangs above 
 
 Old Gian's botte"ga, where the pigeons love 
 
 To flit and peck at noon, the western sun 
 
 Burned as a golden fire ; the day was done, 
 
 And when the music of the bells awoke 
 
 As was my wont I took my singer's cloak, 
 
 (The dear old cloak that hath outlived the song ;) 
 
 And wandered up the Duomo through the throng 
 
 Of sculptured saints ; by buttresses flung fair 
 
 As Babylonian gardens in mid air, 
 
 Past spires and traceries until I came 
 
 Unto this terrace, where the sun's last flame 
 
 Shines on the golden Virgin, at whose feet 
 
 I stand to watch the day and twilight meet, 
 
 Far down below me where the Lombard plain 
 
 (Traversed by shades that wax and lights that wane) 
 
 Spreads purple 'neath the purple skies of eve, 
 
 And dim with mists that glide and interwreathe 
 
 As phantom dancers on its flowerless meads, 
 
 And follow onward while the river leads
 
 COSMO VENUCCI, SINGER. 
 
 By leafless poplars, willows brown and bare, 
 
 By vineyards, now despoiled and ragged where 
 
 Purple and green late glowed ; through mulberry-groves, 
 
 Waste with the coming winter ; past alcoves 
 
 Of trellised roses, bud and blossom gone ; 
 
 By cities, mountains, hamlets on and on 
 
 And as I gaze, behold, before mine eyes 
 
 Old memories as new-come phantoms rise 
 
 And join the shadowy mists in airy dance 
 
 And follow with them through the plain's expanse ; 
 
 Then from my sight, as surf by sea-winds blown 
 
 The mists depart, the memories dance alone, 
 
 As in a dream the autumn twilight fades, 
 
 Still they dance on, then flit as mournful shades 
 
 Over bare rice-fields, that as lakes of gold 
 
 Shone beneath summer skies that eve of old 
 
 When standing at the silent Virgin's feet 
 
 I saw as now the light and shadows meet, 
 
 And the plain darken till at last it grew 
 
 Like to a dusky sky shot through and through 
 
 With crimson flame, while Alp and Apennine 
 
 As bastioned clouds upheld the horizon line : 
 
 When young in years and passionate of soul 
 
 I watched the last stray sunbeams as they stole 
 
 Down from the waning splendour of her crown, 
 
 From golden palms of sculptured martyrs down, 
 
 And faded in the twilight (dim as flowers 
 
 Trampled to death by feet of careless Hours.)
 
 COSMO VENUCCI, SINGER. 
 
 And in the gathered gloom yon carven saint, 
 
 His hope unfailing and his heart unfaint, 
 
 Stood 'mid his fellows, rapt in steadfast prayer 
 
 That searched Heaven vainly yet believed God there. 
 
 Still he looks upward from his marble height 
 
 As through the vigil of an age-long night 
 
 Watching unwearied for eternal day ; 
 
 Still the strong lips unfaltering seem to pray, 
 
 Locked in a passion of appeal from speech 
 
 That (as a blossomed cliff or rock-bound beach 
 
 Which bourns the ocean) bourns the soul's desire 
 
 And is but as to Song itself some choir, 
 
 Still he prays on unchanged, but I since then 
 
 Have passed from youth to age in years of men, 
 
 Have changed the singer's voice for songless lips, 
 
 The sun of Art for darkness of eclipse, 
 
 Have changed young passion, yearning, hope, that were 
 
 For something which is like yon statue's prayer 
 
 But yet is these (as unrefracted light 
 
 Holds every glowing colour in the white.) 
 
 Life too is changed lapsed lost ; she sings above 
 
 Who was its life, the love of its whole love ; 
 
 And he, my Master, whose stern words of praise 
 
 Were sweeter than all early budding bays, 
 
 Than all La Scala's shouts and wreathen flowers, 
 
 Sleeps wakened by no song of transient Hours. 
 
 The past is quick within my heart and strong, 
 
 Old memories from their phantom wanderings throng
 
 COSMO VENUCCI, SINGER. 
 
 Closely around me, and lost voices call 
 
 Athwart the wind ; with cadenced rise and fall 
 
 Old songs ring on mine ear ; once more I feel 
 
 A woman's tender arms about me steal, 
 
 A woman's burning kisses on my lips, 
 
 And straight the weight of weary seasons slips 
 
 From off me, and my life is lost in hers : 
 
 I hear anew the choired choristers 
 
 Sing for us as so long ago they sang 
 
 When Santa Croce's shrines re-echoing rang, 
 
 And by her day my barren night was blest. 
 
 The past is quick within and will not rest ; 
 
 It sends me homeward to the olden rhymes 
 
 I strung together in the olden times, 
 
 Unto the olden songs laid at her feet, 
 
 That haply there we once again may meet.
 
 ( 7 ) 
 
 COSMO VENUCCI, SINGER. 
 
 " COSMO VENUCCI sings to-night, we hear ; 
 But many singers sing and disappear, 
 Flying, (as birds our Lombard winter's frost), 
 La Scala's silence, and Milano's ear 
 Loses less song than with her birds is lost." 
 
 Or " young Venucci sings ' Roberto ; ' he 
 The tenor whom our Master holds to be 
 The city's lark and nightingale in one ; 
 Voice pure as dawn, pathetic as the sea, 
 And true as is the sun-ray to the sun." 
 
 Thus in the Galleria's gorgeous blaze 
 Of golden lights (that in the short-lived days 
 Was brighter as the western splendour wanes) 
 The joyous idlers praise him or dispraise, 
 While in his heart one only passion reigns ; 
 
 B
 
 COSMO VENUCCI, SINGER. 
 
 One only hope, one fear, shall he sing well 
 
 For her who draws him with a deeper spell 
 
 Than mortal maiden, Fame, or e'en his song. 
 
 The Thracian's love thrilled through his harp in hell 
 
 Would love were all, for his were not less strong. 
 
 If song were sweet as love is strong, the fire 
 Of his own soul would serve him for a lyre 
 Whence Orphic music should the world enthrall, 
 And as the singing of Apollo's choir 
 Would be his song if love indeed were all. 
 
 " Cosmo Venucci " how my very name 
 Sounds strangely to me ! Are we, then, the same, 
 The singer of this night and I who here, 
 Forgetful of approaching fall or fame, 
 Kneel at my lady's feet and crave her ear? 
 
 O Art, my love, I sing for thee alone ; 
 My life is in my song, the song thine own, 
 And through it in thy presence I am known, 
 Or, unknown there, sing but unto my shame. 
 
 My life is in my song ; that life is thine. 
 If thou live not in me, (as light will shine 
 Through any film of cloud), then death is mine ; 
 And if thou call me not, I have no name.
 
 COSMO VENUCCI, SINGER. 
 
 Lead me to thee by any lowly ways. 
 What if the world should wreathe for me its bays ? 
 They would but pierce as thorns without thy praise ; 
 Lacking thy laurel, I know nought of fame. 
 
 The Lombard birds before the frost take wing, 
 But where thou art is ever-quickening spring. 
 The singer of this night, to thee I sing ; 
 Thou art the fire, burn through me as a flame. 
 
 O'er bourgeoned woods the western zephyr blows ; 
 A myriad flowers spring where Boreas trod ; 
 The red and golden willow of the snows 
 Hath each bough budded as the Levite's rod ; 
 The morning dews on emerald pastures fall, 
 On early tendrils of the flax and maize ; 
 As speechless love the nightingale's first call 
 Thrills through the gathered dusk, and sunlit days 
 Quicken with music of returning birds ; 
 Season and song of Nature are begun, 
 While in the city new-born silence girds 
 La Scala with its song and season done. 
 
 Which season is the sweeter, 
 Which song the rarer song? 
 Hath Nature, when we meet her, 
 A witchery so strong,
 
 COSMO VENUCCI, SINGER. 
 
 So strange a power to thrall us, 
 To draw us to her knee, 
 As art hath if she call us, 
 Albeit no face we see ? 
 
 The song of Nature's singing 
 Is as a mighty psalm ; 
 A sea where life is winging 
 O'er soundless depths of calm ; 
 A mystic song that fills us 
 With peace and high desire, 
 Draws us with love, yet chills us 
 By seeming lack of fire. 
 
 The song of Art is ever 
 Song of the human soul ; 
 Within herself it never 
 Is perfectly made whole ; 
 She, in some charmed fashion, 
 All human tears and smiles, 
 All human hope and passion, 
 Into her song beguiles. 
 
 She perfects its terrestrial 
 With strains of seraphim, 
 With melodies celestial 
 Of flaming cherubim ;
 
 COSMO VENUCCI, SINGER. 
 
 And thus it burneth through us 
 As fire through lava burns, 
 Or if she cometh to us, 
 Or if from us she turns. 
 
 To it the singer hearkens 
 Through storm and windless calm. 
 While day shines or night darkens, 
 No moly stays the charm ; 
 Or will he not or willeth, 
 Lashed vainly to the mast, 
 He strives to her who killeth 
 Or loveth him at last 
 
 This song he seeketh ever 
 To echo as his own 
 This song whose fulness never 
 By mortal lips is known ; 
 But oft in him she findeth 
 Voice for some single strain, 
 And with its magic bindeth 
 Men, as the moon the main. 
 
 Ere cadence of this song is heard again 
 Within La Scala's walls, seven moons must wax 
 O'er Alp and Apennine, seven moons must wane 
 O'er Lombard meads, and this young emerald flax 
 Be blue (as yonder heavens) with countless flowers.
 
 12 COSMO VENUCCI, SINGER. 
 
 The singer's season with La Scala's song 
 Is over in the city, past the hours 
 Of midnight splendour, when, before a throng, 
 A cloud of listening faces, half aware, 
 Half unaware, that any heard, we sang ; 
 By the pulsating silence on the air, 
 And the proud passionate acclaim that rang 
 Around us (as a storm-lashed sea which beat 
 On moonlit shores), fired deeper in our song, 
 While Lombard flowers fell fast about our feet 
 And, by the sound and silence borne along, 
 Came to our ears the still small voice of Art, 
 " Lo, in my love and kingdom ye have part." 
 
 Oh. sweeter than the passionate acclaim, 
 
 The voice that saved me from a laurelled shame 
 
 And " bays unbudded " of a futile fame ! 
 
 Oh, sweeter than the passion of the lyre, 
 The passion of the singer when as fire 
 It mingles with the soul of its desire ! 
 
 Oh, sweeter than all mortal joy and gain, 
 The singer's when his lady's voice is fain 
 To count his love and service not in vain ! 
 
 Oh, sweeter than all mortal love is sweet, 
 The singer's as he kneeleth at her feet, 
 And mortal lips with lips immortal meet !
 
 COSMO VENUCC1, SINGER. 13 
 
 Songs in the Marinella, 
 
 Passionate songs and gay ; 
 
 Songs on the Molo, songs in the stradi, 
 
 Songs from the barques on the bay. 
 
 " O dolce Napoli, 
 O suol beato, 
 Ove sorridere 
 Voile il create 
 Tu sei 1'impera 
 Dell' armonia 
 Santa Lucia, Santa Lucia." 
 
 Fair shine the sapphire sky 
 And sapphire ocean ; 
 Fair shines the shallop, 
 Rocked with soft motion ; 
 Fair shine the islands, 
 Vineyards, and flowers. 
 Fair shine the naiads in coral bowers. 
 
 Fair shines the city, 
 Sun-loved and holden 
 By some enchanted 
 Spell of the golden 
 Saturnian summer ; 
 Fair as the crescent 
 Seen on the azure of skies nigrescent.
 
 14 COSMO VENUCC1, SINGER. 
 
 Down on the Molo, 
 The Cantastori 
 Tell of Rinaldo 
 Story on story ; 
 In San Carlino 
 The people after 
 Cry, "Pulcinella !" with peals of laughter. 
 
 Dark eyes flash love to love, 
 Eros enhancing 
 Spirit and form become 
 Motion entrancing, 
 Where in the vineyard 
 Or ruined " cella " 
 Maidens and youths dance the tarantella. 
 
 Still, as a siren, 
 The city laveth 
 Her feet ; beside her 
 The pine-tree waveth, 
 The bay's blue waters 
 Throb with emotion 
 Around her, the sun-loved child of the ocean. 
 
 O dolce Napoli, 
 Well may we sing thee ; 
 Queen by thy beauty, 
 What do we bring thee ?
 
 COSMO VENUCCI, SINGER. 15 
 
 Song, while far sweeter 
 Thine own song is swelling, 
 A paean past praise as its charm is past telling. 
 
 Song in San Carlo ; now the grilli chirp 
 But sleepily beneath the setting sun, 
 And the cicada's fairy windmills turn 
 No longer in the flowerless autumn fields, 
 Now that in cypress groves the nightingales 
 Sing seldom in full-throated passion, Song, 
 Within the city strikes her silent lyre. 
 I sing of love to-day, here where the earth 
 Is quick with fiery pulses at my feet, 
 Here where at eve a lurid crimson cloud 
 Beats o'er the burning mountain of the bay ; 
 I sing of love, here where the people's heart 
 Is molten lava in its kindled flame, 
 Here where the passion of the southern throng 
 Swells with the swelling cadence of the song ; 
 I sing of love, albeit my lips have known 
 No mortal maiden's kiss, for, knowing Art, 
 In her I know the lesser human love 
 Which is but as one pulse within her life. 
 
 Dawn breaks above the bay, the crimson flame 
 Pales o'er yon mountain steep, the night is done ; 
 The fervid song-filled night in which were won, 
 Through thee, O Art, these laurels in thy name.
 
 1 6 COSMO VENUCCI, SINGER. 
 
 Trophies of thine, I lay them at thy feet, 
 With this Parthenopean wealth of flowers 
 Plucked in the passion of my midnight hours ; 
 Accept them, though an offering all unmeet. 
 
 For thee I sang, O Art, for thee alone ; 
 To thee I kneel for benison or blame : 
 Plaudits are but a scourge, and proffered fame 
 A broken palm, save as these are thine own. 
 
 ***** 
 A land enchanted, where no beauty wanes, 
 Dim dream-locked waters, green and glowing plains, 
 Where Nature as a drowsy Hebe fills 
 Her beaker at the great Olympian's nod, 
 And drinks nepenthe with the fallen god. 
 Wild satyr-shades still frolic in the vines 
 Whose purple presses foamed at Grecian feet, 
 And ghostly fauns make gambol 'neath the pines 
 Where sweet Cybele found a still retreat. 
 Inland, Avernus shines amid the hills, 
 As moonless darkness blossomed into day ; 
 While on the Lucrine marsh light sea-winds sway 
 The Ladon-reeds, and a weird music thrills 
 Along its verge, where tangled fern and flowers 
 Widen through ivy knoll and bramble brake, 
 Onward to reddened chestnut-woods that shake 
 Their ripened fruit into the vineyard bowers. 
 In ruined Baie, seen beneath the bay,
 
 COSMO VENUCC1, SINGER. 17 
 
 The naiads weep Poseidon's vanished day, 
 
 And in his temple, (by the god drawn down), 
 
 Sing woeful dirges of his lost renown. 
 
 In ruined Baie, on the moonlit heights, 
 
 Flit the wan ghosts of Roman sybarites, 
 
 And where among the brushwood gleams the snake 
 
 Echoes of ancient revelries awake, 
 
 Borne shoreward on the midnight winds that blow 
 
 Around Guinea, where the grasses grow 
 
 'Mid broken marbles, and the poppy blooms 
 
 In the grey tufa of the plundered tombs. 
 
 By sun and moon alike, the plain and bay, 
 
 Mountains and islands, with strange glamour hold 
 
 The sight and soul entranced ; night steals on day 
 
 As in the ear a magic charm is told. 
 
 Bewitched beyond e'en beauty's power to thrall, 
 
 We linger spellbound, live anew through all, 
 
 While in our hearts, at one with our desire, 
 
 There seems to throb the mountain's restless fire. 
 
 ***** 
 I sing of love again, of love to-night, 
 I who beneath yon moon's first crescent light, 
 Insensate, drunk with darkness, sang indeed 
 Of that I knew not doing it despite 
 By blind disdain or word of little heed. 
 
 Of love I held as less than love of Art, 
 A minor voice that in her song bore part,
 
 18 COSMO VENUCC1, SINGER. 
 
 A poorer passion of the soul I sang : 
 
 I sing that love now made my very heart, 
 
 My whole life's life, on which all issues hang. 
 
 An Amadeon seraph half on wing, 
 
 A mortal maiden, unto her I sing, 
 
 The night's wild song unto the distant noon, 
 
 And at her feet San Carlo's flowers fling, 
 
 As ocean-weeds flung down before the moon. 
 
 What is most like her here, where all is fair 
 
 Around and fair above, 
 What best can image or with her compare, 
 
 My love, my love ? 
 More lissome than the silver sapling birch 
 
 Swayed by the western wind ; 
 More rhythmical than Ladon's reed, I search 
 
 But never find 
 Amid the seen an image for her grace, 
 
 Which is, as Psyche's, born 
 Of soul. The budding glory of her face 
 
 Is more than Morn 
 A mystery of loveliness ; her hair 
 
 Is as the ripened gold 
 Of ruddy chestnuts (yet of hue more rare) 
 
 A ring might hold 
 Its wealth, which loosened were a sunset cloud ; 
 
 On either side her blown,
 
 COSMO VENUCCI, SINGER. 19 
 
 Wings of the covering cherub, as he bowed 
 
 Before the Throne. 
 Her lips are kissing flowers such as those 
 
 Lerici's poet saw, 
 Lips that embrace each other in repose 
 
 By nature's law; 
 That sever (as those flowers wind-blown apart) 
 
 For speech or song, then meet 
 To kiss again. The siren voice of Art 
 
 Is not so sweet 
 As is her singing, and the cooing doves 
 
 Round Aphrodite's head 
 Make not such tender music as my love's 
 
 Least sentence said. 
 Her eyes are like the mystic moonlit sea, 
 
 Like sunlight in the pines, 
 Like stars above the plains of Galilee 
 
 When no moon shines 
 Are like all beauties of the day and night, 
 
 All beauteous things that be ; 
 Are like Were Heaven opened to his eyes, 
 
 What man is he 
 Could tell the glory that he saw ? Song fails, 
 
 And melody is dumb 
 Before her who is Music's self; as veils 
 
 And cumbersome 
 
 All lovely things but wrap her round from view 
 Who is with Beauty one,
 
 COSMO VENUCCI, SINGER. 
 
 But could I see the angel Dante drew 
 
 With pencil won 
 From Love's own hand, ah ! then perchance, perchance 
 
 A beauty might be there, 
 A music in its perfect utterance 
 
 Not unlike her. 
 
 Fire calleth unto fire as deep calls deep 
 
 Here on the burning mountain's beaconed steep, 
 
 While the dim city yonder lies asleep, 
 
 And o'er the bay the moonlit shadows sweep : 
 
 The fires of love and fires of nature meet 
 
 As soul with soul oh, meeting bitter-sweet ! 
 
 The prisoned lava surges at my feet, 
 The lava flames far up the midnight beat, 
 The pale moon sickens in the lurid heat, 
 And faints half falling from her heavenly seat, 
 But with the spirit of the seething fire 
 Love is made one, as music with the lyre. 
 
 No longer by a mortal presence bound, 
 I live in the quick flames that break around 
 The cratered summit, and that underground 
 Throb in pent passion with a speechless sound, 
 And with the mountain's mighty heart beats mine, 
 Pulse within pulse, Beloved, unto thine.
 
 COSMO VENUCCI, SINGER. 
 
 I live, I love in these, once more I seek 
 By the fire's voice, the lava's force, to speak 
 That for which every song was found too weak, 
 But still am voiceless ; on the burning steep 
 The soul of Love meets Nature's soul in fire, 
 Pulses as one, but with a passion higher. 
 
 I live, I love, while the quick lightnings start 
 From the rent lava clouds above, and dart 
 Into the night ; but now the mountain's heart 
 Beats within mine, its fire is but a part 
 Of the fierce fire that labours in my breast, 
 By all the fires of Nature unexpressed. 
 
 It draws them to itself, and is at one 
 
 With stars and meteors, burneth with the sun, 
 
 Yet of an equal fervour findeth none, 
 
 And but a lesser life the life so won; 
 
 The fires of the whole universe are drawn 
 
 Within it, as the stars within the dawn. 
 
 Fire meets with fire, Beloved, as deep with deep, 
 Here on the burning mountain's beaconed steep, 
 While o'er the bay the day's first shadows sweep, 
 And the first bird sings softly through thy sleep. 
 Love hath no song to wake thee, as the lute 
 Dumb at thy pillow, still his lips are mute.
 
 COSMO VENUCCI, SINGER. 
 
 Through orange groves and fruiting vines, 
 Green chestnut copses, solemn pines ; 
 Through thickets where the woodbine twines, 
 With myrtles over columbines, 
 Beneath an azure sky ; 
 Through meadows rich with asphodel, 
 And budded poppies (that might well 
 Have lured Proserpina from hell), 
 We wandered, she and I. 
 
 At sunset, when the golden day 
 
 Slept on the bosom of the bay, 
 
 Through olive-woods, whose silver grey 
 
 As clouds about the uplands lay, 
 
 We climbed until we came 
 
 By orange gardens, blossomed white, 
 
 Unto a villa on the height, 
 
 Which bowered myrtles hid from sight, 
 
 And "pines that burned like flame." 
 
 Within, where briar-roses hung 
 
 About the lattices, she strung 
 
 Her lute, and through the chamber rung 
 
 Songs which the seraphs left unsung 
 
 On leaving Paradise ; 
 
 Without the twilight waves caressed 
 
 The slumb'rous shore and isles, the west 
 
 Held the pale moon unto his breast, 
 
 And kissed her opening eyes.
 
 COSMO VENUCCI, SINGER. 23 
 
 The sunless waters swelled around 
 
 The burning mountain's base, where wound 
 
 Green vines to fruited fig-trees bound, 
 
 Or lavishly trailed on the ground 
 
 'Mid hamlets deep in flowers ; 
 
 The utmost summit's columned white 
 
 Changed to a crimson fire as night 
 
 Descended on its throbbing height, 
 
 And called the star-lit hours. 
 
 O love, had we then stood alone, 
 Speech at the last these lips had known ; 
 But the wild briar buds half grown, 
 The roses 'gainst the lattice blown, 
 Spake more in sooth than I ; 
 And now Firenze's flowers must bloom 
 For thee ere from this gathered gloom 
 My heart can question life and doom, 
 Or thine give their reply. 
 
 ***** 
 The city slumbers with its quick and dead, 
 And Galileo's star-lit skies are spread 
 O'er his enshrined dust ; this silent street, 
 Whose pathways burned beneath young Dante's feet, 
 Is traversed but by Night who steals alone, 
 Narcissus-like, to woo herself in stone, 
 And mix her soul with that of Angelo. 
 For me in vain Lethean poppies blow. 
 
 c
 
 24 COSMO VENUCCI, SINGER. 
 
 When life is love, and love of hope unsure, 
 Song hath no lullaby wherewith to lure 
 Sleep and its errant dreams ; her voice is fire, 
 Her hand is as the samiel on the lyre. 
 
 Beloved, beloved, what word upon my lips 
 Were other than the petrel's wing that dips 
 Into the surges of the soundless deep, 
 Were other than the golden bee that sips 
 A little honey from the Hymettian steep ? 
 
 The bulbul sings its love, the moonlit main 
 
 Thunders a cadenced passion, but in vain 
 
 I seek an echo for mine heart in song ; 
 
 The lyre-strings tremble, and my voice, though fain, 
 
 Falters beneath a burden found too strong. 
 
 A little foam upon the petrel's wing 
 Such is my song when I of love would sing ; 
 A little honey from a Bormian mead, 
 Such as the golden bee might sip and bring 
 This is my song, if 'tis not dumb indeed. 
 
 Beloved, beloved, the music faileth me. 
 Can any sing of love, or sing of thee ? 
 Silence is sweeter than melodious speech 
 Sweeter and stronger ; silence let it be, 
 For there are heights not even song can reach.
 
 COSMO VENUCCI, SINGER. 25 
 
 The night grows darker, deeper shadow falls 
 
 On yon grey palaces, whose massive walls 
 
 Hold still the unlighted cressets, and the sky 
 
 Deepens its starlit purple ; dawn is nigh. 
 
 I will go forth ; these overhanging eaves 
 
 Shut out the sweet fresh western wind, which leaves 
 
 Murello's pastures ere the day appears 
 
 To dry the dewy lilies' wakening tears. 
 
 ***** 
 The city lies below me beautiful 
 (As the enchanted fabric of a dream, 
 That with some mighty and resistless spell 
 Allures men to itself), the while the sun 
 Crimsons the east and burns above these hills. 
 Mother of mighty men through days of yore, 
 As Niobe grief-smitten into stone 
 Thou standest in thy beauty, as a queen, 
 Encompassed by their glory and encrowned 
 With their unfading laurels, thou art seen 
 Reigning within thy kingdom ; of their love, 
 Firenze, and their spirits mother still. 
 Mother of him who quickened into life 
 Carrara's marble, and who raised at will 
 Prophet and sibyl ; mother, too, of him 
 The deathless singer of the deathless song. 
 Mother of many who are loved of Art, 
 Thou drawest us who are not born of thee 
 By thy great motherhood, until we come
 
 26 COSMO VENUCCI, SINGER. 
 
 Strangers to seek thy blessing at thy knee. 
 Me more than all thou drawest on this day, 
 For not Angelico's choired angels e'en 
 Sing to thee with so sweet a song as she 
 Who wakes amid thy lilies ; thou hast seen 
 None lovelier in life, in Art, in dream ; 
 Not Angelo's Madonna (though she bear 
 The very image of the face he loved 
 In the Colonna) can with her compare ; 
 Though .in her poet's song shrined evermore, 
 Not Alighieri's love is found so fair 
 As she who is in one, Love, Life, and Art, 
 The beauty of all things that are and were. 
 The sunlight fills the valleys, sunbeams dance 
 A fairy-footed measure in the meads, 
 ' And frolic on the silver Arno's stream ; 
 Sleep from the domed and spired city speeds 
 Full-winged to shores Lethean, and the day 
 Shines on the stir of reawakening streets ; 
 Shines on the storied treasures of Art, 
 On the Art-hallowed chambers (wherein beats 
 The pulse of life more strongly through the dead 
 Than through the living) ; shines most fully where, 
 Amid her lilies red and white, awakes 
 My love, Firenze's lily, still more fair 
 Than are the dewy blossoms of its dales, 
 Than Grotto's lily carved in living stone. 
 Here on the hills I am too far away,
 
 COSMO VENUCCI, SINGER. 27 
 
 The sweets of all her garden flowers are blown 
 Through the sun-lighted city, here are none ; 
 The winds around me hasten to the plain 
 And wander near her, and the sun has left 
 These distant heights : I will return again. 
 
 In the sky for sunlight is cloud, 
 And silence for song of the bird ; 
 
 The wind in the woodland sighs, 
 
 The sunless grey river replies, 
 
 And the lilies' heads are all bowed 
 
 As the sough of the storm is heard. 
 
 Dear, the dawn was more sweet than the day, 
 The bud than the blossoming flower, 
 
 The promise of noon than the noon 
 
 That shone and was shadowed so soon ; 
 
 The winds had but led me astray, 
 And the sun had mistaken thy bower. 
 
 For the height of Camaldoli, 
 
 A moonrise, a sunrise, still 
 Holds thee from us and its pines, 
 As pines at Hellenic shrines 
 On approach of divinity, 
 
 Yet a moonrise, a sunrise, thrill.
 
 28 COSMO VENUCCI, SINGER. 
 
 The lights of the spring are with thee, 
 
 Here is gloom and the thundercloud ; 
 The skies are bereft of the sun, 
 The wind and the storm are at one, 
 And my soul as a midnight sea 
 For the lost day calls aloud. 
 
 A garden of the Apennines, 
 With clustered olives, clambering vines, 
 With cypresses, and singing streams 
 Wherein the golden iris gleams ; 
 With almond trees a wealth of bloom, 
 And eglantine that scarce finds room 
 To blossom for the woodbine bowers, 
 The budded thorn, and bramble flowers ; 
 The garden of Fiesole. 
 
 High on the garden's cy pressed steep 
 The daylight and the darkness keep 
 At earliest morn and latest eve 
 A tryst that each is loth to leave ; 
 Far down below the valley lies 
 As a primeval Paradise 
 Embosomed in its wooded hills, 
 And sung to by such song as thrills 
 Thy days and nights, Fiesole.
 
 COSMO VENUCCI, SINGEK. 29 
 
 'Tis sundown, and the storm hath swept 
 O'er hill and plain, the rains have wept 
 Themselves away, and the winds creep 
 Weary, with folded wings, to sleep ; 
 The thundercloud, rent through with fire, 
 Died at the birth of its desire ; 
 Between the western day and night 
 I stand upon thy garden height, 
 O olive-girt Fiesole. 
 
 From mulberry-groves and blossomed leas, 
 
 (Whose sweet drenched flowers lured the bees ;) 
 
 From little pools the naiad knows 
 
 And to the hamadryad shows : 
 
 From woodlands where the lilies gleam, 
 
 From irised banks of Arno's stream, 
 
 From Arno, sunset vapours rise 
 
 Where the wide plain 'neath twilight skies 
 
 Looks up to thee, Fiesole. 
 
 As mists that watered Paradise 
 Before the firstling rains they rise, 
 Softly and slow, and dim and white, 
 Hiding the blossomed leas from sight, 
 Ascending higher till they seem, 
 There where the city stands in dream, 
 Like shrouded spirits of its dead 
 Whose feet of old were wont to tread 
 Thy cypressed paths, Fiesole.
 
 30 COSMO VENUCCI, SINGER. 
 
 Swifter and closer at thy base, 
 And in the wide plain's sunless space, 
 They throng, Hellenic Hades lies 
 Outspread at last to mortal eyes; 
 Its countless shadowy phantoms stray 
 Through myrtle groves or far away 
 Where noon hath darkened into night 
 Moan for lost life and foregone light 
 Light which is thine, Fiesole. 
 
 Lo ! the scene changes. Swifter still, 
 
 Still closer the mists rise and fill 
 
 The plain's expanse from verge to verge, 
 
 As clouds with clouds they meet and merge 
 
 Each in the other, all in one 
 
 Vast firmament, whose stars and sun 
 
 Unseen are hastening unto birth : 
 
 Between two heavens I stand on earth, 
 
 If this be earth, Fiesole. 
 
 Again is change. The nether skies 
 Become, as denser vapours rise, 
 A surging sea of billowed cloud, 
 Silent where other seas were loud 
 A vast white sea that swells and heaves 
 Beneath the western day, which leaves 
 The upper heavens ; a sea whose waves
 
 COSMO VENUCCI, SINGER. 31 
 
 Are hollow with a myriad graves 
 Insatiate, Fiesole. 
 
 In the dim western sky the day, 
 Requickening, flushes through the grey, 
 And (as one risen from the dead 
 In the full flush of life late fled) 
 Burns in the gorgeous after-glow : 
 The cloudlike sea still heaves below. 
 But now its risen waves are rolled, 
 Purple and crimson, red and gold, 
 Throughout the plain, Fiesole. 
 
 The passion of the throbbing sky 
 Is with its colours mirrored by 
 The vaporous sea, a tremor thrills 
 Its depths, and with strange tempest fills 
 The waves that, as storm-driven, arise 
 Higher and higher 'neath mine eyes ; 
 And as the fires of heaven fail, 
 The purple, red, and golden pale 
 Back to the white, Fiesole. 
 
 Change once again. The wind-rent deep 
 Is broken up, the valleys keep 
 Its place no longer ; the wide air 
 Knows it not any more, but where 
 Its seething billows surged, behold
 
 32 COSMO VENUCCI, SINGER. 
 
 Aerial spirits, manifold, 
 Legions on legions without count, 
 Mist-formed, mist-winged, upward mount 
 Towards the skies, Fiesole. 
 
 From north, south, east, and west they throng, 
 
 As spirits of earth's waters long 
 
 Sundered from waters of the skies 
 
 By the primordial word, they rise, 
 
 Each seeking restlessly, in pain, 
 
 The spirit which with it was twain 
 
 Yet one by some eternal love, 
 
 Since severed from it, lost above 
 
 In the wide heavens, Fiesole. 
 
 Far higher than thine utmost height 
 (Where song rings fuller as the night 
 Shadows the cypress-groves) they soar ; 
 From nether mists still myriads more 
 Uprising spread their wide white wings, 
 And hide from sight terrestrial things ; 
 Higher and higher they ascend, 
 Till with the very heavens they blend 
 And are at one, Fiesole. 
 
 Nor sky nor water is, nor land ; 
 The elements commingle, and
 
 COSMO VENUCCI, SINGER. 33 
 
 Are merged (as shadows in the sun, 
 As blessed souls with Buddha one,) 
 In the ethereal vapour, drawn 
 Within a wider life as dawn 
 Within the day : all matter seems 
 Sublimed to mind, sunk deep in dreams ; 
 Thou too and I, Fiesole. 
 
 Substance and separate life gone by, 
 Behold all lives, thou too and I, 
 As soul in the creating soul, 
 The part-life perfect in the whole. 
 Earth is no more nay, 'tis a dream 
 From which, with special pain supreme 
 Above all phantasy, mine heart 
 Recalls me, finding not Her heart 
 Within the dream, Fiesole. 
 
 The mists arose in dim ascent, 
 From their high place the heavens leant, 
 The spirits of the waters met, 
 The upper with the nether, yet 
 Her spirit from its pure height bent 
 Not ever down to mine, nor blent 
 Its higher with my lower ; still, 
 Though all around seems one, yea, still 
 I am alone, Fiesole.
 
 34 COSMO VENUCCI, SINGER. 
 
 Within the dream I was alone, 
 
 A spirit desolate, unknown ; 
 
 And from the dream recalled, I stand 
 
 An alien in a foreign land, 
 
 Where all seems spirit still and rest. 
 
 A restless fire burns in my breast, 
 
 A "homeless hunger" fills my heart; 
 
 These have in peace, in rest, no part : 
 
 I will go hence, Fiesole. 
 
 The sun of the morrow 
 
 Is risen at length ; 
 The passionate sorrow 
 
 That gives the full strength 
 To the nightingale's song in mid-darkness is soothed by 
 
 the presence of morn, 
 
 And its song from the cypress rings sweeter for joy of 
 the anguish outworn. 
 
 This sunlight but darkens 
 
 Camaldoli's pines ; 
 Each one of them hearkens 
 
 As 'twere at Greek shrines ; 
 But no stir of soft footstep approaches and never the 
 
 sap in them burns, 
 
 For the moonrise, the sunrise, are over, my love to her 
 lilies returns.
 
 COSMO VENUCCI, SINGER. 35 
 
 Fresh flowers spring to greet her, 
 
 A thousand birds sing ; 
 I also shall meet her, 
 
 But will the noon bring 
 Their desire to the lilies and birds, and but hide mine 
 
 still further from me ? 
 Hope sings in the sunlight, but fear is the shadow of all 
 
 that I see. 
 
 ****** 
 She loves me not thus life and death are one, 
 Darkness and light ; infinity, 
 Late budding as illimitable day, 
 Is gulfed within this little space of night. 
 No song, no sound of aught that lives, comes here ; 
 One single agony with fiery pulse 
 Beats through the silence where I stand alone. 
 
 Far off beyond the outskirts of the night 
 I see her in her clinging gown of white, 
 
 As Pontinari's daughter past compare, 
 Tending her lilies in the day's sweet light, 
 
 The fitful sunbeams nestling in her hair. 
 
 O love, my love, removed from me as far 
 As is the firmament's remotest star, 
 
 Unreachable as noon is of the night, 
 What reck you of the life you made and mar, 
 
 Tending your crimson lilies and your white ?
 
 36 COSMO VENUCC7, SINGER. 
 
 What reck you who as yet of love know nought, 
 Whose gentle eyes would sorrow at the thought 
 
 That hand of yours might stay the bulbul's song, 
 Crushing its throat, but you have witless wrought 
 
 A deeper silence, a more cruel wrong. 
 
 You loved me never ; to the singer's song, 
 Not to the singer, did your love belong. 
 
 God knows the singer and the song were one, 
 And by the singer's soul the song rose strong, 
 
 But you, you know it not, there in the sun. 
 
 Loose your hand from me ; let the bird take wing, 
 And in the moonlight 'mid the roses sing ; 
 
 Loose your hand from it, tender-hearted one. 
 Nay, let the little ringers closer cling 
 
 About its throat : see, song and life are done. 
 
 Me you love not, but music makes me wise 
 To know the light it kindles in your eyes, 
 
 Though not for me, will for another's sake 
 Burn through your maiden soul with sweet surprise- 
 Yea, by-and-by the human shall awake. 
 
 Then you will understand the song I sang, 
 The singer's love that in each cadence rang, 
 
 Thrilling San Carlo with its passion's power 
 The boundless life you gave, and the death-pang 
 
 You dealt it, you will understand that hour.
 
 COSMO VENUCCI, SINGER. 37 
 
 An Amedeon seraph, you did lure 
 
 My soul from earth, O tender one and pure, 
 
 Playing upon a lute of Paradise ; 
 You opened heaven to me, then swift and sure 
 
 Shut its wide golden gates before mine eyes. 
 
 Say, shall I thank you, sweet, for this, or cry 
 (After old counselling, " Curse God and die ") 
 
 Against you and the love and life you gave ? 
 I question, but your lips give no reply, 
 
 Responseless as dead lips within the grave. 
 
 Far off beyond the outskirts of the night 
 You stand amid your lilies red and white : 
 
 One word athwart this darkness shall take wing 
 And mingle with the voices of the light, 
 From him who hath no further song to sing ; 
 
 One word which with remembered music blends, 
 The songless singer of "San Carlo" sends, 
 
 A surging ocean to a silent shore. 
 Lady, through life I loved you, life that ends ; 
 
 Lady, through death I love you evermore. 
 ***** 
 
 Space, solitude ; wide ways for unquiet feet, 
 Wide air where unquiet hearts find room to beat ; 
 Silence from babbling voices, silence stirred 
 But by the unconscious singing of some bird, 
 Or the regardless chirp of grilli near.
 
 38 COSMO VENUCCI, SINGER. 
 
 Space, silence, solitude, these all are here, 
 
 Here on the still Campagna's broad expanse, 
 
 Where the last rays of lingering sunlight dance 
 
 With the young winds in meadows lush with flowers, 
 
 And gambol in the corn and vineyard bowers, 
 
 Or smite the purple gloom of sterile hillsj 
 
 Changing to burnished gold their snow-fed rills. 
 
 The darkness of far forest pines they fire, 
 
 And touch with flame each zephyr-shaken spire 
 
 In yonder tract of golden asphodel, 
 
 And where blue shallows round the Pan-reeds swell, 
 
 And Syrinx moans as heedless winds pass by, 
 
 A second sun shines from a second sky. 
 
 Day in the sunless heavens full loth expires, 
 
 The wide plain glows (as strange and subtle fires 
 
 Restrained within its breast, were kindling through 
 
 The outer calm) with sunlike gold where hue 
 
 Sinks into deeper hue, with lambent red 
 
 Whose throbbing pulse by viewless flame is fed, 
 
 With radiant purple, deep drawn under deep, 
 
 While the dim night ascends the eastern steep. 
 
 Here the day dies, life fails ; here too but death 
 
 Is here but beauty, laughs with latest breath, 
 
 Death is not deadly here ; it bears no sting : 
 
 If day died thus with love, lips stricken dumb should sing. 
 
 All night, Beloved, beneath the waning moon 
 I wandered, wandered on from night to noon
 
 COSMO VENUCCI, SINGER. 39 
 
 (As those who in the desert found no way), 
 Seeking in vain for rest that came not soon 
 With the still darkness nor came late with day. 
 
 The bare seared mountains where of old had swept 
 The lava streams, where lava flames had leapt, 
 
 Stirred not in any pulse beneath my feet, 
 But in dead calm of outworn passion slept 
 
 A heavy sleep which unto love were sweet. 
 
 Until the hour when Arno's valley lies 
 A sunset dream of early Paradise, 
 
 I wandered on by barren moor and brake, 
 Through grey sparse grass where every flower dies, 
 
 And in the scorching wind the thistle shakes. 
 
 And when the sun was westering I came 
 Where Nemo's stagnant waters filled for flame 
 
 A mountain crater, whose green woodlands stirred 
 With the rich song of nightingales the same, 
 
 The same old song we had together heard. 
 
 (Not far away were lava banks I knew, 
 Where like a sweat of blood the poppies grew ; 
 
 And in black woods, fire-smitten to the root, 
 A bird lived songless, while the morning drew 
 
 To even, and the night bore stars for fruit.) 
 
 D
 
 40 COSMO VENUCCI, SINGER. 
 
 The pale blue shallows of the Tiber shone ; 
 As fields of flame far stretching on and on 
 
 The golden reeds of Ostia's blue lagoon 
 Burned 'neath the west ; and ere the day was gone, 
 
 As the dim wraith of joy arose the moon. 
 
 Once more the plain is quick with glowing fire, 
 And beats as some great heart with pent desire, 
 
 While o'er it bends the throbbing twilight sky 
 Yet e'en if I could tune my silent lyre 
 
 Unto their passion, thou wouldst not reply. 
 
 On surging waves the ocean-weed may drift, 
 
 The withered leaf be driven of the wind, 
 
 But love is not as these are, nor is man 
 
 A weakling whirled within the gurge of woe. 
 
 Though noon be dark as night above his head, 
 
 And life unto him be at one with death ; 
 
 Though Heaven be hidden from his hope, and hell 
 
 Gape at his feet, still must he nathless on. 
 
 In that I love, my love demands of me 
 
 My best and noblest, that it should not be 
 
 A gift that costeth nothing, save this pain, 
 
 Nor all unworthy, though 'tis given in vain. 
 
 In that I love, my life with labouring breath 
 
 Shall wring a music from the pangs of death
 
 COSMO VENUCCI, SINGER. 41 
 
 Worthy the love, and from this unkissed mouth 
 Shall rise a song the sweeter for its drouth. 
 
 I sing of love once more, of love to-night, 
 Here where the stars, as at some solemn rite, 
 Are gathered in the moonless calm of heaven, 
 Nor throb with restless fires, nor burn with light. 
 
 I sing of love, and for love's very sake, 
 The passion of my soul this night shall break 
 Its songless silence with a music which 
 Shall win the ear of Art herself, and wake 
 
 The sleeping life in the cold northern throng. 
 Once more I feel the keen swift flame of song 
 Thrill through me, and these dry and unkissed lips, 
 By their long drouth, are waxen sure and strong. 
 
 I sing for love, Beloved ; I sing for thee. 
 If there be aught not all unworth in me, 
 I wring it from despair, and, though it be 
 But as the brine-weed of the bitter sea, 
 
 Cast it before thy feet. This song of mine, 
 Born newly of my grief, and therefore thine, 
 Pulses with stronger life than that which died 
 Where, 'mid the fireflies' dance, your lilies shine.
 
 42 COSMO VENUCCI, SINGER. 
 
 The starlit skies throb over Arno's vales ; 
 I hear the far song of their nightingales 
 Within this high-walled city of the north ; 
 I hear them all, not one among them fails. 
 
 Nor shall I fail ; a song (perchance as sweet) 
 Shall echo as the sea's song at thy feet, 
 And with its fuller passion fill the gloom, 
 And fuse their singing in one song complete. 
 
 Night after night there is silence where night after night 
 
 hath been song, 
 And love sits dumb in the soul for the music that bore it 
 
 along 
 Over darkness and time and the hell of despair, as on 
 
 pinions of fire 
 That stirred its set lips till they sang as the winds in the 
 
 lyre 
 Of the Pythian Apollo, the music is wingless, and sleeps 
 
 as the dead, 
 While nor slumber nor song comes to love, and it leaveth 
 
 all things unsaid. 
 Speech is too poor for its passion, and words are too 
 
 weak for its woe, 
 Who seeks the sea in the shallow, the fire in the mountain 
 
 snow? 
 Only the passionate strains of a melody which will rise
 
 COSMO VENUCCI, SINGER. 43 
 
 From the depths of fathomless oceans to heights of the 
 
 uttermost skies 
 Can have power to descend to its woe, or have strength 
 
 to sustain its desire, 
 To allure, unconsumed, from its lips the strong flame of 
 
 their smouldering fire. 
 Night after night there is silence, where night after night 
 
 hath been song, 
 And the singer's love in his soul sitteth dumb, and despair 
 
 is waxed strong. 
 Shall I bid him go forth and regather the bays he flung 
 
 down as he came 
 Through the nights of the north, from his singing with 
 
 lips that were mute with thy name ? 
 Shall I garland his head with their leaves, and lead him 
 
 to feasts he would shun ? 
 Shall he drink of the vintage of fame when his heart is 
 
 undone ? 
 He careth for none of these things ; for the sake of his 
 
 love he hath wrung 
 A song not unworthy the love from his uttermost pangs, 
 
 and hath sung ; 
 Now he sits, as a victor might sit, all alone with the 
 
 thought of his dead ; 
 As a victor will rise at the war-call, and lead as aforetime 
 
 he led, 
 
 So he, when the music awakes, will stand forth with firm 
 feet on the fang
 
 44 COSMO VENUCCI, SINGER. 
 
 Of the serpent once more among men, and will sing as 
 
 aforetime he sang. 
 Here in the isle of the north, where the light of the sun 
 
 is half shade, 
 And the moon is dim in the heavens, and the stars are 
 
 as flowers that fade, 
 When e'en in its southernmost woods the songs of the 
 
 nightingales fail, 
 And the glow of its richest gardens and meadows at 
 
 noontide is pale ; 
 Here where the grey northern sea sings a strange and 
 
 fierce song of its own, 
 He but waits until love findeth voice, and the waves sing 
 
 no longer alone. 
 
 As in a dream, Song hears the music of your lute, 
 And stirs from sleep ; the lips of love long mute 
 Pulse with the passion of the old refrain 
 Heard oft from lips of yours, heard now again 
 As Orphic music known in sunny Thrace, 
 And after in the dark and deathly place. 
 
 As in past summer hours, perchance you stand 
 Beneath the red pomegranate boughs and sing 
 
 (The lute strings thrilling to your tender hand), 
 Love which is always everything.
 
 COSMO VENUCCI, SINGER. 45 
 
 Far off I hear you, and retune my lyre, 
 
 The pale flowers tremble round me as I sing ; 
 
 I also, while the north wind blows as fire, 
 Love which is always everything. 
 
 Sing on, Beloved, nor let the echoes wake 
 A trouble in your song, which soars on wing ; 
 
 Far down below they but as wild waves break, 
 Love which is always everything. 
 
 In the lapsed seasons, hath song shown you aught 
 That makes you know as you knew not in spring, 
 
 What among men these rhythmic words have wrought, 
 Love which is always everything ? 
 
 Sing on, Beloved ; the best love hath to show, 
 You with the clear-eyed seraphs see and sing. 
 
 Why should you know, as lesser singers know, 
 Love which is always everything! 
 
 A siren of the surging midnight sea 
 
 (We hear her as the sweet words round us ring) ; 
 A poisoned flower, the loveliest of the lea ; 
 
 Love which is always everything. 
 
 A Lamian serpent with envenomed fang ; 
 
 A sorceress, who from men's hearts will wring 
 The life, as juice from grapes that o'er her hang ; 
 
 Love which is always everything.
 
 46 COSMO VENUCCI, SINGER. 
 
 Within our souls, as Proserpine in hell, 
 
 She sits as queen the while dark Dis is king; 
 
 Why should you know her deep and deadly spell, 
 Love which is always everything? 
 
 Sing on, nor know how singers' hearts may quake, 
 As from their lips these same words hoarsely ring ; 
 
 Not for its sweet, but for its bitter sake, 
 Love which is always everything. 
 
 Sing on, unwitting of the unslaked thirst, 
 The quenchless fire it faileth not to bring, 
 
 Where all fair things are by its bane accurst, 
 Love which is always everything. 
 
 Behold, I do it wrong ; I know it well. 
 
 The life of life, the death of death, I sing ; 
 The utmost heaven, what knoweth it of hell, 
 
 Love which is always everything ? 
 
 In the new city of the west, 
 
 Where snows fell soft with sound of rest, 
 
 And on the earth's unheaving breast 
 
 The keen still frosts lay uncaressed, 
 
 There night by night was song. 
 
 The singer's special pain and pang 
 
 Merged in the world's pain as it rang,
 
 COSMO VENUCCI, SIA T GER. 47 
 
 And self waned ever as he sang, 
 And life waxed full and strong. 
 
 Far off beyond the winter seas, 
 Where no bird from the leafless trees 
 Sings or for pain or happy ease, 
 He sang, Beloved, for thee 
 Within the city, whose young heart 
 Was quick with spring, and had no part 
 In bygone seasons' fruits of Art, 
 Whose fruit was yet to be. 
 
 With lips close-locked, as flame on flame, 
 And mute, Beloved, with thy name, 
 Back o'er the barren waves he came, 
 Not glad to win the bays of fame, 
 But glad he won for thee. 
 And now, with burning feet and fain, 
 He stands 'mid southern scenes again, 
 Here where the purple Lombard plain 
 Spreads like a summer sea. 
 
 Stands speechless, for all words were naught, 
 And songless, for all song hath taught 
 Fails in him ; yea, all life is wrought 
 Into the fire of one sole thought 
 The thought that thou art near.
 
 48 COSMO VENUCCI, SINGER. 
 
 The tendril vines, the green knots shown 
 Upon the trees, the flowers half blown, 
 Are drawn within it, and alone 
 As fire on fire appear. 
 
 With unkissed lips, unholden hands, 
 
 Unmet, unwelcomed from far strands, 
 
 Yet he is blest in that he stands 
 
 (His wanderings o'er in weary lands) 
 
 On the same soil as thee. 
 
 The spring is quick above, below ; 
 
 It quickens at his heart, and slow 
 
 The bud of hope steals through the snow, 
 
 Perchance a flower to be. 
 
 Song in La Scala ; the still night, 
 With throbbing breast and folded wing, 
 Beyond this circled blaze of light, 
 Stands by to hear the singers sing 
 Their song of spring. 
 
 In that they sing of love, though it 
 Be as a boundless winter bare, 
 A desolation infinite, 
 Whose bud and blade requicken ne'er 
 In the starved air.
 
 COSMO VENUCCI, SINGER. 49 
 
 Though love be such, or though it be 
 A spanless summer whose fierce heat 
 Consumes all fair things utterly, 
 Where winds and seething fires meet, 
 A waste complete ; 
 
 Though it be such, yea, whatsoe'er it be 
 And whatsoe'er it bring, 
 Drouth-parched, death-stricken, budless, bare, 
 In that they sing of love, they sing 
 Of very spring. 
 
 They sing of love ; with them I sing, 
 Not as last year for art alone, 
 Yet art is not a lesser thing 
 To me, nor is its passion known 
 More rarely as mine own. 
 
 They sing of love, they sing of spring : 
 Behold, I know not any more 
 The words that I myself must sing ; 
 I hear the sea's song to the shore 
 Swell o'er and o'er. 
 
 My lips are dumb 'tween hope and fear ; 
 One moment, and my song shall ring
 
 SO COSMO VENUCCI, SINGER. 
 
 Perchance, perchance upon her ear, 
 Who is the love of love, the spring 
 
 Of very spring. 
 ***** 
 
 As the dream of a moment, the night is gone by and the 
 
 darkness is past ; 
 
 Silent and still comes the dawn, no tumult, no trumpet- 
 blast 
 From the warring of winds wins her entrance, but calm, 
 
 with inaudible feet, 
 O'er the hills, through the wide purple plain she draws 
 
 nigh ; the narcissi spring sweet 
 At her step, and the iris and crocus as stars in an amethyst 
 
 sky 
 Shine out as she stands in the meadows/ Her voice is 
 
 unheard, and no cry 
 From her lips breaks the silence, while softly, enwrapt in 
 
 a mystery profound, 
 In repose that is deeper than tumult, in silence known 
 
 stronger than sound, 
 She comes as all highest beauty, all deepest feeling must 
 
 come, 
 Calm where the tempest is weakness, where all words 
 
 are but impotence dumb ; 
 
 As this day-spring of hope to my heart that through dark- 
 ness approacheth at length, 
 
 Hushed by its infinite passion, subdued by its measure- 
 less strength.
 
 COSMO VENUCCI, SINGER. 51 
 
 O'er the night of love's uttermost sorrow where dawn was 
 
 a splendour unknown, 
 Shone a radiance of flame, and within it the face that 
 
 sleep only had shown, 
 And despair, through the lapse of long seasons when, 
 
 exiled from light as the blind, 
 I had wandered with song through far regions alone as a 
 
 desolate wind. 
 Oh, sweet pale face gleaming fair from its aureole glory of 
 
 hair; 
 Sweet eyes that had smitten me blind, then smote sight 
 
 to mine eyes unaware ! 
 
 Oh, my love ! at the last I beheld her, after ages of long- 
 ing and pain ; 
 As I sang with the singers of spring, lo, the spring to my 
 
 heart came again. 
 
 I had chosen the role she loved best, the role I that sum- 
 mer had sung, 
 Ere song died on my lips at her word, ere the ordeal of 
 
 fire had wrung 
 From the silence of death a new voice, ere these lips had 
 
 waxed strong in their drouth, 
 And I sang it once more there before her, as the wild 
 
 northern wind to the south ; 
 I sang unto her, to her only, unto me in La Scala was 
 
 none, 
 As to me in all worlds were none other, in joy, or in 
 
 torture, save one.
 
 52 COSMO VENUCCI, SINGER. 
 
 Was it but a delusion of hope, a deception of dazzled 
 
 sight ? 
 Did a fair faint flush, as I sang, change her cheek from its 
 
 delicate white ? 
 Did a tremor touch the still mouth ? did a strange new 
 
 light fill the eyes 
 (Eyes half hid by the drooped fringe of lashes) was it so ? 
 
 Who replies ? 
 E'en if it were, 'twas perchance but the passion and power 
 
 of the song 
 That had thrilled to her heart as aforetime, thrilled 
 
 deeper perchance after long, 
 And the singer was naught save a voice, though his life 
 
 was sung out at her feet ; 
 What recked he? At last he beheld her, and his song on 
 
 her ear had rung sweet. 
 What cared he that full-flowered laurels, that bays all 
 
 around him were thrown, 
 For the thundered applause of the throng ? He had sung 
 
 for his love's sake alone 
 For his love's sake alone ; to his loved, as at springtide the 
 
 sea to the shore, 
 Enough that his song had rung fuller, sweeter, stronger, 
 
 than ever before. 
 Here on the wide Lombard plain all the shadows of night 
 
 are dispelled 
 
 By the dawn, and day on the glowing hills, in some fast- 
 ness held,
 
 COSMO VENUCCI, SINGER. 53 
 
 Scales the golden height of the stronghold, and issues a 
 
 splendour of flame. 
 Encrowned with the sun, O my love, if this dawning of 
 
 hope overcame 
 The glooms of the night of despair, if the day as a 
 
 glorious fire 
 From the desolate strongholds of Doubt should break 
 
 forth, could these lips ever tire 
 Of singing, if only for gladness of singing, e'en were it 
 
 alone 
 Of joy that they sang, and all passions save joy to their 
 
 song were unknown? 
 Here the birds o'er the hills, o'er the plain, sing aloud to 
 
 the new-risen sun ; 
 "\Yhat song should I sing unto thee, love, were my day 
 
 with their day begun ? 
 
 Could I sing as the birds sing, unwitting 
 
 Of the toil and the trammel of words, 
 No thought to their thraldom submitting, 
 
 Beloved, could I sing as the birds, 
 Then my voice in a paean ascending, 
 
 A passion of music alone, 
 Full-throated should sing without ending 
 
 A song of love's own. 
 
 A song of love's own unto thee, love, 
 For thou wert the new-risen sun,
 
 54 COSMO VENUCCI, SINGER. 
 
 The sole dawn that could come unto me, love, 
 Were my day with their day begun ; 
 
 As Hellenes of old hymned Apollo 
 On the phorminx in jubilant choir, 
 
 I should hymn thee, but their song were hollow 
 To mine on love's lyre. 
 
 Shall I stand in the light of thy presence ; 
 
 Shall I look on thy face, touch thy hand ; 
 Will all pain be a dream's reminiscence 
 
 Ere the day darkens over the land ? 
 Ere the birds in the covert are sleeping, 
 
 Will my laurels be laid at thy feet, 
 Will love be at rest in thy keeping, 
 
 And life once more sweet ? 
 
 Hope sings in my heart, disregarding 
 
 The shadows of doubt and of fear, 
 As a lark in the sunrise discarding 
 
 Night's gloom in a glory so near, 
 As the sea to the proximate haven, 
 
 As the wind drawing nigh to the west, 
 As the flowers that spring's pathway have paven, 
 
 By summer caressed. _, 
 
 All my songs in the winter of sorrow 
 Were thine, as at budding of spring 
 
 All my songs are still thine, and but borrow 
 A music grief ceases to bring ;
 
 COSMO VENUCCI, SINGER 55 
 
 Song hath but one key-note for ever 
 (For thou, love, and Love are as one) ; 
 
 From the lyre, should these twain e'er dissever, 
 No music were won. 
 
 Still the birds on the plain sing around me : 
 
 I sing not ; nay, e'en had I sung 
 Unbounden by words, song had bound me 
 
 By music, the lyre were unstrung 
 (Smitten dumb by the strain of that stringing 
 
 To the height and the depth of love's thought) ; 
 Could I sing as my heart sings, the singing 
 
 To love were as naught. 
 
 Beyond the city, where the white 
 
 March lilies bloom 
 Around a villa, where no flight 
 
 Of hours brings gloom ; 
 
 Where, 'neath the casements, close in sight, 
 
 Narcissi blow; 
 As unto noon the storm-filled night, 
 
 To Her I go. 
 
 Calm, for I hold, restrained at last, 
 
 Within my soul 
 The passion that through tempests past 
 
 Knew no control ;
 
 56 COSMO VENUCCI, SINGER. 
 
 And love, less foolish, fails to find 
 A strength through storm ; 
 
 Nor seeks the limitless to bind 
 By finite form. 
 
 Fire answers fire, deep answers deep, 
 
 In me ; I go. 
 Is long despair but lulled by sleep 
 
 To waken so? 
 
 Nay, if she love none other, hope 
 Shall take no leave ; 
 
 With all save this a man may cope, 
 A man achieve 
 
 Full victory o'er all else. If still 
 
 Her heart be free, 
 If it should free remain, she will, 
 
 She shall, love me. 
 
 For love is stronger than unlove, 
 As life than death, 
 
 And holds a power all powers above 
 In its least breath. 
 
 But should another be to her 
 
 That I would be, 
 And hope find place not anywhere, 
 
 May God help me !
 
 COSMO VENUCCI, SINGER. 57 
 
 For, evermore unloved, I then 
 
 Love evermore. 
 Did He who made both love and men 
 
 Think well before ? 
 
 Nathless if even love could choose, 
 
 'Twould bate no whit 
 From its own love, or torture lose 
 
 Through lack of it. 
 
 And man is not so weak that he 
 
 In aught should fail, 
 Though to himself his life must be 
 
 Of none avail. 
 
 Nor straitened so that when there slips, 
 
 After long drought, 
 The honeyed chalice from his lips, 
 
 And they wring out 
 
 The utmost dregs which, poisoned, sting 
 
 From pain's full cup, 
 They therefore should refuse to sing 
 
 For men who sup. 
 
 With love, or to men's grief deny 
 
 Songs that rejoice ; 
 Though life in me may lapse, still I 
 
 Will live a voice.
 
 58 COSMO VENUCCI, SINGER. 
 
 Beyond the city, where the white 
 March lilies bloom 
 
 Around a villa, where no flight 
 Of hours brings gloom, 
 
 I go to her ; all else is lost 
 In that sole thought; 
 
 As surf upon the ocean tost, 
 All else is nought. 
 
 * * * * 
 
 The last song of sorrow is ended, 
 
 The dream of despair is dreamed out, 
 The forebodings of fear have descended 
 
 To hell, the misgivings of doubt ; 
 And aloft in the wide empyrean 
 
 (As a stream with a river is blent) 
 Blends the paean of hope with the paean 
 
 Of joy in ascent. 
 
 The land sings in sunlight around me, 
 
 I hear the far song of the fire 
 Away in the south where love found me 
 
 At even alone with my lyre ; 
 From all things around song is ringing, 
 
 And afar from the wild northern sea, 
 I sing with them too, and our singing, 
 
 Beloved, is of thee.
 
 COSMO VENUCCI, SINGER. 59 
 
 As speech of a boundless devotion, 
 
 Benediction of infinite praise, 
 As the words of a wordless emotion, 
 
 Of a joy unexpressed all its days, 
 To thy presence our paean arises, 
 
 Our song of unsingable love, 
 In a music that only disguises 
 
 A passion above. 
 
 Song and music for ever and ever, 
 
 As thou art for ever above 
 Our highest and best, that can never 
 
 Express thee, and infinite love 
 Were unworthy to love thee, but taken 
 
 At the last by thy love to thine heart, 
 In a dream from which naught shall awaken, 
 
 It is as thou art 
 
 Made perfect by mystic transition, 
 
 And one with thy life evermore ; 
 As the Florentine blessed in his vision, 
 
 With thee for my guide I explore 
 The circles of Heaven, descending 
 
 Not as he, O beloved, unto earth, 
 For thou bringest a joy never ending, 
 
 No phantasy's birth.
 
 60 COSMO VENUCCI, SINGER. 
 
 Through death I had loved thee, thou knowest, 
 For aye ; thou gav'st life in its stead. 
 
 The highest bent down to the lowest, 
 And kissed back his breath to the dead. 
 
 All singing is vain ; I had sung not, 
 This paean were dumb on my mouth ; 
 
 But what song from dead lips, love, had rung not, 
 Kissed so in their drouth ? 
 # # * * * 
 
 Here once more, amid the gardens, I had bidden her 
 
 good-night 
 ('Twas our last one), and gone homeward as a blind man 
 
 dazed with sight ; 
 But shut out a weary season while these darkling hours 
 
 go by, 
 From the whole of love and life, now I return to feel it 
 
 nigh. 
 In the risen moon's full splendour gleam her lilies, red 
 
 and white, 
 
 All around the terrace shining in a haze of silver light ; 
 Here among the pines and laurels, and the fragrant 
 
 myrtle bowers, 
 By the orange groves white-blossomed, the pomegranates' 
 
 crimson flowers, 
 I will wander, while she wanders with sweet dreams 
 
 through realms of sleep, 
 Nor so far be parted from her, but with moonlit shadows 
 
 keep
 
 COSMO VENUCCI, SINGER. 61 
 
 Watch beneath the trellised lattice till these last long 
 
 hours depart, 
 
 And I be for ever with her, as my heart is with her heart. 
 Every other bird is silent, but the nightingales sing loud 
 In a paean of full rapture, where all sorrow seems as cloud 
 Lost within a cloudless heaven, surf within a summer sea, 
 And as they sing song is kindled as a flame of fire in me. 
 
 In a land of drouth and darkness, where no day was, 
 Love had lived a weary while with death and night ; 
 
 At the last song showed him where a hidden way was, 
 And he came unto a land of life and light. 
 
 O beloved, O beloved, as he singeth 
 
 Wilt thou waken to the music of his lyre, 
 
 Wilt thou hear the song that to thy casement ringeth 
 From his lips, kissed through with life as living fire ? 
 
 Unto thee he sang alone in love's beginning; 
 
 Then thou lov'dst the song, the singer was undone ; 
 At the last he lured thine heart away with singing, 
 
 And the singer and the song became as one. 
 
 Wake, oh, wake, beloved ! he singeth through thy 
 slumbers ; 
 
 Lo, his light, his life, his all with thee sleep on; 
 Shine upon him as the laggard hours he numbers, 
 
 Counting eagerly if night be nearly gone.
 
 62 COSMO VENUCCI, SINGER. 
 
 From yon eastern skies a day that darkens never 
 
 Will descend, a dazzling fire with flame for wings, 
 And shall give thee to his heart at last for ever : 
 Watch a little moment with him as he sings. 
 
 * * * * 
 
 Still the nightingales are singing, as of old the Florentine 
 Heard them sing here through his passion as I heard 
 
 them sing through mine, 
 Far away in northern islands, where the sun and moon 
 
 are pale, 
 And the fires of man and nature with the fires of heaven 
 
 fail. 
 There for thee (with them), in triumph over death and 
 
 hell, I sang; 
 Here for thee (with them) in rapture, feeling neither pain 
 
 nor pang, 
 
 As for thee henceforth for ever, whatsoe'er the ages bring, 
 With their fuller, wider music (still found impotent), I sing. 
 When our present lights are shadows, and our highest 
 
 reach of thought 
 Is our lowest, and our beauty and our knowledge things 
 
 of naught ; 
 When our love's most perfect passion (infinite, as we 
 
 believe) 
 
 Will be lost in love not even love itself can now conceive ; 
 All new arts in all new aeons, all our own arts may 
 
 become 
 In their endless evolutions, still to love must be as dumb ;
 
 COSMO VENUCC1, SINGER. 63 
 
 For all Art is but the passion of the shadow of its 
 
 thought, 
 
 And for ever and for ever unto it must be as nought. 
 Evermore, throughout all ages, love can speak by love 
 
 alone ; 
 Evermore its secret language unto none save love is 
 
 known. 
 Here with still the night around it of the land that gave 
 
 it birth, 
 Compassed by the limitation, toil, and travail of the 
 
 earth ; 
 Let it speak with thee one moment soul to soul and 
 
 heart to heart, 
 
 And the night, the limitation, toil, and travail will de- 
 part; 
 Let it speak with thee one moment, as it watches here 
 
 with me 
 
 In the darkness for the dawning of the day that is to be. 
 ***** 
 
 Over the hills is a glory of light, 
 
 Purple and golden and crimson ; the night 
 
 Dies of its own deep joy at the sight, 
 
 The heart of the dawn, as a maiden's might, 
 
 Throbs quick and thrills as, a splendour of fire, 
 
 The day comes onward, the day of desire. 
 
 Surcharged with a life and a gladness that beat 
 'Gainst all bounds in a passion too great and too sweet,
 
 64 COSMO VENUCCI, SINGER. 
 
 Earth springs into multiform life at its feet, 
 And the joy that she cannot contain complete 
 Blossoms over in flowers, or rejoices on wings 
 Of a myriad tiny radiant things. 
 
 All birds sing for joy of the joyance begun, 
 The south wind sings to the woods in the sun, 
 All insects a web of sweet singing have spun, 
 And the flowers in the meadows every one, 
 Cicalas have made into jubilant song 
 That zephyrs in chorus bear softly along. 
 
 Over at length is all death and all night ; 
 Naught liveth save life in a wondrous delight, 
 And joy that is endless and infinite. 
 As a man love shall kneel at a mystical rite, 
 Where, winged with flame as a splendour of fire, 
 The day will bring to him his heart's desire. 
 ***** 
 Beloved, by whom is born this day, 
 My heart to thy heart speaks alone ; 
 Whatever words these lips may say, 
 Thou knowest, are as wild birds flown 
 Forth from an infinite unknown. 
 
 Whate'er these lips may sing to thee 
 Is but a music borne along, 
 Thou knowest, from Love's infinity
 
 COSMO VENUCCI, SINGER 65 
 
 Upon a summer wind of song, 
 
 And, being such, must do love wrong. 
 
 Thou only livest ; seen apart, 
 A show of shadows all must be : 
 All song, all life, all love, all art, 
 All beauty seem to merge in thee, 
 As soundless rivers in the sea. 
 
 I go to wait where thou wilt come. 
 The wreathen lilies hang and twine 
 In Santa Croce : song is dumb ; 
 The singing of the Florentine 
 Were futile as his vacant shrine. 
 
 Love waits with me, kissed on the mouth ; 
 Kissed through with life, his lips disclaim 
 Once more as once in deathly drouth 
 All singing, closed as flame on flame, 
 And mute, beloved, with thy name. 
 
 " I have no marriage-song for thee ; " 
 What lyre of all lyres could I string 
 Whose music were not vanity ? 
 I sing not ; none of love may sing 
 Love which is always everything.
 
 ( 66 ) 
 
 A PHASE OF AGNOSTICISM. 
 
 BY the prophets of old, it is said, 
 
 God surely hath spoken ; 
 Dare we trust in the lips of the dead ? 
 
 What sign or what token 
 Have they left us who fain would believe 
 
 With a faith still unshaken ? 
 Alas ! they had nothing to leave 
 
 That doubt hath not taken. 
 
 " I am," spake Jehovah, by voices 
 
 Of poet and seer : 
 Thus the record is read, and rejoices 
 
 Our ears that would hear. 
 " I am ; I inhabit (eternal) 
 
 Eternity ; I 
 Fill all things." The voice is supernal, 
 
 The word it is nigh.
 
 A PHASE OF AGNOSTICISM. 67 
 
 Down the ages the echo resounds, 
 
 " I, even I, am the Lord ; 
 I am God," but a challenge confounds 
 
 The sign we implored. 
 " Is there any who knoweth He spake, 
 
 Trust in no written word ; 
 Would you lean on a reed that will break, 
 
 Ye yourselves, have ye heard? 1 ' 
 
 In the soul, doubt and faith, alternating, 
 
 Seek proof and disproof, 
 While the Lord, from the storm agitating 
 
 Our life (if He be), stands aloof; 
 Thus the marvellous echo of ages 
 
 Grows faint, and no more 
 The sound of great waters assuages 
 
 Our thirst as before. 
 
 I. 
 
 At the meeting of aeons there trod 
 
 The paths of the earth 
 A man who was " Fellow " to God, 
 
 Yet of mortal birth ; 
 A greater than poet or seer, 
 
 He spake with God's voice 
 As His own, "Who hath ears let him hear, 
 
 And once more rejoice."
 
 C8 A PHASE OF AGNOSTICISM. 
 
 Still and soft, after earthquake and fire, 
 
 Through the desolate waste, 
 Comes this whisper of faith to desire, 
 
 And we rise up in haste 
 Yea, we cry, " We will hear, we will follow 
 
 That voice anywhere ; " 
 But the echoes around mimic " follow," 
 
 And mock us with " where." 
 
 Will you go to His grave to weep ? 
 
 Would you there raise your paean ? 
 How know you thence rose as from sleep 
 
 The dead Galilean ? 
 Have ye proved He was God the Lord ? 
 
 As the joy in us quickens, 
 Doubt smites it with death by this sword, 
 
 And our whole life sickens. 
 
 " God is a Spirit ; I know Him ; 
 
 With Him I am one. 
 Would ye yet cry beseeching, ' Lord, show Him,' 
 
 Behold Me His Son : 
 If a man hath seen Me, he then surely 
 
 The Father hath seen." 
 Still this voice through the night rings forth purely 
 
 From days that have been.
 
 A PHASE OF AGNOSTICISM. 69 
 
 Yea, once in the sunlight we saw, 
 
 But the vision hath faded away, 
 As a mirage from sight will withdraw, 
 
 And perchance we but dreamed in the day : 
 Yea, once in the sunlight we heard 
 
 The voice as God's voice ; 
 Now we hear it not thus, and no word 
 
 Maketh night to rejoice. 
 
 What did we hear or see ? 
 
 The purest feet that have trod 
 Earth's bitterest ways, it may be 
 
 Were the feet of a man, not a God, 
 For the purest of men might mistake, 
 
 Might be misunderstood. 
 Do we even know He so spake ; 
 
 Is the record made good ? 
 
 Our own souls repeating the echo, 
 
 Re-mock us with " follow " and " where : " 
 Unto whom, unto whom shall we go, 
 
 For the Christ, is He here was He there ? 
 As the weary and homeless winds, 
 
 We range to and fro ; 
 Hope whispers that whoso seeks finds : 
 
 Is there aught or to see or to know ?
 
 70 A PHASE OF AGNOSTICISM. 
 
 II. 
 
 Out of Heaven, His holy Place, from the Universe distant 
 
 and nigh, 
 From the earth, from all regions of space, from the 
 
 spheres that make music on high, 
 From the unknown infinite Vast, the great Spirit, the one 
 
 Soul of all, 
 Had gone forth as a dream that is past, and the skies 
 
 were but drawn as a pall 
 O'er the fane of the Heavens forsaken, the Holy of 
 
 Holies left void, 
 O'er the earth, where no dawn could awaken the soul of 
 
 its beauty destroyed, 
 And the Universe, known to be by the vision of eye or 
 
 of mind, 
 Seemed the glorious mask of a Deity hollow, a blank 
 
 behind. 
 By night (which would sleep divorce when new thoughts 
 
 and old dreams were at strife), 
 As a beautiful soulless corse that had guarded the trick 
 
 of life, 
 It would haunt me, and oft by day, as I pondered the 
 
 seen and unseen, 
 The old deep smile on its lips of clay would mock me 
 
 with what had been.
 
 A PHASE OF AGNOSTICISM. 71 
 
 In the desolate light of their splendour the sun, the stars, 
 
 and the moon 
 Still shone through the depths of the night or the wide 
 
 free spaces of noon, 
 But the marvellous pageant no more brought me joy, 
 
 but unbounded pain, 
 And a pitiless hunger that tore, as a harpy, at soul and 
 
 brain. 
 The mighty song of the sea had become as an empty 
 
 roar, 
 
 The glorious melody that had girded the earth before 
 With a music of measureless passion, of measureless loss 
 
 and desire, 
 That had been in some godlike fashion humanity's song 
 
 and its lyre, 
 Rang hollow as resonant brass where nor music nor 
 
 meaning is found, 
 And but rarely the old song would pass, with a soulless 
 
 beauty of sound, 
 
 Through the waste of the moonlit waves, or the sun- 
 crimsoned waters of morn, 
 Bringing only the thirst that craves for the lost, and a 
 
 passionate scorn ; 
 
 No answer of soul to soul, no fulness of hope or delight, 
 For no spirit spake in the billows' roll, as none looked 
 
 from the heavens' height 
 The mountains, the rivers, the plains, the forests, the 
 
 dales, and the hills 
 
 F
 
 A PHASE OF AGNOSTICISM. 
 
 Seemed some beautiful realm where death reigns, some 
 
 necropolis splendour (that chills 
 With its painted and carverr glories, which as living the 
 
 dead recall ;) 
 For they were but as wondrous effigies the soul had 
 
 gone forth from them all. 
 The birds, in dim regions of dawn, made a melody 
 
 shallow though sweet ; 
 The winds that were legions of spirits had lapsed into 
 
 air ; at my feet 
 The flowers appeared strange from their birth, for the 
 
 life of their life was gone out 
 Yea, the life of the whole fair earth lay dead at the feet 
 
 of a soulless Doubt. 
 Void was the Home of the Holy, where the glorious God 
 
 had been, 
 Void, doubtly void unto me, was the universe known and 
 
 seen, 
 For with Him from its manifest beauty there had passed, 
 
 as it were from a shrine, 
 Thrust forth by some sceptical ban, all the spirits that 
 
 spake unto mine 
 The spirits of bourned and of boundless, of nature and 
 
 visible things, 
 That had spoken with soundless voices, and drawn nigh 
 
 on invisible wings ; 
 All were gone, and God's fair creation was the birth of a 
 
 mindless Force,
 
 A PHASE OF AGNOSTICISM. 73 
 
 Evolved by mere mingling of atoms from primordial 
 
 matter, its source ; 
 And the beauty I knew as ethereal, when I gazed on its 
 
 face alone, 
 As a beauty only material, seemed to change me into 
 
 stone, 
 As the fabled Medusan face wreathed around with the 
 
 serpentine hair ; 
 It froze my soul by its soulless grace, till I seemed to 
 
 myself to share 
 In the curse of the world around me, and my soul, as a 
 
 soul, ceased to be ; 
 Mind was but matter, life's song was but sound, and all 
 
 things were vanity. 
 
 III. 
 
 In a wind-haunted wood where the larches 
 Shadow sunlight through midsummer hours, 
 
 Where the elms' verdant roof overarches 
 The home of a myriad flowers ; 
 
 Where the reeds and the zephyrs, replying 
 To the songs of the birds and the stream, 
 
 Make a soft drowsy music of sighing, 
 I slept unawares, and in dream
 
 74 A PHASE OF AGNOSTICISM. 
 
 (That was born of the beauty around me, 
 And the soulless despair in my breast) 
 
 All the spirits long lost to me found me, 
 And sleep was half curst and half blest. 
 
 With a joy which was great as the yearning 
 That had sought them, I saw them again ; 
 
 But their scorn, and apparent returning 
 Unto death, brought as boundless a pain. 
 
 Above me in sunlighted spaces, 
 As the circling of opaline mist, 
 
 Rose a vision of fairy-like faces 
 
 That turned to each other and kissed. 
 
 Of fairy-like forms interwreathing 
 
 In the maze of aerial dance, 
 Now so nigh I could fancy them breathing, 
 
 Now afar in the sunlit expanse. 
 
 A spirit-set song they were singing, 
 
 The same song I had heard in past hours, 
 
 When the earth had a soul at the springing, 
 The bud, and the bloom of its flowers. 
 
 As they circled afar or anear me, 
 High or low, still the melody rang, 
 
 Impalpably, purely, and clearly, 
 
 At the last, dim and pallid, they sang
 
 A PHASE OF AGNOSTICISM. 75 
 
 " Hearken, oh, hearken ! we sing through the sleeping 
 Of that doubt in your breast, which holds death in its 
 
 keeping. 
 
 We are the spirits of flowers ; you knew us 
 Ere as the bleak eastern wind there stung through us 
 The breath of a soulless despair from your lips, 
 And we faded before you as beams in eclipse. 
 
 Hearken, oh, hearken ! we sing for the last time ; 
 You will know us, will see us, no more as in past time. 
 Doubt from its slumber awakes ; in your dreaming 
 Only the zephyrs you hear now, misdeeming 
 Our song for the stirring of flowers as they pass ; 
 We are fading you hear but the winds in the grass." 
 
 They were lost to my sight e'en in sleeping, 
 E'en in dream I could hear them no more ; 
 
 With the balm of nepenthe still steeping 
 My brain, doubt awaked as before ; 
 
 And the soft rhythmic sighing around me 
 
 Of wandering zephyrs, that stirred 
 'Mid the grasses and reeds, would confound me 
 
 E'en in sleep, and seem all I had heard. 
 
 Ever fuller and louder and deeper 
 
 Through my dream swelled this sigh of repose, 
 Till as rushing of winds when they keep their 
 
 Night trysts in a forest it rose.
 
 A PHASE OF AGNOSTICISM. 
 
 Then it fell as- a tempest that waneth, 
 To the moan of the wind o'er the sea ; 
 
 And once more, as a giant regaineth 
 His strength, it arose full and free, 
 
 As the sound of winged winds that were soaring 
 Through regions of measureless space : 
 
 Doubt slumbered, the dream was restoring 
 Again unto me the lost grace 
 
 Of that life, when as brother with brother 
 
 The soul of the wind and my soul 
 Held converse, and one with another 
 
 Sped forth to a limitless goal. 
 
 As of old time the same voice spake to me, 
 
 And spirit with spirit we met ; 
 I was dumb, for its words but stung through me 
 
 As the scourge of a cruel regret. 
 
 " Hearken now in sleep (they rang) who will not hearken 
 
 waking, 
 
 Once you knew me as the spirit of the wind, 
 Ere the worlds unseen of beauty and of truth forsaking, 
 Faithless, for the seen, you languished, deaf and 
 blind,
 
 A PHASE OF AGNOSTICISM. 77 
 
 Deaf to all the spirit voices that with you had spoken, 
 
 Blind to all the spirits you so well had known, 
 Narrowed in to sights and sounds of sense, the old ties 
 
 broken 
 
 That had linked all spirit-life unto your own. 
 Oft with me you have sped forth, yourself a bodiless 
 
 immortal, 
 
 Songs of stars, anear in spheric heights, we heard ; 
 Oft together swept through space and lingered at the 
 
 portal 
 
 Of the infinite, or where the oceans gird 
 Our fair earth with music of a speechless passion, wan- 
 dered 
 
 With the midnight moon, or with the tempest blent. 
 Now you know me not, for as the soulless you have 
 
 pondered 
 
 On the spirit-life until you thus lament 
 That as dead which by the soul alone can be discerned 
 
 as living, 
 
 That as lost which you but see not being blind : 
 In your heart sleep doubt for faith and mourning for 
 
 thanksgiving, 
 Lo, they wake I lapse from spirit into wind." 
 
 Still in dream, I cried out as forsaken ; 
 
 None answered there came no reply 
 Save the sough of the elms that were shaken 
 
 Around me by winds risen high.
 
 A PHASE OF AGNOSTICISM. 
 
 And Doubt spake once again, "What deplore you, 
 
 A dream that was born of a dream ? 
 Sleep soft, for no grief can restore you 
 
 A shadow, all spirits but seem. 
 
 Then the winds in the wood, as an ocean 
 That is lashed by night-tempests, rose higher 
 
 And silenced its voice, (as emotion 
 Makes a silence of thought,) and desire 
 
 Waxen strong, by sheer strength of its yearning 
 Drew the spirit-life toward me once more : 
 
 On the wings of the tempest returning, 
 The Sea-Spirit spake through the roar 
 
 Of the winds that as waves while I slumbered 
 Rose, quick with past storms that were known 
 
 Of me well in far hours, which Time numbered 
 By the boom of the breakers alone. 
 
 Thus the Spirit found speech (and as friend who meets 
 
 friend after parting and silence and pain, 
 My spirit rejoiced at its presence and voice and was glad 
 
 with lost gladness again) : 
 " In my storms, in my calms, you discerned me of old, 
 
 as the soul is discerned of the soul, 
 We have mingled as one in the noon, in the night ; you 
 
 have heard in my billows' roll
 
 A PHASE OF AGNOSTICISM. 79 
 
 The tides of a life that arose, as the tides of your own 
 
 life, to beat 'gainst a shore 
 That barred from the boundless beyond (as yours beat ;) 
 
 you have heard in my tempest's roar 
 The passionate strain of the strife, of the struggle to 
 
 issue free 
 To burst the impregnable bounds and break forth on a 
 
 boundless infinity : 
 In my halcyon calms you have slumbered full oft, to us 
 
 both there came dreams of repose ; 
 I was Mother, and Brother, and Friend to you then, I 
 
 was more than they all ; as soul knows 
 And is known when the veil of the flesh is withdrawn, 
 
 so we knew and were known each of each, 
 We were one by an union closer than mortal relation can 
 
 reach ; 
 One in the temple of God, in the Universe, where through 
 
 the things that were seen 
 Soul was manifest unto your soul ; now the God of the 
 
 Temple is not, hath not been 
 Save in faith or in vision you fear, and His glorious 
 
 House unto you 
 Is left void, for all spirits with Him are gone forth and 
 
 you know me no more as you knew. 
 You hear in the roll of my billows the sound of full 
 
 waters alone, 
 In my tempests the tumult of force-driven tides, my 
 
 deepest repose is but shown
 
 So A PHASE OF AGNOSTICISM. 
 
 To you now as an ocean becalmed, and the life of us 
 
 twain as a word that is said 
 Is gone by, for you live as a soulless soul in a world 
 
 where all spirit is dead." 
 
 Still the winds in the wood through my dreaming 
 
 Roared loud as a tempest at sea ; 
 But the Spirit was gone, and joy's seeming 
 
 Had wrought yet more sorrow in me. 
 
 Sleep became as a void : soul-forsaken 
 
 My own soul slept in me as dead, 
 Then the horrible silence was shaken 
 
 By voices of spirits that said, 
 
 " From the vast, the sublime, the august 
 
 In the Universe manifest ; 
 
 From invisible glories exprest 
 By visible, to your mistrust 
 
 We draw nigh and our being attest : 
 
 " We draw nigh through your slumber, our voices 
 You hear as in days that are past, 
 Now once more you perceive us at last ; 
 
 As of old time our presence rejoices 
 Your spirit and grief is outcast.
 
 A PHASE OF AGNOSTICISM. 81 
 
 " Understood by you dimly, but dimly discerned, 
 We were more to you then than the shown, 
 For the viewless that by us was known 
 
 Drew you on, and you strove to us blindly and yearned 
 With our spirits to mingle your own. 
 
 " The ineffable spake by our lips and you heard, 
 The transcendent looked forth from our eyes 
 And you saw ; now no longer, (made wise 
 
 With the wisdom of fools who through folly have erred) 
 Your spirit or hears, or replies. 
 
 "We opened infinity's portals to you, 
 
 Yet you turned to the finite and shown, 
 
 And believed in its presence alone : 
 We are lost to your life, lo, we fade from your view 
 
 As mists, from Lethean shores blown." 
 
 Ere I knew, they had left me and sorrow 
 
 Sate dumb in my heart, unexpressed ; 
 As a night that expecteth no morrow, 
 
 Though of moon and of stars dispossessed. 
 
 Once again the dream changed : as in past time 
 
 The beautiful world I beheld ; 
 Once again as it were for the last time 
 
 The darkness of doubt was dispelled.
 
 82 A PHASE OF AGNOSTICISM. 
 
 And the universe then in the glory 
 Of days when all matter had soul 
 
 I knew once again ; as a story 
 
 Told long since of darkness and dole, 
 
 Seemed the life I had lived when creation 
 
 Had been but a desolate shrine, 
 For, returned to its void habitation, 
 
 The Spirit of all spake with mine. 
 
 As the Presence of God was the presence, the voice still 
 
 and tender that said, 
 " In the visions of sleep you perceive me, as one who 
 
 is raised from the dead 
 You have life at my word ; once again as a child to his 
 
 Father's breast 
 
 Your spirit turns unto me, and my infinite manifest 
 Unto yours that yet buds through the finite, once more 
 
 brings you fulness and peace, 
 Thus the weary repose, and the terrors of doubt from 
 
 their torturing cease. 
 You know me in dream as in days when the universe, 
 
 quick with my soul, 
 By the sweetness and strength of a mystical spell that 
 
 you could not control, 
 Seemed to draw you unto itself, and you stretched blind 
 
 arms through the seen 
 In your passion and yearning, to find me; yea, as in 
 
 those days that have been
 
 A PHASE OF AGNOSTICISM. 83 
 
 ' By the cords of love, by the bands of a man,' yet withal 
 
 by the power 
 And attraction of infinite spirit I have drawn you to me 
 
 in this hour : 
 Soul to soul in your slumber we meet, heart to heart ; 
 
 at the last you have rest, 
 Your bounded merged in my boundless, your being in 
 
 my Being blest." 
 
 : 
 
 Thus a fulness of life as I slumbered 
 
 Was mine, and a peace passing thought : 
 
 Time was lost, for its hours never numbered 
 The term of such joy, and unsought 
 
 Is its presence of sleep, but in seeming 
 There had been scarce a moment's space 
 
 And the Spirit had passed from my dreaming, 
 And the joy and the life had given place 
 
 To a horror of great desolation, 
 
 (Deeper death than by mortals is known :) 
 
 From mine own, from all souls alienation ; 
 I lived, then, as matter alone. 
 
 And matter alone was before me, 
 
 Behind me, above and beneath ; 
 Had the night of Gehenna closed o'er me, 
 
 The worm and the gnashing of teeth
 
 84 A PHASE OF AGNOSTICISM. 
 
 Had been painless and sweet to that terror, 
 That soulless and Godless despair ; 
 
 " If I erred, grant me hell for my error, 
 
 For Thy Presence, O Lord, may be there ; " 
 
 Thus I cried in my dream, though I knew not 
 There was any to answer or see, 
 
 For the sword of that death which yet slew not 
 Smote the cry from mine agony. 
 
 A cry of unspeakable yearning, 
 
 Of uttermost woe and despair ; 
 Sleep recoiled at the sound, as discerning 
 
 There was none or to answer or care ; 
 
 And awakened (as anguish will waken 
 When known in the direst extreme :) 
 
 'Neath the larches by summer winds shaken 
 I came to myself from the dream ; 
 
 In the wood, where the reeds, still replying 
 To the songs of the birds and the stream, 
 
 Made a soft drowsy music of sighing, 
 
 Where beauty and peace reigned supreme. 
 
 Still the horror and dread were upon me, 
 And I seemed anew come unto birth, 
 
 In a land where God's sunlight shone on me 
 As I lay in the lap of the earth.
 
 A PHASE OF AGNOSTICISM. 85 
 
 The power of the vision still held me, 
 And the words of the spirits that spake 
 
 Echoed still in my soul and compelled me 
 To joy and to weep for their sake. 
 
 " Fool of phantasy, lo, with the vision 
 The spirits were born and are dead ; 
 
 Dream no longer," Doubt cried in derision 
 'Twas an idle thing that she said. 
 
 For I knew, with the force of full passion, 
 That henceforth it were easier to deem 
 
 Myself mad in some mystical fashion, 
 Than to think they had birth of a dream 
 
 And had lapsed with its lapse, or had ever 
 In past days of my doubt ceased to be ; 
 
 Once again we were one as though never 
 Their sun was a darkness to me : 
 
 The power of their life, through the sorrow, 
 The joy, and the dread that sleep bare, 
 
 Had wrought me deliverance ; the morrow 
 Had dawned ere the night was aware ; 
 
 And once more in the wood all around me 
 Was quick as in days that had been, 
 
 With the Spirit I knew ere Doubt bound me 
 In the prison of sense and the seen.
 
 86 A PHASE OF AGNOSTICISM. 
 
 With the Spirit I knew in my dreaming 
 
 At the last, ere left desolate where 
 Force was God, in some horrible seeming 
 
 I became but a soulless despair. 
 
 From the skies, from the trees, from the flow'rs, and 
 
 From Nature's full glory It spake, 
 It looked forth as in far-away hours, and 
 
 All beauty was sweet for Its sake. 
 
 " Unto everything there is a season 
 
 (Said Doubt), dream in slumber, sleep o'er 
 
 Let no poppied delight lull your reason, 
 Nor linger on Lethe's dim shore." 
 
 As a clarion her voice rang ; replying, 
 Long trains of old thought in me rose ; 
 
 Conclusions of sense testifying 
 
 'Gainst the faith that had brought me repose. 
 
 But a stronger than Doubt, as the sunlight 
 Shone then in my soul, and these past 
 
 As shadows at noon : I had won light, 
 
 Though it were through a dream at the last. 
 
 And I knew beyond need of conviction, 
 
 By the sense or by travail of brain, 
 With belief, (in itself benediction 
 
 Which speech would but serve to profane)
 
 A PHASE OF AGNOSTICISM. 
 
 That in some way I cared not for seeing 
 
 The spirits of my spirit known 
 In lapsed years, in lapsed dream, had true being, 
 
 True life in some fashion their own. 
 
 Of one Unity haply the phases, 
 
 Of one spirit : the whole by the part 
 
 Discerned, as full light that but dazes 
 If broken is seen : heart to heart, 
 
 Soul to soul in the past I had known them ; 
 
 Heart to heart, soul to soul once again 
 I knew them, as slumber had shown them 
 
 After absence and silence and pain : 
 
 And the soul of the Universe drew me 
 Once more to itself, and seemed God 
 
 (As in days before doubt darkened through me 
 To night, and soul-blinded I trod 
 
 The manifold ways of creation, 
 
 When the beauty of visible things 
 Appeared but a fair desolation, 
 
 An angel despoiled of its wings.) 
 
 Was It God ? 'neath the midsummer moonlight, 
 In the wood where the winds still sang low, 
 
 As they sang in the larch-shadowed noonlight 
 Ere my dream, I sought vainly to know.
 
 88 A PHASE OF AGNOSTICISM. 
 
 In the temple I stood, but the curtain 
 O'er the Holy of Holies still hung : 
 
 If the harp give a music uncertain, 
 
 Who shall tell to what concord 'tis strung ? 
 
 Who shall tell, though with blind bitter yearning 
 
 He strive to discover the strain, 
 If 't be paean or dirge scarce discerning 
 
 For fruit of his travail and pain. 
 
 Thus it seemed with me, thus it seemeth, 
 I seek that my search hath not found, 
 
 With the passion of one who esteemeth 
 Aught else but as loss ; yet a sound 
 
 Undefined, a vague music perplexing, 
 
 Alone ever falls on mine ear, 
 And nor travail, nor torment, nor vexing 
 
 Of soul, makes the dominant clear. 
 
 I question the wood, the wide spaces 
 
 Of Nature, the sea and the sky, 
 And the Spirit whose Being embraces 
 
 These all, but there comes no reply. 
 
 Is it I who am deaf to the answer, 
 Is there music mine ear fails to hear, 
 
 Unconfused, a deep consonance, a 
 Response full, determinate, clear ?
 
 A PHASE OF AGNOSTICISM. 
 
 Am I deaf as I was to the voices 
 
 Of the spirits of earth, am I blind 
 As I was unto that which rejoices 
 
 My soul now with soul half-defined ? 
 
 Oh, could but this silence be broken 
 
 As that, by some voice which should speak 
 
 Through a dream ; that as then I might waken 
 Unto sight of the God whom I seek. 
 
 Long ago, in the temple Judsean, 
 
 The blind and the halt, it is said, 
 Were made whole by the great Galilean ; 
 
 Doth He sleep the long sleep of the dead ? 
 
 Did He wake ? would the Hand of His healing 
 Might touch me as I watch in the fane 
 
 Of the universe for the revealing 
 
 Of the God who may be, though in vain 
 
 I have sought Him as blind, and have hearkened 
 For His voice as the deaf in the night, 
 
 Nor have known if His heavens were darkened 
 Or mine own eyes but dark to their light. 
 
 In the Temple I wait at some hour when 
 I think not the Christ may draw nigh 
 
 And His hand be on me, and His power then 
 Seem no myth of an era gone by.
 
 co A PHASE OF AGNOSTICISM. 
 
 With a joy beyond all comprehending, 
 My own soul is certain of soul : 
 
 Will Doubt cease at the last all contending, 
 And desire win its uttermost goal ?
 
 TWO IN PALERMO. 
 
 " TELL me of England, of your isle, 
 
 How cloud and rain 
 Shadow the summer's short-lived smile 
 Tell me again. 
 
 " Tell me once more of fog and mist 
 
 And eastern wind, 
 
 And how the earth's sweet eyes are kissed 
 By snows that blind, 
 
 " How the June heavens are calm and blue, 
 
 While these above 
 
 Us here the sun fires through and through 
 As if with love. 
 
 " Tell me it all again," you say, 
 " And tell me more ; " 
 Cara, 'tis like a dream when day 
 Stands at the door ;
 
 92 TWO IN PALERMO. 
 
 A dream of glooms and shadows gone, 
 
 Wherein I see 
 Dimly as ere your Helios shone 
 
 Flame-crowned on me ; 
 
 Ere in the wake of darkling hours 
 
 I saw you stand 
 Amid Sicilian myrtles, flowers 
 
 In either hand. 
 
 For now I have no life save yours, 
 
 Nor country, dear ; 
 I am as one who thus abjures 
 
 Old hope and fear ; 
 
 Old grief and gladness, sound and sight, 
 
 Old cold and heat, 
 Old dawn and dusk, old dark and light, 
 
 Long incomplete. 
 
 As one who changes warmth for fire, 
 
 Cheer for delight, 
 Hope for the uttermost desire, 
 
 Veiled for full sight. 
 
 Dim skies for skies burnt through with flame, 
 
 Pale flowers for flowers, 
 That blaze as gems of every name 
 
 In southern bowers.
 
 TWO IN PALERMO. 93, 
 
 As one who changes dawn for noon, 
 
 A cloud-girt isle 
 
 For lands that 'neath the sun and moon 
 For ever smile. 
 
 As such an one am I ; your lips 
 
 The charm have wrought, 
 Let them meet mine now, lest eclipse 
 
 Follow my thought 
 
 Of sunless climes where half the year 
 
 The sun is dead, 
 And half the year shines dim or clear, 
 
 Ne'er thus o'erhead. 
 
 Look with your southern eyes on mine, 
 
 Look long, sweetheart, 
 Lest telling you of shade I see 
 Full light depart. 
 
 Listen, 'tis summer in the land 
 
 You count as mine, 
 And on this olive-girdled strand ; 
 
 I draw a line 
 
 'Twixt summer here and there, they are 
 
 And are not one ; 
 Would you see that which gleams afar, 
 
 Child of the sun ?
 
 94 TWO IN PALERMO. 
 
 In wide dim skies it wakes at dawn 
 
 As soft grey light, 
 And in the dewy meads withdrawn, 
 
 Kisses the night. 
 
 At noon perchance as pale and grey 
 
 As at the morn, 
 It sleeps in clouded skies, while day 
 
 Wanders forlorn ; 
 
 Or on the sun perchance it stands 
 
 With shining feet, 
 And pours upon the tranquil lands 
 
 A pleasant heat. 
 
 At eve it hides with blood -red shroud 
 
 The day's decease, 
 Or spreads out every western cloud 
 
 As Jason's fleece. 
 
 Or in a humid mist ascends 
 From hill and plain ; 
 
 Then like a saddened spirit wends 
 Through slumbrous rain. 
 
 When darkness silent as the tomb 
 Hides northern dales, 
 
 It lures to fire the songless gloom 
 No nightingales.
 
 TWO IN PALERMO. 95 
 
 (And if to southward of the isle 
 
 Their passionate strain, 
 To ravish sorrow, or beguile 
 
 It seeks, 'tis vain ; 
 
 In alien lands they fail to sing 
 
 That wondrous song 
 Wherewith your groves and gardens ring 
 
 The whole night long.) 
 
 Give both your hands to both of mine, 
 
 And shut my lips 
 With yours ; of suns that but half shine 
 
 While summer sips 
 
 From joy's full cup the glowing wine 
 
 She dares not drain, 
 Of the pale moon's birth and decline, 
 
 And the calm reign 
 
 Of placid darkness in that distant isle 
 
 We'll speak no more ; 
 See where as flame the noonday's smile 
 
 Burns on the shore. 
 
 Shake down your hair, its shade is deep, 
 
 And sweet as night's ; 
 'Tis like a purple sea asleep 
 
 In shadowed lights ;
 
 96 TWO IN PALERMO, 
 
 Bright as the sunbeams on the wings 
 
 Of rooks in May, 
 Dark as the brine-weed ocean brings 
 
 At break of day. 
 
 Let me forget that I was born 
 
 Where Proserpine 
 Ne'er wandered 'mid the flowers and corn 
 
 And fruited vine. 
 
 For, love, I never lived until 
 
 You gave me birth, 
 (Speaking as gods speak when they thrill 
 
 With spirit, earth ;) 
 
 Here where the sunlit air is rife 
 
 With throbbing fires, 
 Where e'en the mote is winged with life 
 
 And never tires : 
 
 Let me forget dim strands, dim skies, 
 
 Dim summers too ; 
 Let me remember only these, 
 
 Nay, only you.
 
 ( 97 ) 
 
 FRIENDS. 
 
 " FRIENDS " yes, thank God we are, and if there be 
 
 Or long, or short, or any time at all 
 
 In that which by no season's rise or fall 
 
 Is shaken more than is eternity, 
 
 We have been friends since many years ago, 
 
 And evermore are so. 
 
 You smile the slow soft unbelieving smile 
 Of one who from some vantage ground beholds 
 That which but partially you think unfolds 
 Itself to me ; you cannot reconcile 
 A friendship such as his and mine with aught 
 You say, by love untaught. 
 
 "Love love" you listen to the world, which sees 
 All deepest feelings narrowed in one word 
 (So choice of sight be given :) " it hath not heard 
 Of friendship in this wise " such doth not please, 
 Blind where it willeth, it hath stopped its ear 
 To that it would not hear.
 
 98 FRIENDS. 
 
 You speak of what you know not, let me speak 
 Of what I know ; did I believe you were 
 That you appear I should not hope, nor care, 
 To show you aught, but rather on you wreak 
 My scorn of those who smote you with this blight 
 Of hearing and of sight. 
 
 You have a woman's heart which were not slow 
 
 To understand all woman's heart can feel 
 
 Would you but suffer it ; why then appeal 
 
 To the world's judgment and your own forego ? 
 
 Why borrow the world's speech, smile the world's smile, 
 
 E'en for this little while ? 
 
 Cast off this curse from hearing and from sight, 
 Yes, he and I are friends, thank God, I say 
 Once more, as every hour of every day 
 I say it in mine heart, and should the night 
 Shut out the noon with darkness, then each hour 
 Of every night my heart would say it still, 
 And night with noontide fill. 
 
 Listen, what thing this friendship is all speech 
 Must fail to tell you in so many words, 
 Its utmost depth and height a silence girds 
 Like that encircling where no sound can reach 
 The heaven-kissed Alp, or hushing, soft as sleep, 
 Far down below the waves the abysmal deep.
 
 FRIENDS. 99 
 
 We have no thought of love as you count love, 
 Yet we do love : think you there is no fire, 
 No passion of the heart save one ? Inquire 
 Of some true sibyl, seek some guide above 
 A petty-souled and purblind world which sees 
 No light in heaven save that itself decrees. 
 
 Among all men and women of God's earth, 
 Who in the world's eyes are nor kith nor kin, 
 Did He make two and two for love, as twin 
 One man one woman, and albeit by birth 
 Of the same Father save in this condemn 
 Men's love for women, women's love for them ? 
 
 Is God so straitened at the heart ? doth He 
 Hedge in our love, choose for it but one way, 
 Or set it bounds as 'twere a stream or bay, 
 Or e'en the unfathomed and unmeasured sea ? 
 Himself illimitable Love, with "Thus, 
 Thus only " doth He limit love in us ? 
 
 I grant you as regards the outer sign 
 
 Friendships of men and women may be rare, 
 
 Their inward grace to mockery lies not bare, 
 
 And oft, as neophytes before a shrine 
 
 Too fearful of the world, unfit for strife, 
 
 They crush within the unblossomed bud their life.
 
 ioo FRIENDS. 
 
 I grant you too that while the bud is green 
 Or opening to the flower Love's wizard wand 
 May change its nature ; I allow the bond 
 May thus be broken with sharp pain between 
 Two friends by one alone ; all this may be, 
 But Friendship is for this no fallacy. 
 
 I seek in vain for words that will not come. 
 Within the soul of Israel's poet king 
 The fire burned, and his eager words found wing ; 
 In mine the fire burns also, but my words are dumb, 
 They cannot speak the thoughts that from it breaks, 
 And as pent lava-flames my being shake. 
 
 If as in vision of the eastern seer 
 
 Some angel from God's altar would now take 
 
 A living coal and touch these lips that ache 
 
 With their long impotence, then full and strong 
 
 My voice as clarion-call or trumpet-blast 
 
 Should champion 'gainst the world this cause at last. 
 
 This cause of Friendship, judged unrighteously, 
 Then should I vindicate and scathe with scorn 
 The unrighteous judges, then should shame be born 
 A bitter birth within their soul ; and free 
 To love as friends, as friends in heart and hand 
 Would be God's men and women through the land.
 
 FRIENDS. 10 1 
 
 The honour is too great, too high for me, 
 
 I pass the gauntlet to some worthier hand, 
 
 But though words fail I know you understand 
 
 What I would say could speech as feeling be, 
 
 For through my failure your own soul speaks clear, 
 
 And the world's voice falls idly on your ear. 
 
 Touching the friendship foremost in your thought, 
 
 A friendship ever open to all sight, 
 
 My heart now that your heart hath judged aright 
 
 Seeks silence ; words were vainly sought, 
 
 For as I think of all it is to me, 
 
 They do but fail once more, fail utterly.
 
 ( 102 ) 
 
 THE SUICIDES WIFE. 
 
 DROWNED by your own deed O ray love, my love ; 
 
 Why at the least could I not die with you ? 
 
 You were alone, that thought still stabs me through, 
 
 Scant of death's clemency with pangs above 
 
 All mortal agony : why did you go 
 
 Companionless ? you knew my life went so ; 
 
 " Dishonoured," and you could not bear that I 
 
 Should hear it uttered by your living lips, 
 
 " Words that must lash (you say) as scorpion whips, 
 
 Fall spoken from the dead less cruelly." 
 
 O God, how little men know love ! for this 
 
 Stings more than all, that now I cannot kiss 
 
 The dear set lips disburdened of their shame. 
 
 That you denied me, Willie, which you gave 
 
 Unto the bitter sea, where many a wave 
 
 Held you in hungry arms ; they had no claim, 
 
 You were not theirs, but mine ; close on the mouth, 
 
 With ruthless lips they kissed you in their drouth ; 
 
 You let them do it, and you said me nay : 
 
 How you were come to death they had no care ;
 
 THE SUICIDE'S WIFE. 
 
 103 
 
 Your shame, your agony they could not share, 
 And yet they kissed you and bore you away 
 Unto some secret place within the sea, 
 And you strove ne'er to come again to me. 
 They loved you not, why did you go to them ? 
 Could you misdoubt or dream my love could fail 
 When you had need of it ? Could it avail 
 You nothing at the last ; did you condemn 
 It to the deepest hell by your mistrust ? 
 You must have known it better, oh, you must. 
 I loved you far too well to love you less 
 For any wrong of yours, or think of blame ; 
 What matters unto love the bitterest shame, 
 What matters aught, so love be left to bless ? 
 Your love was mine, your shame then equally, 
 It was my right, why did you choose the sea ? 
 We had borne all together ; that had made 
 Heaven for me, and I should have stood in pride 
 When the world passed us on the further side, 
 (As it will pass the sick in soul nor aid :) 
 I knew you, and though you had stooped to ill 
 I should have known that you were noble still. 
 Could you not, Willie, have borne life with me ? 
 Would not my love have been as sweet as death ? 
 My kisses had not brought the sobbing breath 
 Unto your lips one half so cruelly 
 As the waves' kisses, in such bitter wise 
 They had not drawn the darkness o'er your eyes, 
 
 H
 
 104 THE SUICIDE'S WIFE. 
 
 And yet I think they could have made you blind 
 
 To that you would not see, and kissed you dead 
 
 To that you fain had died to, and a bed 
 
 Softer than any that the waves could find 
 
 I could have found you in my arms ; ere long 
 
 You would have known I could, love is so strong. 
 
 But you have given yourself, though you were mine, 
 
 Unto the sea, that unrenouncing holds 
 
 You still, and in unyielding arms enfolds 
 
 You secretly, lest I should yet discern 
 
 Some plan to steal you for myself again 
 
 Had she not hidden you where search is vain. 
 
 Could I e'en find you deep in some lone cave, 
 
 And win you from her, and draw down your head 
 
 On my own breast, what would it boot you dead ? 
 
 What profit could it work me though I crave, 
 
 As crave the famished, for one glimpse of you, 
 
 And almost feel I could bring life anew 
 
 Unto your lips, if I but found your grave ? 
 
 And yet you are not there, I know I know 
 
 Alone, uncomforted, where did you go, 
 
 Where are you, Willie ? There was none to save 
 
 You from your anguish in the cruel sea, 
 
 Are you alone still with your misery ? 
 
 Somewhere perhaps stung through the soul by shame, 
 
 Heart-sick and comfortless you need my love ; 
 
 The torture of the thought racks me above 
 
 That I can bear and live ; what right, what claim
 
 THE SUICIDE'S WIFE. 10$ 
 
 Hath life to hold me from you ? I will go 
 To the same waves and seek you even so. 
 I will come to you wheresoe'er you are, 
 My love by its sheer love shall find you out, 
 Were Hades infinite I should not doubt. 
 The billows sing aloud on shore and scar, 
 As white-winged angels of the waiting sea 
 Eager to speed my search they beckon me. 
 I will go to them, Willie ; even God 
 Cannot be to you that which I could be, 
 He is too holy ; howso bitterly 
 With human feet the ways of shame He trod, 
 Sin could not touch Him ; I I am not good, 
 He cannot understand quite as I could. 
 He never knew that utmost misery 
 Where sin and shame seem as our very own, 
 Soul of our soul, born of ourselves alone, 
 I know, I understand so well, oh, we 
 Were one in this as in all else ; if you 
 Have sinned and suffered, I myself have too ; 
 And in your own sin I sinned equally, 
 And my shame is as yours, are you undone 
 I am undone we are not twain, but one ; 
 There is no question or of you or I 
 Between us, and these bitter hours apart 
 With too much agony have broken my heart 
 I come, I shall be with you where you are, 
 God will not hide you as the cruel sea ;
 
 io6 THE SUICIDE'S WIFE. 
 
 It is enough, where you are I shall be. 
 
 Though He from Heaven hath banished you afar, 
 
 And draws you to Him through the deeps of hell, 
 
 E'en there, with you, for me all must be well. 
 
 Surely my love would make you suffer less 
 
 E'en there; we should strive toward the Heavenly 
 
 height 
 
 Together, by a travail thus half light. 
 You are not there, hell is for wickedness ; 
 But wheresoe'er you are I come to be, 
 I cannot live and think you lack for me. 
 
 Around me far along the midnight shore 
 The billows sing a requiem o'er my dead, 
 And call for me that they may lay his head 
 Haply e'en yet upon my breast once more ; 
 How sweet their voices sound at last, how sweet ! 
 Life is so desolate, a two-edged sword 
 It smites me through the soul with every breath, 
 But I had striven to bear it, nor seek death 
 For my own sake before Thou wouldest, Lord : 
 If Thou art love Thou doubtless wilt forgive 
 The love that can no longer let me live. 
 I go to him, perchance in grief, alone, 
 He calls for me, and there is no reply ; 
 Thou knowest none can comfort him as I, 
 Or stand him in my stead ; he is mine own,
 
 THE SUICIDE'S WIFE. 107 
 
 Thou gavest him to me ; I was his All. 
 
 O Lord, couldst Thou Thyself hear Thy Son call, 
 
 "I am forsaken," and not haste to Him 
 
 On Golgotha in His great agony ; 
 
 And that Thou couldst not wilt Thou ask of me ? 
 
 E'en if Thou couldst, I am not God too dim 
 
 Are my love's eyes to fathom the divine 
 
 And soundless mysteries of love like Thine 
 
 My love is only human, and too weak 
 
 For such a strength ; it cannot hear the cry 
 
 Of its beloved afar, nor hasten nigh : 
 
 Its lips refuse all silence, they must speak; 
 
 Thou madest human love, Lord, and wilt know 
 
 Why by the ways of death this night I go. 
 
 Forgive me where I trespass, Thou who art 
 
 Love's very self, who madest love to be, 
 
 And understandest all love utterly, 
 
 For all had birth in Thine own boundless heart ; 
 
 We cannot understand its infinite, 
 
 But we and all our loves live but by it. 
 
 What do I say ? this love of his and mine 
 
 Lives but by Thy love then and he and I 
 
 Are loved by love that is infinity : 
 
 I do love wrong, if such a love as Thine 
 
 Can fail before the love.it made in me, 
 
 Then my own love becomes a mockery ; 
 
 If Thy love cannot love him as my love, 
 
 And serve him with a service better worth,
 
 io8 THE SUICIDE'S WIFE. 
 
 What hope have I ? When mine of Thine had birth, 
 
 It was not born omniscient to prove 
 
 For its Beloved the hidden and unknown ; 
 
 Neither omnipotent as is Thine own. 
 
 It knoweth only to count all things naught 
 
 For service of its loved j death hell yea, aught ; 
 
 To love unto the uttermost and dare 
 
 All for its love ; but, Lord, that all may fail, 
 
 Without Thy love what shall our love avail? 
 
 Still the waves sing ; a deep wild mournful strain 
 
 (Soft-tuned unto some exquisite delight) 
 
 That woes me to them, and as if for flight 
 
 They spread white wings above the moonless main, 
 
 Impatient to receive my soul from me 
 
 And bear it straight to his soul from the sea. 
 
 How sweet death seems ! yet yet I must not die 
 
 As the swift lightning in a storm will blast 
 
 Some single thing the storm unscathed hath past, 
 
 Thus late the thought strikes my heart's hope : shall I 
 
 Set my love in such wise 'gainst Thine, and take 
 
 His welfare into my hands ? For his sake 
 
 I dare not do it. Shall my love, being blind, 
 
 Find out a surer way to love and bless 
 
 Than Thine which seeth and loves him not less ? 
 
 How the waves urge me ! barely can I find 
 
 Power to resist ; but love indeed were lost 
 
 To serve itself at its Beloved's cost ; 
 
 I dare not trust for him mine own love, Lord,
 
 THE SUICIDE'S WIFE. 109 
 
 I must go mad or trust the love in Thee ; 
 Thou who art very Love, love him for me ; 
 That is enough until Thou sheathe this sword 
 Of life with Thy hand, give the strength to wait, 
 My love is left unto me desolate.
 
 SUNSET IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 OVER this golden isle 
 The sun, (as love) awhile 
 Tarries with lingering smile, 
 
 Loth to depart. 
 Let us stay here and rest ; 
 I too would linger, lest 
 My day adown the west 
 
 Sink swift, sweet-heart. 
 
 See how the crimson glow 
 
 Fires with its flame as snow 
 
 Chilled through the night, you know, 
 
 Yon mountain's height. 
 Thus love with life inspires 
 My soul, enfolds and fires ; 
 As snows of dead desires 
 
 Chilled it through night.
 
 SUNSET IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 Nay, stir not yet, around 
 Stretches enchanted ground, 
 Nature herself is bound 
 
 By slumb'rous charm 
 In rest whose spell is deep, 
 Sweet, soft as spells that steep 
 In dews of Lotos-sleep, 
 
 And pain disarm. 
 
 Stay yet a little space, 
 All things awhile embrace, 
 All things in love's sole grace ; 
 
 Shadows enfold 
 Shadows, the sea and sky 
 Tryst, hills and valleys nigh ; 
 The winds together sigh, 
 
 Listen behold. 
 
 The sun beyond our sight 
 Kisses the wakening night, 
 And fills with golden light 
 
 Her lamp the moon. 
 All things in love are met, 
 We too, dost thou regret ? 
 Then, dearest, stir not yet, 
 
 'Tis still so soon.
 
 "LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCL" 
 
 AT mid of night, on storm-lashed shores, 
 A poet oft was wont to roam, 
 He sang a wond'rous song, which winds 
 Drave by as foam. 
 
 With swift and restless feet he paced, 
 Singing as one whose heart was fire, 
 Whose soul was as the storm, and lashed 
 By vain desire. 
 
 At dawn of day, through dewy mead s 
 He wandered in the wake of light, 
 With wild-strained eyes, as one who sought 
 Some vanished sight. 
 
 Up sultry heats of summer noons 
 His voice would wing its way alone, 
 While to sweet shade of covert boughs 
 All birds had flown.
 
 "LA SELLS DAME SANS MERCJ." 113 
 
 And sad as death athirst for life 
 He sang through many a summer eve ; 
 The nightingales to hear his songs 
 Their own would leave. 
 
 He was as one whom Love had blessed 
 
 With boundless joys of heart and brain, 
 And after blessing cursed him with 
 As boundless pain. 
 
 As one whom Beauty passing by 
 
 Kissed close upon the youthful mouth, 
 Then after left the burning lips 
 To quenchless drouth. 
 
 As one to whom the gods had given 
 
 High passion with his lightest breath ; 
 Fulness of life, wrung speedily 
 By pangs of death. 
 
 The burden of his songs at eve, 
 
 At morn, beneath the noonday-sun, 
 At mid of night on sea or shore 
 Was ever one. 
 
 The burden of a poet's love 
 
 Of which our lesser loves are part, 
 The burden of an only name, 
 The name of Art.
 
 114 "LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCJ." 
 
 The song of mortal lips that woo 
 A mortal maiden's firstling kiss, 
 The moan of mortal lips that mourn 
 For mortal bliss ; 
 
 Had never such impassioned power, 
 Such fathomless profounds of woe, 
 As these his songs that mingled were 
 As fire and snow. 
 
 The lady of his love in sooth 
 
 Descended from no mortal race, 
 Hers was immortal beauty, and 
 Immortal grace. 
 
 Her deep immortal eyes had looked 
 
 Love to his eyes one hour : one hour 
 Their lips had met as flame with flame, 
 As flower with flower. 
 
 She was a goddess at her will, 
 
 Fairy, enchantress, sibyl, Fate ; 
 She drew him to her feet, then left 
 Him desolate. 
 
 The breath of gods was on his cheek 
 One hour, their secrets in his ear ; 
 The things of time and sense were lost, 
 And heaven near.
 
 "LA BELLE DAME SANS MERC I." 115 
 
 By an immortal loved, behold 
 Immortal as a god he grew, 
 And his exceeding love became 
 Immortal too. 
 
 Thus when on his her lips waxed cold, 
 And to his eyes her eyes grew dim, 
 When fading in a magic mist 
 She passed from him ; 
 
 And nevermore at dawn nor eve, 
 
 By midnight moon or noonday sun, 
 Returned to look upon the man 
 She had undone, 
 
 His immortality was made 
 Prey to inexorable pain, 
 Stung ceaselessly by scorpion-whips, 
 Yet never slain. 
 
 Nigh driven mad by sense of loss 
 
 And sheer extremity of woe, 
 
 He sought her of the gods above 
 
 And shades below. 
 
 He questioned sun and moon for her, 
 And importuned the night and day 
 For tidings that should guide his feet 
 Where hers might stray.
 
 u6 "LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI." 
 
 In vain ; he never saw her more ; 
 
 As sleep's fair dreams from waking view 
 She had passed from him, soft and swift 
 As summer dew. 
 
 Therefore upon our storm-lashed shores 
 Frenzied at heart and brain he strode, 
 As one whose soul was homeless, and 
 Despair its goad. 
 
 And ever in his woe he sang 
 
 Songs that no mortal lips had learned, 
 Saving from lips immortal that 
 On them had burned. 
 
 Circe ne'er wrought a spell so deep 
 
 As hers, even Leucosia's wiles 
 Were less alluring, and less sweet 
 Medea's smiles. 
 
 Until he wandered from our shores 
 He listened for her lightest call ; 
 Ever "la belle Dame sans merci" 
 Held him in thrall. 
 
 And now amid Elysian bowers 
 
 He seeks her still with feet untire,d ; 
 Immortal as the life she gave 
 
 The love that she inspired.
 
 ( 7 ) 
 
 AFTER MARRIAGE. 
 
 SAY, have I spoken words in any wise 
 
 One with the love which forced them from these lips 
 In its last strain toward speech? thus, in your eyes 
 
 I seek the answer, while this silence slips 
 Like a familiar spirit known in pain 
 Back to my heart again. 
 
 Within the unheaving bosom of the earth 
 
 The lava fire seethes long and makes no sign, 
 
 Voiceless, unknown, imprisoned from its birth ; 
 But outer calm not always may confine 
 
 Its dumb pent passion, which at length breaks free 
 From pure necessity. 
 
 Through ebb and flow of equal tides the sea 
 
 Holds the full forces of its surging life 
 Deep in its utmost depths all silently ; 
 
 Unheard they travail till at strenuous strife 
 With bounds and silence, lo, they issue free, 
 And thunder mightily.
 
 AFTER MARRIAGE. 
 
 Is it not so with love ? it travails long 
 
 Dumb and in secret, but at last must speak ; 
 Who is content with silence ? it is strong, 
 We say, and words are poor, worthless, and weak, 
 Yet love strains outward as the fire and sea 
 From pure necessity. 
 
 Through stammering lips it finds itself a way 
 
 And thinks it speaks thus it hath thought in me, 
 
 I seek your answer, has it spoken, say : 
 In the great outward rush as it broke free 
 
 If speech were poor or rich I could not know, 
 I felt the love surge so. 
 
 The secret forces of the ocean's life 
 
 Break forth in storm, but still are unrevealed, 
 
 The boom of billows, the white rage of strife 
 
 On rock and scar must leave them still concealed, 
 
 The storm they sought themselves to issue by, 
 Bears but their travail cry. 
 
 The lava-forces burn a way at last 
 
 Outward in roaring flame and molten fire, 
 
 Thunders and lightnings, riven rocks (upcast 
 As glowing meteors), yet with foiled desire 
 
 The mighty spirit of the whole apart 
 
 Seethes dumb in earth's deep heart.
 
 AFTER MARRIAGE. 119 
 
 Love strives for speech by no volcanic storm, 
 Sea-tempest, fire nor earthquake, the still voice 
 
 It best can issue by, can best inform 
 
 With its great passion, yet love hath no choice, 
 
 Its outward rush sweeps all things else away ; 
 Dear, hath it spoken, say. 
 
 Look back upon the lava's seething way 
 Its fiery outbreak, but one moon gone by ; 
 
 Look back on the lapsed sea-storm but one day, 
 What then remains ? beneath a calm blue sky 
 
 The cold still lava stream, the fireless stone, 
 Seaweed and shell alone. 
 
 If I could stand but just so far from this 
 Whereby my love sought egress, would it be 
 
 As the quenched lava from the fire's abyss, 
 As weed and shell from the unfathomed sea ; 
 
 Would it be such, could I then set apart 
 This surging at my heart ? 
 
 Would it be even less ? perchance could I 
 
 Have stood with you outside love's inner life, 
 E'en at the moment of its travail-cry 
 
 And issuing birth, I should have known the strife 
 'Gainst bounds and silence, the wild rush and strain 
 Than sea's or fire's more vain. 
 
 i
 
 AFTER MARRIAGE. 
 
 Words into which love fused its very soul 
 
 And dreamed it thus broke forth on wings of fire ; 
 
 Words in which love's pent passion seemed to roll 
 Outward on wide free waves at its desire, 
 
 E'en at their utterance then perchance would be 
 Fireless and void to me. 
 
 While yet I speak love's surging tide ebbs fast, 
 And sinks back in my heart, yea, now I know 
 
 Over its soundless depths all speech hath past 
 As the sea's storm, nor entered ; far below 
 
 Love, as the mighty spirit of the sea 
 Still travailed voicelessly. 
 
 All strain for egress left it now I know 
 
 Deep in abysmal silence seething dumb, 
 As far beneath the lava's outward flow 
 
 Seethes the fire's inner force, yea, speech hath come, 
 Yet love itself hath not e'en spoken so, 
 Nor can speak now I know. 
 
 Words have not touched love, yet words have been we 11, 
 
 I pity all things voiceless : evermore 
 To feel love's infinite mute passion swell 
 
 In its pent torture, and not even for 
 One moment let it dream it issues free 
 Were too much agony ;
 
 AFTER MARRIAGE. 121 
 
 I could not bear that always, Dear, and live, 
 
 Is it love's strength which thus strains forth in me ? 
 
 Is it love's foolishness ? thou wilt forgive, 
 E'en so, its failure ; less intolerably 
 
 The mighty forces of its life in mine 
 
 Seethe dumb now with no sign.
 
 ( 122 ) 
 
 A BROKEN FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 How long this silence lasts, a year ago 
 Words were as many as the meadow flowers 
 
 That crowded each on each for space to blow, 
 As swift of birth ; in those far summer hours 
 
 Both quickened for sheer gladness of the sun, 
 
 And now of both there is not left e'en one. 
 
 Who made the silence, was it you or I ? 
 
 Who made the last year's words to be the last ? 
 How much I wonder and how bitterly 
 
 Had I turned to you ere the chance was past 
 And said, " Be friends, be friends," if then you would, 
 If then you would have fully understood. 
 
 I miss you so ; once more the summer sun 
 Shines, and new flowers blossom on the graves 
 
 Of the old flowers, but the old words have none 
 To follow them ; the barren east wind raves 
 
 Still o'er their burial-place and keeps it bare, 
 
 And though 'tis summer-time no sun shines there.
 
 A BROKEN FRIENDSHIP. 123 
 
 Some have a way of caring much for friends, 
 And whet a sword to wound themselves thereby 
 
 I had it from a child such friendship spends 
 Its surplus wealth of power as uselessly 
 
 As shore-bound seas ; six times from seven 'tis so, 
 
 As Nature wastes six fruits and lets one grow. 
 
 I speak full bitterly, forgive me, too 
 
 I speak as speaks a fool, there is no waste 
 
 Of Nature's or of friendship's wealth, but you, 
 You wring a cry straight from my heart in haste 
 
 That else were dumb ; why were you friends with me, 
 
 And after on that last day would not be ? 
 
 Why did you hurt me then ? I cared for you 
 
 Unto the utmost that a woman can 
 Care for a woman, or a man for man, 
 
 Above a common friendship ; if you knew 
 Why did you hurt me ? if you did not know 
 Why did you blindly misconceive me so ? 
 
 It was my fault perhaps, I wrought it all, 
 It was my fault that you misunderstood 
 
 And but my own fault's issues on me fall 
 As penalty ; you did not think they could 
 
 Cut me thus deeply, will you take my hand, 
 
 Will you be friends now, will you understand ?
 
 124 A BROKEN FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 You did not mean to hurt me e'en so much 
 As the small thorn that on some rose we find, 
 
 You did not think you would, O God that such 
 Griefs can come unawares ! I made you blind, 
 
 Unwittingly I did it, and this pain 
 
 Has punished me enough, be friends again. 
 
 Forget forget and let me too forget ; 
 
 Let me remember but the happiness 
 That came with you, e'en that last time we met, 
 
 Ere all things banned which late were wont to bless 
 Will you forget, will you be friends once more, 
 Just as we were not many days before.
 
 MONODY OF DOUBT. 
 
 YEA, " Vanity of vanities," we cry, 
 
 All things are vanity and we than all 
 More vain and profitless ; the hour we die 
 
 Shadows our hour of birth with funeral-pall, 
 So fast it follows after : lo, we call 
 
 The sunlight day, the darkness night, a space 
 Then unto both are blind, then wine and gall 
 
 Bear to our passive lips the self-same grace. 
 
 All human lives are but as gossamers 
 
 Floating at eve upon a summer wind ; 
 As firstling snows, the winter's harbingers, 
 
 That pass ere they a place of rest may find : 
 We are as blind men and our seers are blind, 
 
 We know not what we are nor what shall be ; 
 Time in his triumph drags us on behind, 
 
 Who knoweth aught of an eternity ?
 
 126 MONODY OF DOUBT. 
 
 Love kisses us upon the lips and fills 
 
 Life's proffered cup with nectar, as a god, 
 Then at our feet the golden wine he spills 
 
 And follows death below the grass-grown sod ; 
 Or we unto ourselves are made the rod 
 
 And scourge of change and kiss with languid lips 
 (Lips that late burned upon the ground he trod) 
 
 While from our loosened hold his beaker slips. 
 
 What can we ? we may sit beside the grave 
 
 Of the beloved while grief wrings out our life 
 In tears of blood : shall life so given save 
 
 Their lives from death ? and we may spend in strife 
 With change our strength, or plunge the avenging knife 
 
 Into our hearts as by our own dead love 
 We stand ; shall this avail ? Nay, let us take to wife 
 
 Despair, love is beyond us and above. 
 
 Sun, moon, and stars shine down upon our youth, 
 
 Earth blossoms into flowers beneath our feet, 
 Laughter is on our lips unhushed of ruth, 
 
 Joy lingers with us, sorrow's wings are fleet, 
 And every bitter thing is one half sweet : 
 
 Yea, haply then we hear Apollo's lyre 
 Amid the laurels in some still retreat, 
 
 And life thrills through us quickened by his fire :
 
 MONODY OF DOUBT. 127 
 
 A new-born passion pulses in our breast, 
 
 We fall upon our faces at the shrine 
 Where 'mid surrounding darkness, manifest, 
 
 Enrobed in crimson flames that sting and shine, 
 Art stands a goddess and her priests divine. 
 
 Psean or dirge with fervid lips we sing, 
 And drink with sateless thirst her seething wine, 
 
 Full fain our hearts as holocausts to bring. 
 
 Thus is it in our youth ; a little while 
 
 And darkness deepens in the mystic fane, 
 The beauty of the goddess grows, her smile 
 
 Waxes more sweet than joy, more keen than pain 
 But, lo, the glory is become our bane, 
 
 A too transcendent light it blinds our eyes, 
 And as our prayers her presence would constrain 
 
 She leaves us mourning, for her native skies. 
 
 It is for ever thus with all things great, 
 
 They pass beyond us, leave us to self-scorn, 
 
 To weary conflict, cursing of dark Fate 
 
 By which without our wills our lives were born 
 
 And are reaped down in haste as unripe corn : 
 We come to no perfection, have nor scope 
 
 Nor strength for action and with raiment torn 
 . In dust and ashes wail our buried hope.
 
 l?8 MONODY OF DOUBT. 
 
 Yea, " Vanity of vanities," we cry, 
 
 All things are vanity ; day follows night, 
 Night day, and grief and joy together die, 
 
 Falsehood and truth shine with alternate light, 
 Who knoweth how to judge of each aright? 
 
 Visions of God, as in a dream or trance 
 Shine with uncertain splendour on our sight, 
 
 But peace comes not on pinions of " Perchance." 
 
 We know not aught of anything above 
 
 Life's fitful fever stilled by death's cold kiss ; 
 Art, beauty, knowledge, passion of high love 
 
 Quicken our throbbing hearts to pain or bliss, 
 The afterward is blank, we know but this : 
 
 We run a race, unwitting to what goal 
 Before us lies a fathomless abyss, 
 
 Therefore we travail ceaselessly in soul.
 
 ( I2Q ) 
 
 SONG OF THE SPIRIT OF NATURE. 
 
 O FOLLOW, follow where I lead 
 
 From wind-swept moor and dewy mead, 
 
 From stately oak and shaken reed, 
 
 From foam-strewn beach and purple weed, 
 
 O follow, follow; 
 
 From pools where lilies gold and white 
 Sleep in a starlit haze of night, 
 O follow me beyond all sight, 
 
 O follow, follow. 
 
 From tender glooms of forest pines 
 And southern hills of fruited vines, 
 From thickets where the woodbine twines 
 With myrtles over columbines, 
 
 O follow, follow; 
 
 From surging of the moon-drawn sea, 
 The wind's lyre in the coppice-tree, 
 From the brook's babble to the lea, 
 
 O follow, follow.
 
 130 SONG OF THE SPIRIT OF NATURE. 
 
 From lullabies of streams and showers, 
 From blazoned pomp of sunset hours, 
 Of sunrise ; from sweet scents of flowers 
 And splendours, in Hymettian bowers, 
 
 O follow, follow ; 
 
 From their sweet singing as they bloom, 
 From the loud tempest's blast and boom, 
 The bulbul's passion in the gloom, 
 
 O follow, follow. 
 
 From mysteries of eve and morn, 
 From silences whose hearts are torn 
 By speechless secrets, from forlorn 
 And weary autumns, years outworn, 
 
 O follow, follow; 
 
 From the broad arch of azure skies 
 Withal too straight for mortal eyes, 
 From all that charms, not satisfies, 
 
 O follow, follow. 
 
 follow, follow, I am She 
 
 Who lives in moon and moon-drawn sea, 
 
 In song of bird and hum of bee, 
 
 In wind and storm and flower and lea ; 
 
 O follow, follow ; 
 In sound and silence, gloom and light, 
 
 1 live, in vale and mountain height, 
 I live too in the infinite, 
 
 O follow, follow.
 
 SONG OF THE SPIRIT OF NATURE. 131 
 
 follow, follow where I lead, 
 
 1 am the spirit of the mead, 
 
 Of moor, and mountain, flower and reed, 
 Of sky and sea and purple weed, 
 
 O follow, follow ; 
 
 As soul thralls soul your soul I thrall, 
 With mine as though the seen I call, 
 O follow me beyond it all, 
 
 O follow, follow.
 
 ( 132 ) 
 
 IN LESBOS. 
 
 DRAW nigh, Apollo, e'en at Delphi's shrine, 
 
 No Pythonissa's cry can claim thine ear, 
 
 Fraught with one half the passion and the pain 
 
 That hath burned dry these weary lips of mine 
 
 In calling on thy name from Lesbos, here 
 
 Where never I have sought thee thus in vain, 
 
 Hearken, draw nigh, for at my heart song lies as slain. 
 
 Blind unto sun and moon, through dark and light, 
 
 A long and bitter vigil I have kept, 
 
 Here in thy vacant temple, lo, 'tis day ; 
 
 Black as the wings of a forsaken night 
 
 (That weeps for its lapsed fires as I have wept) 
 
 Thy deep-groved laurels show against the grey 
 
 Of this far-widening dawn, why dost thou still delay ? 
 
 Blood-red through all its depths yon sapphire sea 
 Ripples beneath the rising sun ; blood-red 
 Through the clear white of marble columns glows 
 This Mitylean temple, yet to me
 
 IN LESBOS. 133 
 
 (Whose songs, new- quickening, unborn lie dead 
 And cold about my heart as northern snows) 
 No prescient thrill, great Delius, thine approach fore- 
 shows. 
 
 Sole watcher at thy shrine I wait for thee, 
 
 Know'st thou not Sappho's voice, hath love so changed 
 
 Its every cadence, sapped its music so 
 
 That but as the hoarse surging of some sea 
 
 It breaks the silence here ? has love estranged 
 
 Thee from me, as it hath estranged I know 
 
 All of my old life save this one thing, woe 
 
 Love, love ; have I not always loved ? yea, song 
 Was but the birth of love and in its fire 
 Nurtured, as was Neraea's son, but now 
 Waxen too fierce the fire hath smitten song 
 Unto the death and hath become a pyre 
 Whereon I burn (as held by some dread vow) 
 The green bay shrivelled round my hair and brow. 
 
 Hear me, Apollo, as in bygone hours, 
 When from these lips the "To Paean" rang 
 In jubilant acclaim, when at thy side 
 Amid the nine (crowned with Pierian flowers 
 Even as they) I stood, nor quailed, but sang 
 Mingling my voice with thine unterrified, 
 Though to thy lyre my lyre alone replied.
 
 13 V IN LESBOS. 
 
 Then love was sweet, love made so bitter now, 
 Swathed in its living flames and thus well-nigh 
 Waxen immortal, song laughed then I know, 
 As laughed the young Triptolemus, but now 
 Yea, love was then as lava-fires that lie 
 Hidden in earth's quick heart and nurture so, 
 All rarest fruits and flowers deep down below. 
 
 But now as molten lava-floods that sweep 
 
 Through fertile lands and leave them seared and bare, 
 
 It hath swept through my life and laid it waste, 
 
 Smitten with dearth its fruitful plains, burnt deep 
 
 Unto the root all ripening growths and rare ; 
 
 Amid the ravage now I stand abased, 
 
 With empty arms which then the world embraced. 
 
 If I could ease me of my love in song, 
 
 Then life were softer borne, but these mute lips 
 
 Are as the white charred ash burnt through with fire, 
 
 And very weak, unkissed, that were so strong 
 
 Between love's kisses, lo, Castalia slips 
 
 From them ere they can slake their dumb desire, 
 
 And at thy shrine, unstrung, hath fall'n my lyre. 
 
 Hearken, draw high ; thy love I would not, none 
 Of all the gods can love as love in me ; 
 Sappho hath too much loved, been loved too much, 
 And is grown sick of all loves save this one
 
 IN LESBOS. 135 
 
 Which hath laid waste her life ; mortality 
 
 Fails in it, yet, howso immortal such 
 
 No lips but Phaon's hers to love may touch. 
 
 Ere into such a devastating fire 
 
 Love rose within me, love was lord of song, 
 
 Amid her myrtles Erato grew pale, 
 
 And trembled at the passion of my lyre, 
 
 Her sweet mute lips but blanched where mine waxed 
 
 strong 
 
 To bear unseared all flame-winged words nor fail, 
 To sing Love's own intolerable song nor quail. 
 
 Great Pythian, god of that for which I thirst, 
 Let but thy spirit enter mine one hour, 
 Let it possess me, fuse within its fire 
 All of my life that lives (this life still nurst 
 Deep in the heart it daily doth devour 
 As a Promethean vulture ;) let thy lyre 
 Be strung by Sappho's hand to her desire ; 
 
 So life and death, so love and love's despair 
 For one short moment shall be lost in song, 
 Merged in the passion of a music which 
 Shall draw within it hell, earth, heaven, and bear 
 All joys, hopes, sorrows that to these belong 
 Upward upon a melody so rich 
 That all things of their special nature 'twill bewitch. 
 
 K
 
 136 IN LESBOS. 
 
 Then Sappho's proper self shall be no more 
 
 Unto herself as Sappho, in that hour 
 
 Thy spirit, Pythian, shall seem her own, 
 
 Thus respite from love's torment shall restore 
 
 Her full deep life in sky and sea and flower ; 
 
 Here at thy shrine she seeks for this alone, 
 
 Let her forget all love, make but thy power known.
 
 137 ) 
 
 SONNETS TO MY MASTER. 
 
 DEDICATION. 
 
 I CANNOT come before thee as 'tis meet, 
 
 What song have I wherewith to win thine ear, 
 
 Whereon the music of each wandering sphere 
 
 Rings incommunicably strange and sweet. 
 
 O Poet, in whose life all pulses beat 
 
 Of all things living ; singer in whose song 
 
 The passion of the world is borne along 
 
 God- ward and as a sea breaks at His feet ; 
 
 What claim have I who yet with thee would speak 
 
 Heart unto heart, my Master, soul to soul, 
 
 When the wide universe awaits thine ear ; 
 
 What plea have I that will not prove too weak 
 
 To gain thee for me while from pole to pole 
 
 Life, death, joy, sorrow, urge thee to draw near ?
 
 138 DEDICATION. 
 
 Master, I have no claim, yet knowing thee 
 Fearless I offer from my heart to thine, 
 'Mid others' claims this only plea of mine, 
 Because I love thee : thou wilt speak with me. 
 My life sends forth its homage to thy knee 
 As other lives, but now thine ear I seek, 
 Because I love thee, and my love must speak, 
 As thou must sing, from sheer necessity ; 
 In that thy song my soul from hell hath drawn, 
 In that thy day hath thrilled my night with dawn, 
 And thy love taught me love, in that thy life 
 Hath given me life, with silence long at strife 
 Past days and present cry alike in me 
 For speech, though words must prove but vanity.
 
 SONNETS TO MY MASTER. 139 
 
 I. 
 
 LOVE. 
 
 Because I love thee, and my love must speak, 
 
 As thou must sing from sheer necessity, 
 
 For this I sought thee, but I did not seek 
 
 Speech for love's self, which as eternity 
 
 Is voiceless, and its secret words would hide 
 
 Yet deeper ; children on the ocean shore 
 
 Whose little feet play in the summer tide, 
 
 Of the sea's boundless passion, could tell more : 
 
 Love cannot speak of love, but still must yearn 
 
 'Gainst silence and seek utterance by some phase 
 
 Or mode of loving that it may attain 
 
 Speech with its loved and access in far days. 
 
 Thus I stretch hands across this waste to thee 
 
 And strain for speech, but love is dumb in me.
 
 140 SONNETS TO MY MASTER. 
 
 II. 
 SEPARATION. 
 
 A CHILD I wandered often at thy side, 
 Drawn by thy song as sea-birds by the sea, 
 Drawn more by some mysterious charm in thee, 
 And thou wouldst take mine hand nor ever chide, 
 But thine high solitude with me divide. 
 Thrice swallows built, and learning at thy knee 
 The child's young heart grew great with love in me, 
 And as a child's with love was satisfied ; 
 It knew thee not, but with the passing years 
 Childhood slipped past, and love with deeper eyes 
 Saw clearer, and the young heart understood ; 
 So I have craved for this and have no tears, 
 The hour which parts us shall immortalize 
 The singer and his song how God is good.
 
 SONNETS TO MY MASTER. 141 
 
 III. 
 
 HOMAGE. 
 
 VOICELESS, I tender thee an unpenned scroll, 
 Beyond all written words and spoken speech, 
 Beyond the power of all the Arts to reach 
 Is the unlanguaged homage which my soul 
 Offers, as at some altar, unto thine. 
 I thought to praise thee, but behold, I stand 
 Dumb, and the pen drops useless from my hand. 
 A seer of God thou shew'st the light divine, 
 My Master, by thine own light, unawares, 
 And these dim eyes that else had seen it not 
 Can thank thee, as thou knowest but by tears, 
 Tears smitten sweet from night as day appears 
 And wrung out bitter for the stain and spot 
 And darkness that the deepening splendour bares.
 
 SONNETS TO MY MASTER. 
 
 IV. 
 
 MISUNDERSTOOD. 
 
 " DISTANT from me, yet never from mine heart 
 
 Removed ; in evil days as late in good, 
 
 By many newer friends misunderstood 
 
 I seek the years ere space held us apart 
 
 And the young soul which loved me and my art." 
 
 Thou writest to me thus in some sad mood 
 
 Some hour of darkness, when the poet's rood 
 
 Is heavy on thee, when the sting and smart 
 
 Of the thorn-crown hath pierced unto thine heart ; 
 
 And I, for tears, scarce see the tender words, 
 
 For sorrow of thy sorrow scarce rejoice 
 
 In thy renown, but love gives me no voice 
 
 To call thee back, its bitter silence girds 
 
 Me round from speech, for thus thou winn'st the goal.
 
 SONNETS TO MY MASTER. 143 
 
 V. 
 
 WOMANHOOD. 
 
 FIVE years, my Master, as five golden sheaves 
 Stand gathered in the harvest-field of Time 
 Since we were wont in autumn days to climb 
 These wooded hills and watch the waning leaves 
 Drift on the wind as dreams that Fancy weaves, 
 Down where the ripe corn rang a magic chime 
 And poppies danced as to some merry rhyme. 
 The child is grown a woman, and that grieves 
 Thine heart afar with sense of change in me ; 
 Nay, think not thus, in sweet days ere those years 
 The singer held the child's hand as he sang ; 
 Still hold my hand, spare the child's heart this pang, 
 For as the soul to that it most reveres 
 Is evermore a child so I to thee.
 
 144 SONNETS TO MY MASTER. 
 
 VI. 
 
 SONG. 
 
 THE sea's song and the wind's song and the song 
 
 Of stream and river, wandering bee and bird, 
 
 Within thy single song are borne along 
 
 As all sweet words are borne in one sole word, 
 
 Yet is the song a song beyond all these 
 
 As is the word beyond all sweetest words. 
 
 Thy voice from mortal bonds the spirit frees, 
 
 And by its deep melodious cadence girds 
 
 All human things with the divine ; through it 
 
 An incommunicable music thrills, 
 
 And the far murmur of love's infinite, 
 
 Its rhythmic rise and fall, its pauses fills. 
 
 I cease, for speech can name thy song to thee 
 
 But as the frailest shell may name the sea.
 
 SONNETS TO MY MASTER. " 145 
 
 VII. 
 
 FAILURE. 
 
 STUNG to the quick, o'erwrought and overworn, 
 Thou speak'st of failure yes, I understand 
 Thy whole soul burning with its fiery scorn 
 Of littleness and evil in the land, 
 Zealous for love and passionate 'gainst wrong 
 Thou singest and men listen ; unto them 
 Thou art as one who sings a lovely song, 
 Whose burden they pass lightly or condemn ; 
 Thus there seems failure and the bays stab deep 
 As wreathen thorns ; thy grief is doubly mine, 
 But well thou knowest on the stony steep 
 The seed springs first ; I wait the fruit of thine, 
 For revolutions, by the world unsought, 
 Through single-handed genius are wrought.
 
 146 SONNETS TO MY MASTER. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 SPEECH. 
 
 Too long I sit with silence here alone, 
 As the sea-bird holds converse with the sea 
 By virtue of the life born from its own, 
 Beloved, my Master, I would speak with thee. 
 As the sea's life encircles and transcends 
 The bird's life so thy life this life of mine 
 Yet born of thee its lesser comprehends 
 Thy greater, and by birth my spirit thine. 
 Stoop down and hear me, once more take my hand 
 As in the old days when our words had wings ; 
 Stoop down, speak to me, I shall understand, 
 This silence is too bitter, naught now brings 
 The voice I crave for, as the sea-bird craves, 
 Driven inland, for the music of the waves.
 
 SONNETS TO MY MASTER. 147 
 
 IX. 
 
 THANKS. 
 
 LONG I have striven to thank thee, striven in vain ; 
 
 I seek no more for words that will not come, 
 
 Too well thou knowest though for speech they strive 
 
 The deepest passions of the soul are dumb ; 
 
 And could I thank thee words would but profane 
 
 A debt unreachable by aught of mine, 
 
 By life, by love, by all these may attain, 
 
 Though they unto the uttermost are thine : 
 
 I stand before thee mute, thou canst not tell 
 
 How my whole soul is surging (as a sea 
 
 At strife 'gainst adverse winds will surge and swell,) 
 
 With its unspoken gratitude to thee. 
 
 Oh, let my silence, silence quick with pain 
 
 Speak as the hush beneath the storm-filled main.
 
 148 SONNETS TO MY MASTER. 
 
 X. 
 
 MUSIC. 
 
 "AND when the evil spirit came on Saul, 
 
 The son of Jesse took a harp and played : " 
 
 Before a mist of tears the letters fade, 
 
 I read no more, again I see it all ; 
 
 See it but as in dream, the hand is thine 
 
 That from the harp, my Master, wins such strains 
 
 As must have soothed a whole world's soothless pains, 
 
 And drawn the darkest fiend to the divine ; 
 
 The hand, the harp are thine, the poet-soul ; 
 
 The evil spirit rageth fierce in me 
 
 As a wild storm within a midnight sea ; 
 
 But as thou playest, lo, the waters roll 
 
 Calmed in the dawn, the swollen tide sinks fast 
 
 The storm is over and the darkness past.
 
 SONNETS TO MY MASTER. 149 
 
 XL 
 
 COUNSEL. 
 
 WHAT words of mine can bear thee my reply ? 
 
 I am not worthy even to unloose 
 
 The latchet of thy shoe, how then should I 
 
 Give as thou askest counsel for thy use ? 
 
 Doth Nature seek for guidance from the flower 
 
 Or any sun from its encircling star 
 
 Or Time from any year or day or hour ? 
 
 Nay, this is never and behold as far 
 
 As these apart are we ; I can but give 
 
 That which is thine, teach me that I should say 
 
 For by thy counsel I have lived and live, 
 
 Nor fear its issues even for this day ; 
 
 1 have no lightest doubt, whate'er it be, 
 
 But am content to trust it, e'en for thee.
 
 150 SONNETS TO MY MASTER. 
 
 XII. 
 
 ATTAINED. 
 
 Now at the last, my Poet, through the land 
 
 Men wreathe for thee the laurel and the bay ; 
 
 The dawn is flooded with the sun-filled day, 
 
 Men hear the song I heard and understand. 
 
 How I have looked for this, the child's young hand 
 
 And the child's voice (which thou wouldst oft gainsay) 
 
 Were as the seer's when Saul stood in the way 
 
 Crowned king to be by all the tribes' demand ; 
 
 Crowned poet thou by all the people's choice, 
 
 Far off I lay these laurels at thy feet 
 
 And listen as of old unto thy lyre, 
 
 While songs new-quickened thrill thy soul as fire. 
 
 Now, at the last, hope and fruition meet, 
 
 I (as the Bridegroom's friend) at last rejoice. 
 
 PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES. 
 
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 PRINTED IN U.S A.
 
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