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POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 REGINALD C. ROBBINS 
 
 CAMBRIDGE 
 
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 191; 
 
COPVKIGHT, IQI7, U\ KEGINALD CHAUNCEY KOBBINS 
 
 ALL KIGHTS REbEKVED 
 
 ©01.^576016 
 
 A'ju Id ll'fiO 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Page 
 
 OCEANICS I 
 
 I-XVI 
 
 POEMS OF THE UPLANDS 19 
 
 I-XXII 
 
 POEMS OF A WATCH-NIGHT 43 
 
 I-XIX 
 
 WORK AND ART 65 
 
 I-XXVI 
 
 THE WORLD AT WAR 93 
 
 I-XVII 
 ELEMENTALS 113 
 
 I-XII 
 
 POEMS OF A PESSIMISM 127 
 
 1-XXI 
 
 PROPHETICS , 151 
 
 I-XII 
 
 THE SONNETS 165 
 
 M-LI 
 
OCEANICS 
 
OCEANICS 
 
 I 
 
 Beloved, with those who to the sea in ships 
 Go down, have we and friends of the spirit twain 
 Dwelt; and to element consign'd our souls 
 In cargo perilous: adventure sweet! 
 The splendors of the morning have been ours 
 And the bright noon; or evening gloriously 
 Hath left us to the guardianship of stars. 
 And clouds over our heads have gone and come 
 And mists enshrouding sea or sky; the winds 
 Have to our sails lent power and, passing by, 
 Whisper'd of farthest spaces. And lithe waves 
 Have leapt and flung upon us in wild play. ' 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 II 
 
 The elemental intercourse hath been 
 Profound, heart-immanent. As wandering birds 
 Have our souls wing'd a widening way within 
 What stream of the air, what fluent whim of the sea 
 Might moon or sun resolve. And we have been. 
 Like birds or verily like our swift ship, 
 Supported, saturatingly sustain'd 
 From turmoil of the continental years 
 By these free hours, these mild and eloquent 
 Teachings of calm and storm, the primal dream 
 Of whole and firmamental ambience 
 Cosmic in agitation as in sleep. 
 
OCEAN I CS 
 
 III 
 
 'T WERE well, in sooth, that something of the strength 
 
 Of ocean in us be by ocean-wrath, 
 
 A cosmism by the cosmic agitance. 
 
 Aroused to battle as in joyousness 
 
 With bolt of death delirant blindingly 
 
 In the howl and sweep of tempest! For by storm 
 
 Sudden, nigh overwhelming in surprise 
 
 Were we assaulted. Though the billowy blast. 
 
 In equanimity by will sustained, 
 
 But blared in supreme emphasis the truth 
 
 Of sea-spirit in us; soul-alarged from tasks 
 
 Earth-stint in crude cross-purpose among men. 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 IV 
 
 For we are wearied through the days and nights 
 
 With dusts and fiery heats of citied strife; 
 
 Nay, even, with the ceaseless strain, the tax 
 
 Toward food-support in exploitation harsh 
 
 Of the weaklier energies, the vegetant. 
 
 Enforced and spoil'd to yield us livelihead. 
 
 But here of the ocean dwelt we without griefs 
 
 Of man despoiler nor of man self-spoil'd. 
 
 Here dwelt we childly; rigorously assail'd 
 
 (As told) of tempests, warn'd of the spume-thresh'd 
 
 shoals 
 Indeed, yet heedless of a doom's distress. 
 Adrift in mood harmonic momently. 
 
OCEANICS 
 
 And song belike unto the song of the sea, 
 Response anthemic to the voice of winds 
 Was not without wild birth under the sun; 
 Some auspice of the best that is in man 
 Pervading spaces of the nearer air. 
 Ay, whithersoever the sun-stream sped us on, 
 The tongue surrounding of an half-uncouth, 
 Yet none less meaningful, gale-vigorous voice 
 Of gulls in keen vocation — creatures, though 
 At spoliation of a flote untill'd, 
 Yet tuneful; as within the spirits of us. 
 Though men, were melodies evoked thereby. 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 VI 
 
 That therefore, as we stoutly tower'd along 
 
 Breasting the surge, else lazily at poise 
 
 In calm smooth-hyaline entranced lay-by, 
 
 A finer venture of the muted word 
 
 Was daily, hourly dream'd upon the air: 
 
 That in our hearts men's song in ships went down 
 
 Unto the sea and wing'd over its ways; 
 
 That in the splendors of the morning and 
 
 The wonder of bright noon, the brilliant hues 
 
 Of evening and the sparkling sooth of stars 
 
 Were thought-tunes saturate, symphoniously 
 
 With tones prismatic of the ocean-scene. 
 
OCEAN I CS 
 
 VII 
 
 I WOT not there be any mutual feel 
 Betwixt the high-screaming sea-bird and the sea, 
 Nor 'twixt the tenor of her shrill tongue and men's 
 Attuned entrancement as we yearn therewith 
 Any exchange of intercourse. For we 
 Are to the white gull what for ocean were 
 Her seeming sea-voice — all-misunderstood, 
 Untaken still though neighboring. But both 
 Might unto us be meaningful; mind's singing 
 And the quaint bird-call both within our heed 
 Of the mighty sea-scene entering-in and making 
 The very wave a felt tone-fundament. 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 VIII 
 
 And so the oceanic poetry 
 
 Beneath the breath of the listening spirit leaps 
 
 As no wide sea unaided of the sense 
 
 Intensive of humanity might sing: 
 
 An human song yet ocean-poetry 
 
 Beyond or bird or ocean! For we know 
 
 And feel the ocean-aboriginal, 
 
 The matrix-hood, primordial potency 
 
 Of the molten firmament whereof the land 
 
 Was founded and wherefrom the earths emerged. 
 
 And in the thought we praise the primal things 
 
 With reverence, sense of their progeniture. 
 
 lO 
 
OCEAN I CS 
 
 IX 
 
 A SENSE unguess'd save to the human word. 
 
 For waves, I ween, 'neath heaven are agitant 
 
 Now mainly as in aeons overgone, 
 
 Regardless, unsuspecting of the truth 
 
 That thwart their breathings, traversing their foams, 
 
 Are keels undream'd then when themselves were 
 
 young; 
 And poetry imported from beyond 
 All cosmic unctions and all ken of these, 
 Interpreting, unsensed of the glaucous spume, 
 The universal yearnings. Though the seas 
 Lift to subside, we feel the buoyancy 
 As of the spirit-onlift everywhile. 
 
 II 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 X 
 
 EvERYWHiLE, everywhither of the truth 
 
 Of unions differential: now no more 
 
 The weltering of an undistinguish'd rout 
 
 Of atoms putative (an any be 
 
 In the world so indistinctive?) but, beyond 
 
 All principle of sea-conglomerance, 
 
 The faith-discernment (if yet seminally 
 
 Ta'en of the wave, just thus) in nobler guise 
 
 Allow'd of the comprehending sympathy. 
 
 The foresights and the memories of growth 
 
 Which float in the keel; which, going down in ships, 
 
 Commit us to the seas not wantonly. 
 
 12 
 
OCEANICS 
 
 XI 
 
 For, though we cast upon a bosom unmoved 
 Of manhood-care the cares of our land-creeds, 
 And though the shores receding fade and sink 
 From least of guidance, yet with purpose set 
 And course determined seek we sanities 
 In understanding of the inchoate mood 
 And ancient welter. For, whilst none attain 
 (Save an by self-denied intention still !) 
 Yet all our ways horizonward intend. 
 And we are reason'd in a cosmic sort, 
 Foresighted in an oceanic kind 
 Unlike a land-creed — bournless willfully. 
 
 13 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 XII 
 
 Ay, though 't were by the creed-competitive, 
 
 The common-seeking as in rivalry 
 
 Of ends not universal, hence unfit 
 
 For the general partition, that the world 
 
 May sheerly seem to wax in world-support; 
 
 And though the cross-purpose, let us frankly yield. 
 
 Be crude material to soul's industry; 
 
 Yet is our reason inly reasonable, 
 
 The spirit actual, only by the feel 
 
 Of generous furtherance: each aim for each 
 
 Mainly evaluable in the worth 
 
 Of sympathies intuitive therethrough. 
 
 U 
 
OCEAN I CS 
 
 XIII 
 
 For such the understanding modernly 
 
 Of us who down unto the sea in ships 
 
 Take passage — as the winds and white sea-birds 
 
 Perchance, yea, also as the poet-gods, 
 
 Appreciators in a psychic course 
 
 Of the infinite recession of the cirque. 
 
 The bournlessness of men's horizon-bound. 
 
 We are not aimless as the sea-waves seem. 
 
 But splendid in the intimate resolve 
 
 To be by the sea-waves toss'd and flung at heaven, 
 
 To be by the universal flote enarm'd 
 
 In flux unending, elementalwise. 
 
 15 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 XIV 
 
 For thus the insight, thus the power to be 
 Afresh the poet of the human aim, 
 The singer of the lordHer-defined 
 Than merely human, overhumanly 
 Orbic-conceived, acceptance of the way 
 Made rich in sympathy, in mutual trust 
 Furthering the over-ocean of the mind, 
 The heart love-rational of thee-and-me; 
 And these who lately in our lives are link'd 
 To comprehend the deeplier by the dwelling 
 With them the while within the world of those 
 Who in swift ships to the firmament go down. - 
 
 i6 
 
OCEAN I CS 
 
 XV 
 
 One sea is in our music whilst we four, 
 Four-set to the polar lode, in symphony 
 Of divers mutual motives waft along 
 The wonder-stream of wave and atmosphere; 
 One artist-motive to the weltering of 
 Primordial unmeaning. And the concave 
 Of the ambient horizon opening wide 
 Or rounding close as clouds or sea-mists will, 
 Seems resonant, self-utterance of the soul 
 Appreciant, creative boundlessly — 
 Not aimless, sith intention'd: humanwise 
 The sea-bird in the spirit circling high. 
 
 17 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 XVI 
 
 Ah! unto morning mount we, circling there 
 Aloft 'mid roseate-flush'd, engloried fogs 
 Prophetic of the sun-burst. And through noon 
 Sweep we the flood of the ray-stream breasting large 
 The salt-sweet saturation. And with eve 
 Sink we perchance, the gilded plume-sheen shent. 
 To a brooding eye-upturn'd toward the stars 
 That watch and wait. And, with the paling east, 
 Aleap from the wanton undulance of sleep 
 Phosphoric-dark, aleap we lift descrying 
 The signals of the day; and daily praise 
 Sun-paramount, with him gyral anew! 
 
 18 
 
POEMS OF THE UPLANDS 
 
POEMS OF THE UPLANDS 
 
 I 
 
 Again unto the hills we here are come 
 With hopes of help and health, we anxious pair. 
 Watching the workings of the potency 
 Of heavenward heights upon the pallid brow 
 And weakling frame of him our heritant ; 
 A brow less pallid and a frame more strong 
 With every hour of upland-open breath — 
 That we, as erst, are happy (and he, our joy) 
 Who had been fearful of the fever-stroke 
 That fell. And now is every morn more blithe; 
 By neighborhood of these ennobling hills 
 Ennobled in beneficence to men. 
 
 21 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 II 
 
 For from the mind's beginning have the hills 
 Enfranchised our hurnanity and bred. 
 Catholic thus in generosity, 
 A race beyond all import of their own; 
 Have foster'd in a breed they could not ken 
 The high hill-quality, the mountain-mood 
 Of uplift and of outlook with benign 
 All-abnegation in their bravery: 
 A boon tremendous, cooling with their crags 
 Of undemanding eminence the close 
 Of craven, hot desire within the brain 
 And making man a strong serenity. 
 
 22 
 
POEMS OF THE UPLANDS 
 
 III 
 
 Fain were we lowland creatures, save the hills 
 So taught almightiness in sacrifice: 
 Relinquishment of ancient fiercenesses 
 'Mid venomous miasmas sweat-oppress'd 
 And as with hates reptiHan instinct; 
 Attainment of innocuous far-seeing. 
 Fain were we too-insistent, zealous-keen 
 Destroying as we might the truth of who 
 Run traverse to our crudity. But these 
 Omnipotently uninsistent heights 
 Rebuke by meek example unaware 
 Our infamy of selfishness unseen. — 
 
 23 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 IV 
 
 Again unto the hills as anciently 
 
 The psalmist; as in mine own infanthood 
 
 The generation of my parentage 
 
 Stood, father then and mother unto me 
 
 As I may humbly recollect it now, 
 
 Happy in self-effacement and the sight 
 
 As of incipience of the mountain-mood 
 
 In him their weakling from the fever'd shores 
 
 Of pressured breaths and burnings of the brain! 
 
 I mind me of these mountains in those days 
 
 Working their own wise ways upon us then. 
 
 The help and health and high hill-quality. 
 
 24 
 
POEMS OF THE UPLANDS 
 
 'T IS sad, the recollection. For they learn'd, 
 My father and my mother, learn'd so well 
 Of these high monitors (and of themselves 
 By spiritual splendor!) how to leave 
 The memory of wise beneficence 
 In firm self-abnegation whilst they sought 
 Mine all-too-lowland instinct to imbue 
 With eminence to match the morbid zeal • 
 Of one for whom no heaven-establish'd truth 
 Were sacred to a question nor the wish 
 Of wisdoms other than an own allow'd 
 Their benefit of beauty — half in vain! 
 
 25 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 VI 
 
 For I am half but heart-inhuman still. 
 Fervid and fever'd with the lust of self 
 In too-insistent dogma; and have need 
 Of generous acquirement, the grasp, 
 Within mine own opinion, of that faith 
 And certainty, the personal-sincere 
 Inherent to the wisest or the worst 
 .Of other men for practice as belief. 
 I learn'd not wholly of these hills the way 
 Of uninsistent insight, estimate 
 /Esthetic in allowance of the truth 
 Of other truths and their nobility. 
 
 26 
 
POEMS OF THE UPLANDS 
 
 VII 
 
 I MEAN not any doctrine that the truth . 
 
 (Being constitute as truth best by belief) 
 
 Bears no distinction of a true-from-false — 
 
 For such were chaos-come, not ordering 
 
 In cosmos of a system spiritual. 
 
 I mean that, as the sense of true and false 
 
 Elaborates in fluxions cumulant. 
 
 Not 'falsity' for other men's beliefs 
 
 But 'other's-truth' best names and best maintains 
 
 For foil of ultimate dogma all the heart 
 
 May feel else meaningful, the metaphor 
 
 And sign, vicariously yet one's own. 
 
 27 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 VIII 
 
 For thus the manifold meanings of a world 
 
 (Which, hark ye! speak to the child with faery-tongue 
 
 Of mountain, flower or bird), the moods of men 
 
 (Of hearts not merely mock'd or miming here) 
 
 Have inwardness, a self-sincerity 
 
 Of psychic realism, sacred so. 
 
 In which the grades of true-and-false have each 
 
 A fundament-position, personism 
 
 Outreaching, intropenetrant; each fact, 
 
 Faith-standing. To avow mere false or true 
 
 Rejective and adoptive to a choice 
 
 Were somewhat; but to base in both, were best. 
 
 28 
 
POEMS OF THE UPLANDS 
 
 IX 
 
 Whereby the very dogma may conclude 
 
 Projectivewise an immanence of earth 
 
 Germane unto achievement and itself 
 
 In inmost operation mould awide 
 
 A world within the working; that the way 
 
 Of truth-belief and labor for the right 
 
 Be mutual-artistry, a plasticism 
 
 Of mode-creation intracommunal; 
 
 And earth be animate and founded fresh 
 
 With every utterance; whilst reverend, 
 
 Old wisdoms recrudescent lead us on 
 
 In sympathy to creeds they ne'er may know. 
 
 29 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 X 
 
 HowBEiT, 1 have labor'd. As a man 
 
 Climbing these huge rock-shouiders or along 
 
 The rugged, upward ridges clambering 
 
 Have I essay'd the spiritual task, 
 
 The lesson of the ages in the hour, 
 
 The reverence for attainment obsolete 
 
 Sith ne'er to be repeated. I have sought 
 
 A method in a felt sublimity 
 
 Through person'd reproduction of the past 
 
 Not as a past but as the thought and tongue 
 
 Poetwise, wonder-thrill'd of ancientry 
 
 While yet mine own along the ways new-hewn. 
 
 30 
 
POEMS OF THE UPLANDS 
 
 Along the ways new-hewn, in sage respect 
 
 For forest and the primitive therein 
 
 Approven human in the passioning 
 
 Of grave enthusiasms ! I have sought 
 
 And somewhat found the fraught acknowledgment 
 
 /Esthetic and the rapture of sun-song 
 
 Skyward if haply in and through the cry 
 
 Of lowlandhood, self's rude insistencies 
 
 Within and far beneath it. Such a task 
 
 Hath been mine. And the failure half-way shown. 
 
 The falling groundward in the vale from faith, 
 
 Hath been no fault of love's ensample set. 
 
 31 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 XII 
 
 So love's ensample set hath led us back, 
 
 Led us with him our heart-hope-heritor, 
 
 To ways of wonder-hewn sublimity. 
 
 The hills whence cometh help. And hope have we 
 
 Not solely in assurance to ourselves 
 
 That earth hath high ideal; but for him 
 
 In wish that deep within the boyhood heart 
 
 A vision of the mild almightiness, 
 
 The unassuming grandeur, enter in 
 
 To plead regeneration, silent-kind 
 
 Assoil the man-acquisitiveness, make 
 
 Our son a splendor art-creatingly. 
 
 32 
 
POEMS OF THE UPLANDS 
 
 XIII 
 
 For, were the grandeur of the hills in him. 
 Their uninsistent fostering of soul. 
 Of outlook and of inlook, sympathy 
 For sense of faith within the counter-faith 
 And sweetness of the creed-antiquity — 
 Then were the adolescence saved, by strength 
 Of wisdom-admiration, from a scorn 
 In misconception by a private truth, 
 Uncouthness of insistence passion-warp'd; 
 And manhood in him be as on the hills 
 The race of man hath been; firm, ay, and bold 
 But from all overbearingness restrain'd. 
 
 33 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 XIV 
 
 That pride and overbearingness yield place 
 
 (Still with inherent sight-capacity 
 
 To take of the world of men song-substance to him) — 
 
 Yield place, pray we — though needs must they take 
 
 root 
 And spring to potence in the first of youth — 
 Share space with counsels of a playful whim, 
 Babe-hints of artistry prefiguring 
 A grandeur in the man-maturity 
 Of elemental insight. And so now 
 Take we with thankfulness the fancy-tale 
 (Reporting falsely what the mountain saith 
 Or bird or flower) from the trifler-tongue ! 
 
 34 
 
POEMS OF THE UPLANDS 
 
 XV 
 
 And fill'd with tongue's beginnings of an art 
 
 Is every day the mouth-romance of him. 
 
 The speech of bird, the deed of bloom and leaf. 
 
 The neighbor-thought of mountain with the snows 
 
 Down-gazing, greeting morningly the day 
 
 Anew begun of their small visitant: 
 
 The friendliness and reasoning in things. 
 
 We welcome truthlessness for such a stage 
 
 As very man in ages of the race 
 
 Outlived, a faery-cycle epochwise; 
 
 With hope that truth will be to him at last 
 
 The plastic of an age-regenesis. 
 
 35 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 XVI 
 
 . For only he who babbleth sympathy 
 Through innocent pretense may, soul-mature, 
 Innocuously still project of self 
 A cosmos, cast foundations of a world 
 Godwise if all within the conscious rule 
 Of reverence and mountain-won respect 
 Toward weaker or toward wiser each alike 
 Its claim of true sincerity and sight. 
 The mountain-wisdom bases in our soul 
 An universalism, whilst the heart 
 From inmost of the maelstrom love-creates 
 The truth that is not to the mere mundane. 
 
 36 
 
POEMS OF THE UPLANDS 
 
 XVII 
 
 And Fancy thus, the finely false report 
 
 Of feelings, intuitions in the tongue 
 
 Of spirits not ourselves (these picture-tales 
 
 Of miracle figmental childishly) 
 
 Develops from beneath the mountain-wing 
 
 The strife-assertion, not for sheerly strife 
 
 And lust of the lowland power but, for dreams 
 
 Intuitive in falsity, therethrough 
 
 Ascribed to others for a living truth 
 
 (All-uncompetitive with selfhood's share 
 
 Because of the self of either heart the same) 
 
 Whilst yet the bird-in-me, yon bloom-of-mine. 
 
 37 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 XVIII 
 
 Be prosper'd, then, in elemental awe, 
 
 Young fancy-falsifier of the fact ! 
 
 And fable innocent: The bird hath told 
 
 A name and calleth to me as I call; 
 
 And this fair flower hath smiled and nodded on me; 
 
 And yonder hill-snow greets me out of sleep 
 
 To morning momingly ! — Thy parents take 
 
 And these hill-wisdoms haply too would take 
 
 A promise of forbearance in the fib, 
 
 A prophecy of exercise of soul 
 
 Mountainlike as with furtherance of faiths 
 
 In world-hearts as some self-of-poethood. 
 
 38 
 
POEMS OF THE UPLANDS 
 
 XIX 
 
 A poethood! I marvel mine be weak 
 Who fend so fondly in me this, I yearn 
 That he should feel and friend in artistry. 
 I marvel 1 be weak, who feel behind 
 The place, the hour, how high a parentage 
 Of abnegation and of generous hope 
 To help me upward of the mountain-way — 
 Who now am holpen also of the hills 
 With him to hope-for and with her to prove 
 A presence absolute of world-within- 
 My-spirit as of self creatively 
 Projective in eternal genesis. 
 
 39 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 XX 
 
 O MOUNTAINS, that your aid should be at loss 
 
 (Ah, shame for him who must the fault avow!) 
 
 To lift the spirit unto beauty-truth 
 
 In utter'd artistry, the singing-troth 
 
 Of earth-assurance in a genesis 
 
 Catholic, elemental as your ways 
 
 Of abnegation in almightiness! 
 
 Ah me! that perfect mutuality 
 
 Betwixt me and the partner of mine house 
 
 Should want of spirit-progeny, intense 
 
 By self-won certainty whilst wide and free 
 
 Of the motion and the music cosmical! 
 
 40 
 
POEMS OF THE UPLANDS 
 
 XXI 
 
 Yet so the song, in solemn abnegation 
 Of claim for inspiration in itself, 
 Renouncing aim of the founding now, anon, 
 A world anew, nathless to him may turn 
 In hope of future coming unto voice, 
 A song-birth posthumous, vicarious 
 (Mountain-like so in inmost essence still) 
 From lips of the forest-hymning progeny, . 
 The fact-inventor of the faery-years, 
 Our child, as once was I the child-in-hope 
 Of them who help'd me if but half in vain. 
 And thus the song hath splendor in itself. 
 
 41 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 XXII 
 
 And thus without too fraught a fever-shame 
 
 Within me, bide we by the tonic power 
 
 Of pine-bluffs and of rock-steep, clambering o'er 
 
 Their ruggedness to take of them an health 
 
 Both in our own new hearts by uplift there 
 
 And through the strength recover'd and the wisdom 
 
 Of him who fables of a faery earth. 
 
 The birds, the blossoms and the upland snows 
 
 Have speech by him and in his speech are born 
 
 Unto the human in us that is child; 
 
 Whilst also is our whole humanity 
 
 Hill-nobled; and for him our hope sublime. 
 
 42 
 
POEMS OF A WATCH-NIGHT 
 
POEMS OF A WATCH-NIGHT 
 
 I 
 
 Sustain 'd at heart by hearing still of thee 
 Thy daily avocations and of him 
 The rumor in thy screed of every joy — 
 In kind as thou and he (thy love hath writ) 
 May without my companionship be glad 
 And busied, with unwonted friendships nigh 
 Or playmates other than accustom'd toys — 
 Sustain'd by knowledge in mine heart of you 
 Who are earth's dearest and the day to-come 
 Of your sweet home-return, I would not spoil 
 Thine hour of holiday by that complaint 
 Which lurks a little in my loneliness. 
 
 45 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 II 
 
 Beloved, I will o'er-brave it. But the fact 
 Of overt emptiness is wide about: 
 Thy chamber empty and the ingle-nook 
 Where guardian vestal with perpetual flame 
 Hath temper'd to her charge the frosts of earth 
 Within the infant-sanctuary. These 
 And all the chambers of an home unhearth'd 
 Are void. And void of sun or sun-steep'd snow 
 Dun lies the outdoor earth in m.ists congeal'd 
 A sullenness, unwitting of the hues 
 Companionable to our weeks of light 
 And love-time. But in hope 1 will be bold. 
 
 46 
 
POEMS OF A WATCH-NIGHT 
 
 HI 
 
 In waiting will I serve. But what of them 
 Whom expectation helps not; overposed 
 By all-disaster, in the shocks of death 
 Estranged beyond recognizance, for whom 
 The home-unhearth'd forever shall abide? 
 BelovM, ah! what of them, of thee or me 
 In case extreme of vacancy mundane, 
 The left-behind upon the void of life 
 With outlook undirected nor an hope? 
 Yet, as thy screed to-day, might haply gleam 
 Our love-remember'd and the unfading fact 
 Of mutual faithfulness while life had been. 
 
 47 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 IV 
 
 For, though the days were drear of old, brown earth 
 
 And mists were shrouding of the planet-corse. 
 
 Should somewhat of the memorable truth. 
 
 The beauty of this understanding peace 
 
 To-day, be underlain and soul-transfusing 
 
 With wonder of valuation still the world, 
 
 Because of what had been, which here and now 
 
 Foresees, anticipates and so lives-down 
 
 The epoch otherwise but desolate. 
 
 And so, or quick or dead, we twain have strength 
 
 Of worth somewise eternal ; and a will 
 
 To face the world-fate, being whole therewith. 
 
 48 
 
POEMS OF A WATCH-NIGHT 
 
 And therefore, though with death, can there befall 
 
 To souls hearth-faithful not the heart-exile. 
 
 For we within possess the seed-of-worth. 
 
 The mutual recognition world-about 
 
 Of thee by me (as my truth else by thee) 
 
 For personable, by a pact unique 
 
 Exhibiting in paradigm to each 
 
 The very type and acme of the good 
 
 Which houseth all, which makes of life, though death 
 
 Environ and be of the stuff thereof, 
 
 A cherishment, an home and native place 
 
 Which heart-in-heart may humanly provide. 
 
 49 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 VI 
 
 An overwealth of hearthship, which the rule 
 
 But sole of insight and the accrediting 
 
 Of spiritual warmth may warranty; 
 
 Where otherwise were dearth, unestimate 
 
 In judgment of fact-nature — which indeed 
 
 Love-cognizance alone may truth-inspire! 
 
 I love thee and shall love and dwell within 
 
 A worth-criterion, an homelihood 
 
 Though thou to thrive the world might ne'er return 
 
 Who else were capable of little wisdom 
 
 Anent an earth though fairy-fine trick'd-out 
 
 And prevalent by every spring-pretence. 
 
 50 
 
POEMS OF A WATCH-NIGHT 
 
 vn 
 
 Beloved, the bud and blossom of an earth 
 
 Had meant to me how niggardly, far less 
 
 In wealth than this wan mist-time, had I held 
 
 No premonition and no clue to thee 
 
 The fervor of thy hearth-faith ! Yet thou earnest 
 
 Amply fulfilling (if fulfilling still) 
 
 The poet-expectation from the first — 
 
 If more than merely as 1 yearn'd for thee 
 
 In prophecy, yet of heart-yearningness 
 
 Fair apposite and archetype; that youth 
 
 Learn'd best its own high hope, maturing with thee. 
 
 And now thy child is as a second spring. 
 
 51 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 VIII 
 
 A SECOND spring by this, that in the house 
 
 Of marvel-valuation, love for love. 
 
 Shall earth a budding worth to that shy ken 
 
 Acquire and life be May-time; even as now 
 
 Unto our eyes half-aged yet the child 
 
 Contributes youth not solely as by sight 
 
 And sound to year-dull'd lymphs acoustical — 
 
 Ah, not to these alone but to a power 
 
 Within us of a sense-resilience, 
 
 A blithe resurgence, child-worth cosmical. 
 
 Inventive of the very infanthood 
 
 Its child-world: hour by hour, an archetype. 
 
 52 
 
POEMS OF A WATCH-NIGHT 
 
 IX 
 
 And so, beloved, how blessed is the birth 
 
 Of childhood, an from mutuality 
 
 Like thine and mine it leapeth, ready-born 
 
 Unto a spring-world (though earth-mists be wan) 
 
 Of vivid valuation, conscienced worth. 
 
 At will which apprehends in beauty-thrill 
 
 The least incipience of a person'd power! 
 
 I doubt me, were so innocent a thing 
 
 Presented to a solitary source 
 
 Which carried ne'er, within, love's master-mood 
 
 Of estimation all-intuitive — 
 
 I doubt me, scarce were infancy a soul! 
 
 53 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 For how might such youth take or life-source yield 
 
 (And thus in yielding earn unto oneself) 
 
 The intimate wardship of the innocent 
 
 Who owe by no accomplishment appeal 
 
 Nor claim respect by any strength of truth? 
 
 They are but as expectancy, an hope 
 
 For somewhat which, sans parent-sense of soul 
 
 Intuitive afforded best by love. 
 
 Were nought, no goal, no brave entelechy 
 
 To claim life-recognition — that my son, 
 
 Were he not son in virtue best of thee 
 
 Within me, ne'er had sensed a spiritual. 
 
 54 
 
POEMS OF A WATCH-NIGHT 
 
 XI 
 
 For well might man, a creature cognitive. 
 Perceive in all things but subservient use 
 Maybe, some hostile will-recalcitrance 
 Or plain indifference of the physic-fact 
 Supposed, nor realize in reality 
 For guerdon e'en of bare unignorance 
 And crass force-exploitation, spiritwise 
 Some modicum of grace intuitive. 
 Incipient understanding of the heart 
 For soul-projection comprehendingly; 
 Well might the manhood or the child alike 
 Miss self-avow'd world-ideality: 
 
 55 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 XII 
 
 Having, perchance, small love within himself. 
 How sad, had not a tenderness instinct 
 Already brimm'd within those starry eyes 
 Of his, which beam upon a beauty-world 
 Assured of interest and estimate 
 By intercourse wherein the hourly round 
 Hath sign of valuation, person'd proof 
 Of furtherance, heart-inference! And so. 
 Pity a world whose infancies had source 
 In physic-mating of the Science-State 
 And grew, cant creatures of a tyranny. 
 Stale-hearted to subserve an earth of waste. 
 
 56 
 
POEMS OF A WATCH-NIGHT 
 
 XIH 
 
 It were not, faith forbid! that child or man, 
 As though unsocial, should with unrestraint 
 Indulge a wandering and flexile lust 
 For first this toy and whimsy (be the toy 
 Or idol-wax or sentient womanhood) 
 And then on pretext of a soul at large 
 Cast over and betray the trust-enforced. 
 Nor should a fair consent half-palliate 
 The outrage on an object-dignity 
 Profaned in duplication. Spirit unique 
 Hath perfect social place: the world-of-love. 
 An universe each-individuate. 
 
 57 
 
POEMS DOiMESTIC 
 
 XIV 
 
 And so the social regulation holds 
 
 Of the manhood-play of potent parenthood 
 
 Its faithfulness to that wherein the being 
 
 Of love's life-partner most may hope to owe 
 
 Intrinsic world-proportion. If love's health 
 
 Require that infancy be physic-borne 
 
 Of noblest frame and bravest intellect. 
 
 Such strength of worldhood therein founds upon 
 
 The perfecting selection of the soul, 
 
 The insight of a value absolute 
 
 And undisplaceable; which at the worst 
 
 Compensates and suffices though we die. 
 
 ^S 
 
POEMS OF A WATCH-NIGHT 
 
 XV 
 
 Ay, what for gain or loss were posable. 
 
 Where value ultimate in furtherance 
 
 Of personal mutualisms were unknown 
 
 And only arid use-impanderings 
 
 To scarce-acknowledged lusts false-heartedly 
 
 Did unction at the burial of soul? 
 
 Ay, how were worth conserved where worth's high 
 
 source — 
 In individuation by a love, 
 Affording permeant criterion 
 For estimate in spirit of all things 
 (Their immanencies and their powers-of-art), 
 Unique — were heart-denied out of the earth? 
 
 59 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 XVI 
 
 For him, then, as for me hath been thy wonder 
 
 A wide-world opening and a freedom through 
 
 The universal home and fire-sweet hearth; 
 
 Thy chamber as the solar cradle-source 
 
 Of artist-immanence, a poetry 
 
 Based best in earth-avowal, in the bare 
 
 And dun-wan, lowly, mystic majesty 
 
 Of this chill season (seen as from within 
 
 The seed-sparks of earth's myriad ember-germs!); 
 
 Whilst thereby best in spirit contributive. 
 
 With power impregnate of the sympathy 
 
 Most highly human, cosmic of the man. 
 
 60 
 
POEMS OF A WATCH-NIGHT 
 
 XVH 
 
 Myself with new-found friends the year-end spent 
 
 In vigils of a poet-sympathy 
 
 And goodliest musics on the midnight pour'd; 
 
 New friends, of artist-insight Hke to thine 
 
 And kindliest married confidence. To them 
 
 Be humblest praise for outlook spiritual! — 
 
 But now, in home-return where home scarce seems 
 
 Were friendship-memories of scant avail, 
 
 A frame, a foil perchance for bitterness 
 
 Of this dark moment. If the song swell not 
 
 In celebration of such spirit-watch. 
 
 Be no ingratitude imputed for it ! 
 
 6i 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 XVIII 
 
 Ah, therefore, home! home! where the merely man 
 May hold thee and upon the upturn'd brow 
 Of him my spirit's son (being born of thee) 
 Imprint a benediction! Home! For death 
 Might any hour afford, to thee or me 
 Alike, what want of death-philosophizing 
 Which haply still might fail us at the need! 
 Thou, then, might'st read in such a case untoward, 
 This artship of thine inspiration, take 
 Therein some consolation plausibly 
 In here or there a love-light. Ah, but I 
 Who, having writ, might not aid find therein? 
 
 62 
 
POEMS OF A WATCH-NIGHT 
 
 XIX 
 
 Though would I not complain. For thou wilt come — 
 
 Despite this folly of a ranting flux 
 
 In fever-fond, frail volubility: 
 
 The self-indulgence of a waiting mood 
 
 Which merely wants thee, wants thee with the child 
 
 As formerly, yet would not scant the scope 
 
 One jot of your appointed liberties. 
 
 The dusk hath voice without. But I within 
 
 Have lit thy love upon our chamber-hearth 
 
 Of spirit and warm me by the ancient lamp 
 
 Of vestal oil; and send into the storm 
 
 This greeting from love's old to love's new year. 
 
 63 
 
WORK AND ART 
 
WORK AND ART 
 
 I 
 
 Beloved, our life hath special privilege 
 
 (And, praise be! special privilege of all 
 
 Who dwell with childhood, having insight of it!) 
 
 For which indeed a private gratitude. 
 
 In that our child alway exhibiteth 
 
 The natural childness of humanity. 
 
 We, gazing guardians, may haply fear 
 
 A future for him brief or sufferant 
 
 In body or in spirit; or we may dread 
 
 (Beyond these ills as hell were under earth) 
 
 Some yet unhinted ethic turpitude; 
 
 Or we may hope for strength to strengthen him 
 
 67 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 II 
 
 And in the strait way keep him; or the glory 
 
 Of souI-nobiHty see proved in him 
 
 By natural bent and beauty heart-inherent — 
 
 Who knoweth? And, o'sooth, the beauty of it, 
 
 An character accrue in evidence 
 
 Of moral apprehension, should itself 
 
 Be splendor of aesthetic immanency 
 
 To love's environment more fair, more true 
 
 Than aught else here in prospect or here sung. 
 
 And let there be within the expected years 
 
 What fate of fine or foolish, joy or grief 
 
 Need be! Our hearts shall face it and our wills 
 
 68 
 
WORK AND ART 
 
 in 
 
 Assist, as wisely as a liberal love 
 
 May feel and guide us to it, what of strength 
 
 In moral aptitude and appetite 
 
 Toward spiritual-won integrity 
 
 Should, to the adolescence of the soul 
 
 Within him, be in anywise attain'd — 
 
 We aiding as intelligence-of-love 
 
 And sympathy in soul-enthusiasm 
 
 May aid by human purpose. But, beside 
 
 The sense of hope and fear, the outlook and - 
 
 The will to foster in the highest, springs 
 
 A privilege, aesthetic stimulation 
 
 69 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 IV 
 
 Not heretofore by thee or me full-sung, 
 
 But meriting, for serious import. 
 
 The utmost of an art's imagining — 
 
 For reason that its very fact induceth 
 
 The artist-attitude, the poet-pulse 
 
 Within all ways of action-utterance! 
 
 The world, its business of our self-maintaining 
 
 By exploitations of environment. 
 
 The margin economic 'twixt the man 
 
 And molecule converted to his use 
 
 in furtherance anthropomorphic, this 
 
 World-way is too much with us; and must aye 
 
 70 
 
WORK AND ART 
 
 V 
 
 Too much detain man's forced attentiveness. 
 Alas! it were not that the miseries 
 Of poverty, the lacks of nourishment 
 Or warmth maybe, the suffering uncured 
 Of ills avoidable were negligible 
 Nor crying-out that each hand in degree 
 Of hand's capacity should lift the world 
 To hours of lesser hardship (but of this 
 More, more anon in terms of artist-help!); 
 Nor were it that the labor of the body 
 Bode of itself an evil anywise — 
 Unless o'er-labor vitiate the frame 
 
 71 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 VI 
 
 With weariness and with an heart-disgust 
 
 For life by reason of the task untoward. 
 
 No man need shame of labor; nor may zest 
 
 Toward economic betterments from heed 
 
 Of best nobility be anywise 
 
 Taboo'd; but rather were a daily task 
 
 (As task, of interest still but tentative) 
 
 An honor'd social perquisite sustaining 
 
 A sanity of fibre, body and soul. — 
 
 Yet this, by no means that the brute-bound thrust 
 
 Of hand or foot were better without brain; 
 
 Nor that laborious bulk of ignorant 
 
 72 
 
WORK AND ART 
 
 VII 
 
 Food-seeking were per se superior 
 To such intelligence of world-control 
 Which, howsoever selfish, yet may be 
 By foresight as by insight veritably 
 A world-beneficence because by wisdom 
 Of intricate other-purposes directed 
 To generosity in serving self 
 And realization of the super-self 
 Beyond horizon of the delving hand. — 
 But liefer, beloved, sith in just such task 
 (If mediative taken, zeal-relieved 
 From deadening absorption; quicken'd by 
 
 73 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 VIII 
 
 Infinity felt therein of inference 
 
 And all-assumption) may the task's own beauty 
 
 And wonder of purport penetrate the man — 
 
 And meanest world-requirements so feed 
 
 A splendor of the spiritual-world. 
 
 The universe-of-value which no use 
 
 Of exploitation toward a truth-without 
 
 (Conceived as other than that truth-of-task 
 
 Appreciable by the private heart) 
 
 Could innerly establish. So were labor 
 
 (And thus alone a glory spiritual 
 
 Rightly assertive) — so alone were labor 
 
 74 
 
WORK AND ART 
 
 IX 
 
 A PRIDE of human life and of its hire 
 High-worthy; otherwise, when wrath with sweat 
 Vies in an ill-contentment, wholly vile. 
 Unworthy of the dole that staves-off death — 
 An empty clamor, doubly pitiable. 
 The laborer's loud demand as though on earth 
 Were brute-borne thrust alone the gauge of merit 
 And wage the guerdon solely without shame! 
 Heed we and all men, love, that world's life-burden 
 Wax not too great; though, save the spirit be meek. 
 Were every task reluctant and no goal, 
 However set, so easy as would yield 
 
 75 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 X 
 
 To effort felt not too immoderate! 
 
 And thus were spirit rector at the last 
 
 'Soe'er we guide as by antagonism ! — 
 
 Thus, love, indeed were labor valuable 
 
 If just by some least world-consistency 
 
 Adumbrate there for hint of an all-thought 
 
 (A work-of-conscience cosmos-permeative), 
 
 In push and proved displacement of an earth — 
 
 Consistency, for subservience-to-soul 
 
 Beyond an earth's own ken though none less of it. 
 
 In mediation be the requisite 
 
 Replacement-struggle with environment, 
 
 76 
 
WORK AND ART 
 
 XI 
 
 Not solely for the body's sustenance 
 (Requisite though enough!) but, as a source 
 Of spirit-realization; that the use. 
 Conceived in sort as for the potence' sake 
 In posed accomplishment, incipiently 
 Achieve the implication in each act 
 Of worth-intrinsic as by utterance — 
 The use (for use-sake felt within the deed) 
 Providing, if but rudimentalwise. 
 Criterion beyond an use-bej^ond 
 And therefore differential from an art 
 (Of function for intrinsic functioning) 
 
 77 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 XII 
 
 Alone by some inadequacy yet 
 Entail'd of use' false-logic how a goal 
 Were inessential to the goal's-own means 
 Nor aspect of the fmitude-supposed. 
 But nathless, by the feel of inference 
 Within the means, may end-within-the-work 
 (Through universal implication) pose 
 An influence of worth intrinsical: 
 To render even labor's anti-art 
 An immanence, if embryonic, still 
 A promise of expression spiritual, 
 World-permutation though necessitate — 
 
 78 
 
WORK AND ART 
 
 XIII 
 
 And so serve artist-apprehension, love, 
 
 In right of practised understandingness. — 
 
 Sobeit with labor and the labor-need 
 
 Which needs affords foundation for a work 
 
 Not world-necessitated, save an world 
 
 Be featured orb-reflection of the soul 
 
 Which is world-apprehension actionally. 
 
 And now conceive what special privilege 
 
 Were childness-neighborhood — and this, without 
 
 Regard for pedagogic purpose nor 
 
 The crafts of guardianship; though with regard 
 
 Alone for lore beyond all craftsmanship 
 
 79 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 XIV 
 
 Save as ennobled in the lift of art. 
 Of work for utterance' sake, the making new 
 Of world and self alike in love's self-scheme 
 Wherein the counterwills of men and things 
 Contribute, not alone to variance sheer 
 Or competition each-oppositive 
 But, unto a composition overall! 
 And overall, scarce by an alien pact 
 Enforced upon a stiff reluctancy 
 Within the proper nature of earth-stuff 
 As though the human were inimical 
 And earth oppress'd by spirit but, beyond 
 
 80 
 
WORK AND ART 
 
 XV 
 
 Immediate nature of the plasmic stuff 
 Maybe yet, humanly imposed upon 
 A plasticism of entelechy 
 To work-of-reverence amenable 
 And influence of insight hospitable! 
 That therefore is the ordering overscheme. 
 Founded in apprehension of earth-truth, 
 An wholeness in and through polarities 
 By dint of comprehension — every fact 
 Concluded of the scheme affording proof 
 Thereby the richlier for diversity 
 Of spirit-won control. For so therein. 
 
 81 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 XVI 
 
 That spiritual dignity is shown. 
 Were all known items art-appropriate 
 E'en for the stimulations felt therethrough. 
 If but an uplift and a purport sane 
 Obtain in evident efficiency 
 As ordering-in-beauty. So, dear wife. 
 Are we, by daily intercourse with one 
 Whom burden of a world-necessity 
 Weighs not, at hourly obvious benefit 
 For vision of the vision of a play 
 Inly so free-constructive, outwardly 
 So amply adequate with means so weak 
 
 82 
 
WORK AND ART 
 
 XVII 
 
 Save as the little means with warrant large 
 Of privy connotation seem upborne 
 As by imaginations of a god — 
 Conceptions executed sans a source 
 Of socially agreed-on inferences 
 But rather with a provenance transmutive 
 From each to any as the humor moves 
 Of flexile self-projection. Dear, that thus 
 The fixture-meanings (meanings but in name) 
 Of daylight-dim environment acquire 
 A cordial and a curious valuation 
 In perspicacity of fresh conceit. 
 
 83 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 XVIII 
 
 That each seems in the course of evermore 
 
 A mutual genesis, creation-flux 
 
 Awide through myriad hitherto half-seen 
 
 Soul-plausibiHties! — The hour of play 
 
 In man's development; so vast a boon 
 
 Not only to the youth which may perchance 
 
 Endure, despite the oppression of the flesh, 
 
 E'en in maturity of poet-kind 
 
 But also, to the poethood discrown'd 
 
 Of us the onlookers; such hour of play 
 
 In him ere age-responsibilities 
 
 O'erwhelm: 't is this which unto all mankind, 
 
 84 
 
WORK AND ART 
 
 XIX 
 
 So forth as childness be of neighborhood, 
 
 Granteth an ultimate grace and privilege. 
 
 'T is true that, sans responsibility, 
 
 The art remains but playtime, socialized 
 
 In least degree and dealing seriously 
 
 With Httle but hope's whimsy; lusts, or fears 
 
 'Gainst abrogations, as of fancied facts 
 
 Or worthier arthoods of another's skill. 
 
 But, with responsibility, nowise 
 
 Need burden, flesh-reluctance, of the self 
 
 Creative from the hourly circumstance 
 
 Of cosmic counter-poise the poise o'erwhelm 
 
 85 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 XX 
 
 Of high self-exercise in utterance. 
 
 For only with responsibility 
 
 By social-inference of counter-will 
 
 Can insight of the other-self obtain 
 
 A method — and avoid the huge mistake 
 
 Whether of solipsistic lunacies 
 
 Or substitutions of the counter-self 
 
 Supposed (by mathematic formulism 
 
 Of object-fact for datum unitary 
 
 Proponed in lieu of tropism self-avow'd) 
 
 For self-approval of world's ways and means, 
 
 In wisdom and in pity-sympathy 
 
 86 
 
WORK AND ART 
 
 XXI 
 
 O'er-taken for the instruments of speech 
 Each in an order new and not its own: 
 Demonstrably both yet of self and world 
 Afresh defined for mutual-distinct — 
 A method in the building (from within 
 World-objectivity) conformably 
 To spirituality and thus to truth. 
 And else were art or as a calculus; 
 Or as a lax indulgence of the terms 
 Of sight and voice sans sanity innate — 
 Poor outcome of an utterance, ne'er so rich 
 In narrower self-assertions though its ranting 
 
 87 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 XXII 
 
 Ring unto eye and ear! But, with the assuming 
 
 Of star-borne intercourse and immanence 
 
 For basis of the industry of art, 
 
 May art, through just art's own salubrity, 
 
 Enhearten very world with artist-help. 
 
 An aid to labor by ensample yielden 
 
 Of labor in an overt lifting-love. 
 
 Of industry as universe-alive. 
 
 Vivid and open of entelechy 
 
 In action-soul concentred; that such art 
 
 Makes (without aim extrinsic, pedagogy 
 
 Nor propagandism any of a creed 
 
 88 
 
WORK AND ART 
 
 XXIII 
 
 However noble) a nobility 
 
 Effective for world-uplift, if alone 
 
 By so forswearing every use-beyond 
 
 The inward universe-of-utterance: 
 
 By esoteric poise all-dominant. 
 
 And thus the parent-part, in artistry. 
 
 May find perfected counsels influencing 
 
 The spirit-potency of him the child. 
 
 Not as by crafts of urgent guardianship 
 
 But, by due exercise of insight yielding 
 
 A source of apprehension in the highest. 
 
 For love-truth, wise respect betwixt the twain 
 
 89 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 XXIV 
 
 Though ne'er so infant he! — And therefore, love. 
 
 The recognition of the artist-truth 
 
 In things of childness, playtime as it be. 
 
 Yields privilege indeed though no release 
 
 From soul-maturity. The wonder of it 
 
 Is, scarce for imitation (that the heart 
 
 Should mouth awild !) but, for the liberation 
 
 From overweight of earth's necessity 
 
 By sign, howe'er half-crude in childishness. 
 
 Of reason'd possibility to move 
 
 Life by the utter'd insight of a truth 
 
 Amenable, and so compatible, 
 
 90 
 
WORK AND ART 
 
 XXV 
 
 Not with an order alien but, with powers 
 Autonomous of apprehensive zest 
 At permeation of the things perceived. 
 And thereupon this screed, scarce self-insane 
 Sith order'd of an insight of the truth 
 How labor were a life-necessity 
 And social-inference within the thought 
 The very stuff of art; though none the less, 
 For all its earnestness and intricacy 
 Of reason'd import, yet, a lyric mood 
 Akin to childness, in acknowledgment 
 Of playtime and art's infinite privilege 
 
 91 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 XXVI 
 
 Of innocent pretence. But such pretence, 
 O love, is that which, as 1 think of thee 
 Or picture him in every moment-mood. 
 Thrills with the sense of spirit-intimacy. 
 The entering-in and alway living-through 
 Thy beauty and his splendor as mine own — 
 These nowise thereby less the truth of him 
 Earth's bright, brave boyhood nor of motherhood 
 By any grief pervertive; that the task 
 Of this dim-searching, lorn necessity 
 Of utterance is as a morning smile 
 Greeting an art-eternal hour of play. 
 
 92 
 
THE WORLD AT WAR 
 
THE WORLD AT WAR 
 
 I 
 
 Beloved, this very earth of thee and me 
 Hath fallen on evil days: a suffering 
 Unprecedented sprung of furious hate; 
 A devastation and an holocaust; 
 Murder and rapine; treacheries and lies; 
 Old oaths forsworn and righteousness denied; 
 A creed of ruthless power; the right of might; 
 And proud contemning of the claims of love — 
 A world run mad and boasting of its sin 
 And crying out with pain and cursing peace; 
 A world in hell-fire verily! — And we 
 Loving and living: though with souls of shade! 
 
 95 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 II 
 
 The sun, morn after morn, yet riseth on us 
 To glad our souls of grief. But we, with eyes 
 Well-nigh tear-fill'd to take the splendor of it, 
 Aweep to feel the cosmos-undismay'd, 
 Turn to the daily task (we twain and he 
 The waxing childhood) as with confidence 
 Of infinite love and trust within our hearts 
 Either for either; though with intimate trust 
 In man's humanity, with confidence 
 In civilization's mighty moralism 
 Crush'd down from out the daily dreams of us 
 And nothing worthy-seeming that we do. 
 
 96 
 
THE WORLD AT WAR 
 
 III 
 
 For we are human with the worst of them; 
 Degraded and disgraced by battle-yell, 
 By treachery and lies and oaths forsworn. 
 The evil-boasting of our self-same earth, 
 The epoch which we dwell in. We are lost 
 In the labyrinth of wanton arrogance 
 And unmorality — the loves of us 
 Attainted in their hypercosmic source, 
 In civilization gone insane around us: 
 We feeling world-responsibility — 
 Whilst hating whomsoever upon earth 
 We hold responsible for hell-disgrace. 
 
 97 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 IV 
 
 Ay, hating; and desiring worst dismay. 
 Destruction utterly to them who seem 
 By arrogance, by pride and lust of power 
 With fatal-false philosophy of pain. 
 To have forced upon the world precipitate 
 A race-destruction! Sharing so too in sin 
 By being but in their image consecrate 
 To creeds of opposition! Through our love 
 Either for either (and our hope for him) 
 Hoping yet only, wrath and ruin to fall 
 On them of this hell-surfeit — we being so 
 A source at soul of that we most deplore! 
 
 98 
 
THE WORLD AT WAR 
 
 How doubly desolate! To feel our earth 
 
 Satanic to distraction; though, to join 
 
 Of inmost wish within the devihsh cirque, 
 
 Parties to every purposed violence. 
 
 To every harm and hurt within the world 
 
 Till that the instigators be subdued; 
 
 Acknowledging no hope of righteous peace 
 
 Before they be disabled! Ah! to know 
 
 The love of love, yet hate with strength thereby! 
 
 To loathe the life-destruction, yet call down 
 
 Annihilation on a kindred race 
 
 Rather than leave their evil unavenged! 
 
 99 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 VI 
 
 For this the misery is of men who meet 
 
 (And needs must meet) a foul aggression through 
 
 The weapons but of foul aggressiveness — 
 
 Where all else fails, where love or reasoning sane 
 
 Ahke are wasted on brutality! 
 
 And thus the very sense of outraged shame 
 
 Envenoms to the conscienced urgency 
 
 The self-betrayal; and heart-righteous wrath 
 
 Absolves not soul from self-abhorrence still. 
 
 Ah, love! to live in a world where merit holds 
 
 (High merit of home-defense) in bitter blood. 
 
 In slaughter ruthless countering the foe! 
 
 100 
 
THE WORLD AT WAR 
 
 VII 
 
 And nought can be of love or love-respect 
 Save amid rallied armaments together 
 Banded in forced barbarities! — The sun 
 Riseth indeed in overt undismay. 
 And sweet winds come and go, ay, whithersoever 
 They list to carry clouds along the blue. 
 And seasons pass. Earth's orbit undistraught 
 Wears on-and-over man's enormities. 
 But we, what of our prophecies, our faiths 
 Of brotherhood and mutual furtherance, 
 Our hopes of starry universalisms 
 Within the heart of individual man? 
 
 lOI 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 VIII 
 
 And if the solar peace-insistency 
 
 Of daily overflux be inly proved 
 
 An ignorance, an o'er-indifference 
 
 To men's concern; else, as a mask, but hiding 
 
 Infinities of strugglings self-contain'd 
 
 In entities too insignificant 
 
 For human apprehension; though be men 
 
 At war but as example atom-set 
 
 Bids to the issue — how might that preclude 
 
 An influence of anger in the mind 
 
 That man's iniquity should so ofl"end 
 
 The cosmic mysticism of the soul? 
 
 102 
 
THE WORLD AT WAR 
 
 IX 
 
 I GRANT, the silvery-shown indifference 
 
 To men's obliquity and helplessness 
 
 For proven; how the sun-white mists astream 
 
 Owe ignorance of any hint of sin 
 
 As of nobility. And yet no truth 
 
 Of atom-struggling, for a paradigm. 
 
 Obtains against a mind-morality 
 
 Which, in the physic all-concatenance 
 
 And systemization, hath an earnest still 
 
 However half-articulant — the dream 
 
 Of mutual helpfulness, the brotherhood 
 
 Of hand, the world-well-wishing in the heart. 
 
 103 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 X 
 
 Within the heart! Ah, mainly then in this 
 Might any hope be seen : that yet an heart 
 Of honor is in us, bettering the worst 
 Of pain's emergencies by far and wide 
 Such danger'd heroism, in direst strait 
 Such fix'd fideHty to comrade men, 
 To comrade heroes, worsted in the strife! 
 And what too hear we, 'neath the untiring sky. 
 Of nobleness in upHft to assist 
 The ruin'd under arrogance, the outraged 
 Of men's brutaHty to suage and soothe — 
 Man's impulse to atone the enmity? 
 
 104 
 
THE WORLD AT WAR 
 
 XI 
 
 Yea, if the chief offenders in the sun 
 Lack even charity to save the starved, 
 The torn beneath their mad monstrosities. 
 Shall that absolve us from the duty there 
 Of reparation if in some least sort; 
 Preclude us from the privilege of aid — 
 Which such remaining modicum of faith 
 In soul, in merit and humanity 
 Demands; and, in demanding, lamps within us 
 A sunlight and a dayspring: that we sense 
 An hint of overhumanism the more 
 Living and loving in the shaded soul? 
 
 105 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 XII 
 
 Beloved, an overhumanism still! 
 
 Not overweening in barbarities, 
 
 Not crushing, desecrating but, by creed 
 
 Of intimate faith and fervor of the blood 
 
 Ennobling sacrifice; by sympathy 
 
 Itself transforming to a perfect pledge 
 
 Of honor among nations! — Love, all hail 
 
 Unto thy mothering love — where hate obtains 
 
 Dominion undenied, yet, hate beyond. 
 
 The personal devotion undismay'd; 
 
 With hope toward something of a nobler earth 
 
 Beyond our generation: in his eyes! 
 
 1 06 
 
THE WORLD AT WAR 
 
 XIII 
 
 For he shall live, we trust, to learn of earth 
 An epoch (ay, and bear an heart and hand 
 To such accomplishment) where neither war 
 Nor internecine strife of violent needs 
 May harbor; but where generosity 
 Transcend mere justice; and the wise, alone. 
 In loving service shall absolve the lands 
 From bitterness, by unself-seeking rule: 
 Self-seeking but in realizing so 
 The heart's best-born desire. This he shall see. 
 Haply. And in that hope alone we laugh, 
 Hearing the happy laugh our home within. 
 
 107 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 XIV 
 
 And meanwhile, in the shadow of a wrath 
 Righteous, which burden bears of every wrong 
 Inflicted by the pride of wickedness; 
 And in the horror of our hating so; 
 Oh, yet remember, love, how even they, 
 Pledged though together to destroy the earth. 
 Are in the brotherhood of fiends in hell 
 Some least ennobled and not utterly 
 Beyond the pale of love's humanities; 
 Not hopeless of repentance when the strife 
 Hath brought an infinite chastisement, abasement 
 Meet for transgression, to their soul's reward! 
 
 108 
 
THE WORLD AT WAR 
 
 XV 
 
 Hopeful: save (if by absolute mischance 
 Of fate gone wrong and every plasmic errand 
 Of spiritual process fruitless turn'd) 
 Success in overwilful arrogance. 
 The brutal rape and holocaust of earth. 
 Survive the struggle of this counter-hate 
 Aroused, and fitness prove unto the ends 
 Of shame and sorrow and an all-despair! 
 Ah ! aid we as we may the freedom-chance 
 Of earth for ultimate splendor! Lest the spirit 
 Turn backward — from this hour, a fiery force 
 Dissipant, desperate, yea, self-foredoom 'd! 
 
 109 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 XVI 
 
 I YIELD me, worth were nought (the soul amazed 
 At her own vacancy) were wrong in the world 
 Outworn ! Yet wrongs enough are alway with us 
 And ever shall be by the growth of truth 
 Degrading to unworthiness the erst 
 Ideal, if ne'er attain'd, yet aye outwon! 
 Sobeit! But none the less there lifts a sweep 
 Of spirit-interplay, the psychic splendor 
 Of incremental process. Hereupon 
 An anguish to live down, a moral death 
 For man to rise from; and a dawn of soul 
 To lamp us from the ashes of this age! 
 
 no 
 
THE WORLD AT WAR 
 
 XVII 
 
 And in what trivial tasks, if faith be to us. 
 May seed the time's salvation and the springing 
 Of loftier truths than earth before hath known ! 
 Among the women sittest thou who sew 
 The seam, who roll the linen for the sick; 
 And salve a world-shame therewith hourly. 
 And I, what can I; but in this to thee, 
 This intimate, rhythmic commune, half-achieve 
 For thee, ah, haply for his hour to-come, 
 A record of the world-bewilderment — 
 Saving in such expression still mine own 
 Soul hourly: that otherwise would die! 
 
 Ill 
 
ELEMENTALS 
 
ELEMENTALS 
 
 I 
 
 Beloved, we are not keepers of the clouds. 
 
 Whether upon the mountains or within 
 
 The thicket-verdures of the valley fall 
 
 The thunder-torrents, these beyond the stint 
 
 Of hand or help of ours have origin 
 
 And fountain in the firmament. For these 
 
 Are of the sea, the streams and open tarns 
 
 Upsuck'd and saturate of atmosphere 
 
 By very potence of the sun in heaven. 
 
 The trees indeed, for virtue of their breathings. 
 
 Exude and aid in endless interchange. — 
 
 But we nowise are keepers of the clouds. 
 
 115 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 II 
 
 Forsooth our own outbreathings well may prove 
 
 Not too contemptibly contributing 
 
 To cyclic process; as the trees, ourselves 
 
 Transfusers haply of earth's self-imposed 
 
 Cloud-penance and purgation of the rains. 
 
 Yet mainly, O beloved, are we found 
 
 Recipients of a baptism unbeknown; 
 
 A dim, cool consecration, unforeseen 
 
 Within men's casual prospect; though none less 
 
 Inevitable and compelling each 
 
 To cloud-acceptance; howsoe'er the hope 
 
 Of sunlight on the hill-top had upled. 
 
 1 16 
 
ELEMENTALS 
 
 III 
 
 Within the cycle of the circumstance 
 
 Of root and leaf we recognize the right 
 
 In rain, where justice or injustice nor 
 
 Obtain nor fail, the normal intercourse 
 
 Requiring rain-completion — that the thirst 
 
 Of the body merely as of bark and branch 
 
 Be satisfied and verdure be sustain'd 
 
 In luxury and umbrage overall 
 
 The upland ledge that otherwise were bare 
 
 And gaunt in glaring infertility 
 
 Beneath a sun-scorch impotent. And so much 
 
 Is rain a natural sustenance and splendor. 
 
 117 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 IV 
 
 But we are strangely from the life of earth 
 Apart who would assume in happier hours 
 A guidance to the chaos; who, creating 
 An universe spirit-conformable. 
 Essay with soul-responsibility 
 A cosmos of the conscience; who be driven. 
 At worst, as from within, dependent only 
 On heart-born hopes that lift us or despairs 
 Self-gender'd, if by disappointment, yet 
 With sense of sad control — and we must learn 
 As from the open'd book of natural things 
 An irresponsibility anew. 
 
 ii8 
 
ELEMENTALS 
 
 It little matters that the woods may wail 
 Or mountains murmur or the sea make voice - 
 Which seem so inly deed-indifferent 
 And apt in figure for the mood we fain 
 Must feel if with our world we would be one. 
 For ways of human power beyond our shores. 
 From further than the brine-froth near about 
 Of neighbor-seas, with overwhelming thrust 
 Have push'd our human institution down 
 From aspiration; and of blood and clay 
 Compounded all the savagery revived 
 Of outworn ages resurrected mad. 
 
 119 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 VI 
 
 And we must learn how heart's amenity 
 And sympathy in sunniness and help 
 By gentle purports and respect of truth 
 Are obsolescent under iron hands 
 That reck not save of spoil and ruthlessness. 
 [Sobeit. The soul of the world hath sicken'd quite 
 And we of the world must die with it; to learn 
 A refuge in the feel of cloudy things 
 Their overcomings of the summer skies, 
 And so allow the wonder: a special strength 
 Vouchsafed, acquired so in the dwelling 'mid 
 The mountains and the myriads of the trees. 
 
 120 
 
ELEMENTALS 
 
 VII 
 
 And thus we risk upon the threaten'd steeps 
 
 No obligation, but an exercise 
 
 Of cloud-adoption, plunging upward yet 
 
 In the crowded, mist-enshrouded forestries 
 
 And fog-hung rock-caps; and the deluge take 
 
 Where chance and the hour permit a sheltering, 'neath 
 
 The matted, storm-wrench'd, gnarl'd and thicket 
 
 boughs 
 Of them the ever green, the ever shaken 
 Who still maintain foothold and function there. 
 The weight of earth-responsibilities. 
 Too heavy for the spirit, falls away 
 And leaves us native to the torrent-draught — 
 
 121 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 VIII 
 
 Purged of the sickness of the soul of the world; 
 
 And purified of weakness and of fear. 
 
 The thunders lower upon us; that we stand 
 
 Or crouch, as care may be, in the rugged cave 
 
 To let the hail pass over — but avow 
 
 The cosmic interruption without shame 
 
 Of purpose frustrate where no aid can be. 
 
 We breathe of the deluge and the fire a strength, 
 
 As he who, after ages of a doubt 
 
 That withereth action, in his nostril smelleth 
 
 The call of battle, the abandonment 
 
 To elemental conflict: and is glad! 
 
 122 
 
ELEMENTALS 
 
 IX 
 
 \h, pity indeed the loss of crystal-clean 
 
 Intelligence; of mystic insights sweet, 
 
 Warm-penetrant athwart an orient haze 
 
 With friendship for the furthest! But proclaim we 
 
 The grandeur and the innocence of him 
 
 Who, under stress of barbarous circumstance, 
 
 Without dismay takes up the darts and slings 
 
 To live or die as earth hath press'd him to it — 
 
 Gigantic at the heartstrings, if in stature 
 
 Dwarf'd by the very monstrous palls, the glooms 
 
 And menaces of mountains and of sea, 
 
 Compell'd for hearthstone and for homestead to him ! 
 
 123 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 Compell'd? — O may we, even from the verdures 
 
 And shelterings of the sated mountain-vales, 
 
 By will to wreak with utmost element 
 
 Dare freely yet the launch in the lifting flood 
 
 Of the troublous, foam-fierce maelstrom; where the 
 
 clouds 
 Have origin in main (and all above, 
 Below is without mercy!); where is no 
 Refuge nor help save in the hopeless pride 
 Of meeting each wave-outrage — rearing once 
 And once again till the last smother fall 
 That shatters into a wreckage o'er the deep 
 The spirit of truth which bravely had held on! 
 
 124 
 
ELEMENTALS 
 
 XI 
 
 Beloved, the world's a-welter in the throes 
 
 Of far-flung rapine. Yet here our hearts have learn'd 
 
 The hint of heroism, a taking-o'er 
 
 Of the hatred without shame of consequence 
 
 Nor justice-fear at earth's inevitable. 
 
 The purpose halts not though the feet turn back: 
 
 The conscience breatheth though the body drown. 
 
 Lifts in the lurch of love's dismantled prow 
 
 At face with such destruction. — May the hands 
 
 Clasp each of me and thee when that day come; 
 
 Not keepers defeated of the clouds which whelm. 
 
 But natured, splendid in the storm-delight! 
 
 125 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 XII 
 
 With thee, may all be suffer'd of the soul 
 
 Or body which the future shall betray 
 
 Not blithely, perchance, and yet in heroism 
 
 Of welcome; sith to storm the world hath come 
 
 And thou and 1 are children of its power! 
 
 And thou and I forsooth, a power have won 
 
 Of innocence; acceptance, mountain-strong 
 
 And forest-wisdom'd, of the clouds our spirits 
 
 Had erst-while sicken'd-with in self-foreboding 
 
 And condemnation that we could not clear 
 
 Their omen from the heavens. Dear love, they loom. 
 
 And we, our brows are bared, abiding them. 
 
 126 
 
POEMS OF A PESSIMISM 
 
POEMS OF A PESSIMISM 
 
 I 
 
 Beloved, there is a twilight of the soul 
 Too like the austere twilight now descending 
 Earthward from out the eastern sepulture 
 In sombre, dim envelopment along 
 The rugged valley-steeps, the mountain-tops 
 And even at the last over the sea, 
 That westering ocean which so radiantly 
 Re-echo'd from her purple-tremulous deeps 
 The crimson day-blood cloudward lingering — 
 The clouds which now themselves to olden ash 
 Are deathlier turn'd. Beloved, there is a shadow 
 Descending dusk indeed over the soul. 
 
 129 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 II 
 
 The mountains may not, nor the darkening air 
 Remember of the sun-time; nor themselves 
 Suspect of night-causation, bearing blame 
 For revolution from the light away. 
 They are, for truths at large, but this they show 
 A beauty and a pathos, if thou wilt. 
 Unto the observation and the insight 
 Of him who, lonelily and sadly station'd, 
 Regardeth them for sign and symbolling, 
 For planet-image of the sickness in him: 
 He aiming only that the beauty there 
 And pathos may inform and mark the song. 
 
 130 
 
POEMS OF A PESSIMISM 
 
 in 
 
 In earlier, happier song I fain avow'd 
 
 For nature-process and environment 
 
 Evidence of a monad-inference. 
 
 Transfusion spiritual through-and-through 
 
 Confocuss'd and self-centred, psychicwise 
 
 With infinite diversity, to each 
 
 Identical if indiscriminable 
 
 Object of intuition-sympathy. 
 
 But not of man's soul-chemic passioning 
 
 Are earth-hood, sea or air — if theirs be feeling 
 
 And vague envisagement of outwardness, 
 
 We dream not theirs an inward self-humane. 
 
 131 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 IV 
 
 Thus to their mass no insight may ascribe 
 The speechless pains, tongue-numbing memories 
 Of life-chance and of powers a-worn in waste: 
 Not to themselves, whate'er the silence of them. — 
 And, lo! if memory were theirs, forsooth. 
 Should hope, the sure anticipation still 
 Of sun-return, a twilight-dawn achieved, 
 Be also of the mountains, air and sea. 
 And something of a constellated glory 
 Shall crown the calm confession, thus should earth 
 Declare within herself the conscienced source 
 Of nighthood-derogation, cyclic shame. 
 
 132 
 
POEMS OF A PESSIMISM 
 
 'T WERE sweet, o' truth, and inly comforting 
 
 To ponder of the distant crystalline 
 
 Its clean and penetrating, infinite 
 
 Sparks of the conflagrations nebulous 
 
 Whereof the valleys and the hills and sea 
 
 Are framed in far foundation. And, though clouds 
 
 Be cold and nigh-impervious between 
 
 (Enshrouding, from all sight of comet-flames 
 
 Or sister-spheres among the systemings 
 
 Of the solar incantations), yet a sense 
 
 That where be earth there constellations hover 
 
 For firmament — I ween were comforting. 
 
 133 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 VI 
 
 Such for the daedal earth, of substance still 
 
 With the overarch, the vault of firmament — 
 
 Beyond mere exhalations sorrow-like 
 
 From the bosom of the blank self-banishment, 
 
 The nightly-exile from her source-of-soul 
 
 (That warmth and light) whence heart hath turn'd 
 
 away. 
 Such for the outward earth. But what of one 
 Who hugely (though of spirit-stature small!) 
 The titan-friendship of an earth assumed 
 To dwell as chthonic bulk upon the hills 
 Or brood in half-divinity the sea — 
 Shall he, in human failure, feel the stars? 
 
 134 
 
POEMS OF A PESSIMISM 
 
 VII 
 
 Behold, I erst above a broadening ocean 
 
 And in the shimmering valleys or upon 
 
 The primal outlook of the mountain-tops 
 
 Stood and the vast world-wakening have seen; 
 
 And waken'd with the dawn-tide inwardly. 
 
 The sun I have known upsprung with sudden speech 
 
 Even from the red of the wave or, 'mid the quaver 
 
 Of myriad forest-matins, piercing strong 
 
 A vivid, myriad-shafted aureole 
 
 Through temple-aisles of trees, steadfast, faith-fiU'd. 
 
 These wonders of renewal have I seen 
 
 And know them to be record in the soul — 
 
 135 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 VI 
 
 And prophecy: so far as dreamless earth 
 
 Now in yon autumn twiHght swooneth off! 
 
 Her stars shall keep their watch; and heralds on 
 
 Her forest-pinnacles (the buds, bough-born) 
 
 Of restoration; and the birds at last 
 
 Of earth-new springtime shall announce to sense 
 
 And soul the advancing day! But in mine heart 
 
 1 feel not spring adventive nor return 
 
 Of day unto my spirit. In the clouds 
 
 Of ashening birthright doth the very blood 
 
 For conscience of the mood mysterious 
 
 And blame of the consecration, faint within me. 
 
 136 
 
POEMS OF A PESSIMISM 
 
 IX 
 
 Yea, and where be the stars, for one who feels 
 As from the first the shroud within his soul 
 Of failure to achieve the heart of day? 
 Ah ! where, that consolation of the skies 
 Their cooling watch upon our planet-peace, 
 With morrow-dreams of strength-reception aye? 
 I blame not clouds, mere mists of star-fill'd fate. 
 Which drifting hang above the wanton-frame 
 Of him who 'mid the mountains and the sea 
 Had self-contended with a giant-hope 
 To speak, to sing and usher-in the morning — 
 But lays him self-subdued despairing down: 
 
 137 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 X 
 
 His shapeless soul supine upon the hills. 
 
 Not as with their everlasting certainties 
 
 Of sun-recurrence but, within his heart 
 
 The shrinkage and the shrivelling of leaf. 
 
 The bareness of the frost-betrayal, frore 
 
 With ice-anticipations and the night 
 
 Which (blameworthy in shame-acknowledgment 
 
 Of shadow-turning) never may renew 
 
 The cycle of completion; but, or e'er 
 
 The natural years of man, hath yielden him 
 
 To cloudship, and the way of fate hath gone — 
 
 Supine upon the hills without their strength! 
 
 138 
 
POEMS OF A PESSIMISM 
 
 XI 
 
 'T IS true, 't is true, as I ere now have sung, 
 How smokes of earth's great madness overseas 
 Are gather'd and contribute in the soul 
 (Though raged beyond responsibility) 
 To pessimisms of the advancing dusk. 
 Perchance, without such pall of frightfulness, 
 The titan-friendship well had been sustain'd 
 In dusk-tide, as in dawn-tide, confidence. 
 But, such as world-times are, must we of the world 
 Be free; or fail. And in the loss of faith 
 Must come no coward cry to curse the clouds, 
 No spirit-unction by such blame-recourse. 
 
 139 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 XII 
 
 Ay, such as the world-times are and of their judgment 
 
 Must men be judged, if of the titan-part 
 
 Our purpose would be aim'd. And in a world 
 
 Of war and torment have our hearts been tried — 
 
 Helpless the right to aid and agonized 
 
 With hate and horror of triumphant wrong: 
 
 And may not be appeased. That of men's earth. 
 
 Mine own, have 1 been broken and dismayed 
 
 Despite some voice of bombast. And I take 
 
 The circumstance of such environment 
 
 Unblamed, if unaccepted, of the soul — 
 
 To blame me of heart's fatuous revolt. 
 
 140 
 
POEMS OF A PESSIMISM 
 
 XIII 
 
 It may be that the reeking wraths of the world 
 
 Exhaust them ; and an era of a peace 
 
 Ensue though with abiding bitterness 
 
 At infinite injustice unavenged — 
 
 Or very vengeance unto righteousness 
 
 In sort establish men's millennium; 
 
 That soul may cease concern with force and hate. 
 
 To find in earth a world of sympathies 
 
 New-based, maybe, on hero-sacrifices 
 
 Now wide-prevailing. But my present soul 
 
 In this her circumstaiice of overwrath 
 
 No sacrificial heroism hath shown. 
 
 141 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 XIV 
 
 And thus no claim to share and sympathy 
 
 Were mine in the reconstruction: from the world 
 
 Of outward hope and social help humane, 
 
 The coming overnature of mankind 
 
 Their body-politic and civil spirit 
 
 Shut out — by the cowering now from sacrifice, 
 
 The slinking from furtherance to the threaten'd 
 
 righteous 
 In such least kind as, sooth, were practicable 
 Despite in main the manual impotence! 
 And, thence, from any aid as any burden 
 By civic intercourse the chthonic heart 
 Must faint, to feel the titan-failure still. 
 
 142 
 
POEMS OF A PESSIMISM 
 
 XV 
 
 Yet may it be that a swerving of the worlds 
 All-innocent of ethic influence 
 May undeservedly expose to a dawn 
 The spirit-prostrate, from the wheel of earth 
 (Broken but unembitter'd of the blame) 
 Uplifting scarr'd and gaunt unto the warmth 
 Of sun-revival : with a chasten'd heart 
 Through memory firm of froward fruitlessness, 
 The mastery of a meek Hyperion-mood 
 Avowing, he (to sacred springs of song 
 Devoutly bending) in the new-born light 
 Bathing his body of humanity. 
 
 143 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 XVI 
 
 For this, the miracle of heart contrite, 
 There surely hath been everywhere of men 
 When twilight on the self-supported spirit 
 Had fallen, yet the earth-mother too been kind 
 Where supine lay the soul over her hills — 
 The spring-sight and the peace of cosmic day 
 Vouchsafed of largess to the hopelessness ! — 
 But now it is that twilight of the spirit; 
 And cloud (the fate unblamed which cometh ever 
 Of overweening and unmaster'd hope) 
 Impends; and mists within the shame are mix'd 
 Of him who feels an autumn come too soon. 
 
 144 
 
POEMS OF A PESSIMISM 
 
 XVII 
 
 Indeed, indeed, beloved (for the soul 
 
 Must needs her failure flatter at the end 
 
 With subtler unction) was the spirit-search 
 
 Supposedly by universal sunship 
 
 Guided, and of an all-intelligence 
 
 (The clear crystalline of an open sky) 
 
 Transfused, irradiated! But the clay 
 
 Of a mind opaque was mine. The spirit gnome-like 
 
 In delvings after heaven-unvalued things 
 
 The glitterings of a momentary greed 
 
 Ransack'd — when wealth were of the holy heaven's 
 
 Sunshine; heart-guarded in the eyes of thee! 
 
 1-45 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 XVIII 
 
 I WAS not fit, beyond thy guardian arms 
 To thrill upon the hilltops, to adopt 
 The tempest-courage and the ocean-joy 
 Of grand contention. For the bulk of earth. 
 The breadth of ocean was not of my spirit 
 Her stature. And the haven of my heart 
 With all a leafy benison and solace 
 Of morning song and sunlight-sympathy 
 Was rather of thy limit-infinite. 
 The woman-universe, to dwell therein; 
 Nor painfully the glimmering fatuous 
 Of elfin candle aimlessly pursue. 
 
 146 
 
POEMS OF A PESSIMISM 
 
 XIX 
 
 For such, beloved, hath the sun supposed 
 
 On hilltops of the spirit proved at last — 
 
 No heaven-luminary orbit-poised 
 
 But, just a glow-fly gleam as wildereth. 
 
 O'sooth, there seemeth, now the wearied eye 
 
 Allows of woodland intimacies so 
 
 The gentler registration, here and yon 
 
 A more-than-glow-fly gleam, in reason'd errand 
 
 Flickering the white-stemm'd paths; now near, now 
 
 far 
 As fortune favoreth the search for me — 
 Thy search: for one unworthy of thy sight 
 Save as he lays him down — to burial. 
 
 H7 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 XX 
 
 Beloved, the darkness falls, the drift obscure 
 Rolls in and over from the sombred east 
 Till hilltops, ay, and valleys in the gloom 
 Are nigh confounded, low and high alike 
 Unworthy-seeming that the ashen'd gleams 
 Still shaft o'er sea's sun-regions westering 
 A seeming-memory. — And wilt thou yet, 
 With starrier lanthorn through the wooded glens 
 Roaming in mercy as in grief, thy Titan 
 (No bulk upon the mountains but, a child 
 Too far from thy protection wandering) 
 Find; and his tired body bless with leaves? 
 
 148 
 
POEMS OF A PESSIMISM 
 
 XXI 
 
 And, lo! there is to me also a child. 
 
 Thy child who waxeth to the mountain-dawn 
 
 Even as my soul hath shrunk — that he and 1 
 
 Transpose the music of our spirits: I 
 
 The self-dismember'd; he the forest-youth 
 
 With lyre of mine own heart-strings loud and high 
 
 The matin-song unto the sea and air 
 
 Declaiming on the hillside. May thy voice 
 
 With his have tender antiphon. The birds 
 
 Shall with you join. Whilst 1, beneath the charnel 
 
 Embedded of the ember'd forest-wrack, 
 
 Suffer some resurrection, hearkening! 
 
 149 
 
PROPHETICS 
 
PROPHETICS 
 
 I 
 
 Dear heart, well-nigh unheeded hath the spring 
 Swift-stolen upon us — all at once the sun 
 High-mounted; and a myriad sympathies 
 Of sap-things and of vernal imagery, 
 Shimmering the white-shone warmth to rainbow- 
 bloom. 
 Are vivid over earth: whilst thou and I 
 Heart-held in rigor of a wintriness 
 World-done-with, yet half-wittingly awake 
 To move and find our being with the birds, 
 With woods and sun-sweet music; we ourselves 
 Bewilder'd with the outward suddenness 
 Of wonder and in spirit unprepared. 
 
 153 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 II 
 
 While winter was, we fancied in the sky 
 
 A crystalline perfection, on the world 
 
 A rigor of purity, an open heart 
 
 Of fortitude to bear the bitter years 
 
 With whatsoever of a suffering 
 
 Earth's hour had earn'd of fate; fain we endured 
 
 The desolation as with dignity 
 
 And power, too unaware how all within 
 
 Was image of the desolateness there. 
 
 Now by the sudden ardency of earth 
 
 Are we found voiceless, overaw'd at last 
 
 At world's quick courage to be born again. 
 
 154 
 
PROPHETICS 
 
 III 
 
 But we with the year who move must find a tongue 
 
 Or die heart-dust, evaporate away 
 
 With ice-bonds in the echptic crucible 
 
 And calor of earth — as streams to a spirit-sea 
 
 Rather and sun-sparks of the world-aUve 
 
 To join in a fortitude of ardency, 
 
 A rigor of life-creation and be part 
 
 Of the coming human-whole regeneration, 
 
 The turning of the nations as of earth 
 
 To uplift and an art of furtherance. 
 
 The openness of aid-appreciative. 
 
 Because of the very death-strife that hath been. 
 
 155 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 IV 
 
 Dear heart, for what of wonder and of song 
 Hath ever been, save that in sacrifice 
 Was seeded and in rigorous sepulchrings 
 Enwomb'd and nurtured to the burst of birth? 
 Shall we be bHnd-born, barren, sith the world 
 With sacrifice hath reek'd and reeketh still — 
 Though now the beauty bought of priceless blood 
 Blooms evident, declared under the sun 
 Where man hath nobliest died defending man? 
 If little of our souls in song sincere 
 Hath come to argument the winter through, 
 Shall such half-silence now prevent the praise? 
 
 156 
 
PROPHETICS 
 
 V 
 
 A SOUL of Song perchance the winter through 
 
 Was veritably in us, if attaining 
 
 No warmth against the tempest, nought of tongue 
 
 To tame the rigor to a tempest-tune — 
 
 As had been formerly or e'er the world 
 
 Was with an human wickedness o'er-run. 
 
 Which sembleth winter in its fear and grief 
 
 Yet show'd not till of late and suddenly 
 
 An hope of rectification : sacrifice 
 
 To perfect purpose of salvation-wrought. 
 
 Now, if in hope of final betterment 
 
 The heart revive, a winter-song is born. 
 
 157 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 VI 
 
 A WINTER-TUNE — the art which, sadly strong, ' 
 
 Hath fervency, a rigor of sun-within 
 
 Come to earth-understanding: bower and bird 
 
 For image, figure of the fortitudes 
 
 Which make a .music, mightily profound. 
 
 Of the common courage and the common cause 
 
 How death and dearth are (in the ultimate 
 
 Of resurrection and of beauty-birth) 
 
 Sith veritable, thus a source-of-song 
 
 If only song be virile! Hitherto 
 
 Hath soul half-sought a singing-paradise; 
 
 Else mute remain'd, confronting verity. 
 
 158 
 
PROPHETICS 
 
 VII 
 
 Now but our eyes are open'd. From the storm 
 
 Of seeming-endless ice-drift wakes awide 
 
 The wonder-earth, a sudden outwardness 
 
 Of vivid paradise not world-beyond 
 
 But here about us in the dooryard. Dear, 
 
 The drift had in it such an artist-earth; 
 
 And bitter skies, the splendor of beauty-bred. 
 
 And shame was only that the tongue was mute 
 
 In wilderment of such an evidence. 
 
 Not daring-desperate deeds of thrice-arm'd men 
 
 'Soever noblest in defence of man 
 
 Alone need lift the world. For there is song. 
 
 159 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 VIII 
 
 With thee I turn to the open'd singing-page 
 
 Of earth, to read therein the worth-of-man, 
 
 The values which ennoble men's defence 
 
 And yield a loftiest dignity and praise 
 
 To terrible strifes. And, though we twain may strive 
 
 not 
 With hands unto the hour heroical 
 Nor high an hero-tale with epic tone 
 Descant (scarce pertinent the saga, then 
 When our heart-metric earn'd a mother-tongue) 
 Yet, after world be won and brotherhood 
 Reborn, the rhythm of person'd sympathy 
 May seem an insight worth new heaven, new earth: 
 
 100 
 
PROPHETICS 
 
 IX 
 
 And therefore every effort of our hearts 
 At earnest utterance prove not earth-undue — 
 Not too-inhuman in men's hour of pain 
 And trial. For no taint of heedlessness 
 In our tranquillity need hint of shame 
 Soe'er, whilst the balk'd zest for right to smite 
 Hath hamper'd the rack'd spirit. At the worst 
 Have our lives yearn'd toward earth's wintriness 
 (To peril and perish should the foe invade) 
 Yet felt the hearthstone sacred to defend 
 And infinite duty in the tasks of home. 
 But, now, fresh sense of warrant to the song! 
 
 i6i 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 X 
 
 This, yea,. there is about us which demands 
 
 Resplendent utterance, thrill'd through and through 
 
 With verity-respect; yet not unHke 
 
 Dreams of a singing-paradise indeed! 
 
 Dear heart, for but one moment suddenly 
 
 Be heart-surprised; and, taken unaware, 
 
 Believe in the rectification of a world 
 
 From throes of human horror by the strength 
 
 Of human manfulness, wrong to withstand 
 
 And conquer; then with me, in voice uplift, " 
 
 Allow the vigorous rapture and the word 
 
 Which heroes home-returning have made good — 
 
 162 
 
PROPHETICS 
 
 XI 
 
 Made plausible, by man's defence of man 
 From soul-outrage, from savageries unmatch'd 
 Since first creation groan'd; that now the heart. 
 Which elsewise in an ice-bound tyranny 
 Had wholly died, may feel an heat of hope 
 (Grace be to them who bled that soul be whole!) 
 And render in the sun-tide high return. 
 For by men's spirit steadfast hath the spirit 
 Found verification; and her celebrance 
 Of person'd insight, vivid warranty. 
 Howbeit, the song may fail; but finds a theme 
 Of cosmic praise with inward reverence. 
 
 163 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 XII 
 
 At least there is the springtime as of yore; 
 
 And here the singing-heart self-found anew. 
 
 And earth-perpetual and thou and I 
 
 Come through the two-edged turmoil, without shame 
 
 Re-dedicate to wonder — though the years 
 
 Have darken'd something of the rainbow-bloom, 
 
 For earth's long-battled winters. Ah! still stand we 
 
 Impassion'd beneath an heaven of azure, gazing 
 
 Down and abroad upon the woods and sea. 
 
 And yet again the thrush-song; and the gleam 
 
 Of myriads that are nectar in our nostrils. 
 
 Scenting the breath with beauty, near and far. 
 
 164 
 
THE SONNETS 
 
THE SONNETS 
 
 ' ON THE THIRD BIRTHDAY 
 
 I 
 
 Year unto year, for once and once again 
 (A childhood trinity of holy days). 
 Hath borne thee thrice anew, a thing of praise 
 Each time and miracle — yet well-nigh pain 
 For love that dwells upon the past and fain 
 Would have thee as it had thee once, always 
 A cradled innocence, and with amaze 
 Mourneth an infancy at ruthless wane. 
 
 But That thou art through every hour of change 
 
 Were high humanity provenient, 
 
 A waxing truth-containment, comprehending 
 
 A world by sense and speech through all the range 
 
 Of daily proof in soul-environment — 
 
 For love's humanity, a lift unending. 
 
 167 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 ON THE THIRD BIRTHDAY 
 
 II 
 
 And: though the tenderness ineffable 
 
 Of thy first being is but lost and gone 
 
 Unless for fond regret to ponder on; 
 
 And though to love and lose were little well 
 
 Save a new union yield an holier spell 
 
 Of deeplier-wondering communion 
 
 In spirit: such we find thee — loftier won 
 
 Each love's fulfilment, where the first love fell. 
 
 And thus that thou art verily a boy 
 
 Of health and beauty, of a gentlest heart 
 
 And merry, busiest ingenuity, 
 
 Sith thou art manly at the man-child's toy 
 
 And shalt be man with man's prepotency — 
 
 Why, let life kiss thee for the life thou art. 
 
 168 
 
THE SONNETS 
 
 TO JANE IN HER MID-SUMMER 
 
 And, whilst beneath thy bosky fostering 
 The beauty of the bud-time undefiled 
 Increaseth hourly of thy wonder-child 
 And all's with him a vernal promising, 
 With thee how is it in thine after-spring? 
 Were it enough, prophetic-reconciled. 
 To take earth's new faith with acceptance mild, 
 Vicarious through autumn-questioning? 
 
 Were it enough? — What wisdom, dear, were mor 
 To learn earth's sap-upsurgence, not alone 
 In youth-immediacy but, mature. 
 Through rooted love's leaf-abnegation pure 
 To realize in his nature as thine own 
 The annual orbit of the forest-floor! 
 
 169 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 SALVATOR MUNDI 
 
 I 
 
 Dear child, when I have seen thee, ruefully 
 Reluctant, tear-stain'd to forlornness stand. 
 Thy brow a misery and in thine hand 
 The fragment-victim of thy tragedy 
 Beyond this world's repair; whenas the shy, 
 First hovering of the banish'd angel-band 
 Perchance thine inmost innocence hath fann'd 
 To ember-gleams of goodness: then have I 
 Quick-snatch'd and kiss'd thee as we alway kiss 
 The place of pain to bless and make it well — 
 Yet impotent to press upon thy sin 
 Such healing touch or salve the smart within 
 By hope: a love-sign helpless but in this. 
 That love in thee could lead thee back from hell! 
 
 170 
 
THE SONNETS 
 
 SALVATOR MUNDI 
 
 II 
 
 And therefore is it best that I should take 
 Naughtiness to my bosom and afford 
 Thee sense of cherishment to search the chord 
 Of piety within thee and awake 
 The slumbering ethic-light through thine heart-ache 
 Of evil half-repentant. Not untoward 
 The pressure of a strength of pity pour'd 
 Which, in thy perilment, for thy will's sake 
 Would fain transfuse the subtlest core of thee 
 And entering transmute thy very dole 
 To joy beyond an infant-innocence. 
 But, ah, thine heart must earn an own defence 
 To aid thee; or the very kiss of me 
 ^.onfirm thee in betrayal of thy soul! 
 
 171 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 SALVATOR MUNDI 
 
 III 
 
 Something too much of this! — Dear child, thy toy 
 
 Remains a broken token. But thy life 
 
 Renews its pleasance o'er the pains of strife 
 
 In zest and fresh-found vigor to enjoy 
 
 The natural pastime of the happy boy — 
 
 And earth is as it should be. If the knife 
 
 Hath enter'd 'neath the heart-strings tremor-rife 
 
 Of parenthood, need coward cry annoy 
 
 The swift-forgetting little mind and heart 
 
 Which wit not of abiding sympathies? 
 
 Which wit not of the hourly crucifying, 
 
 The sun-blaze and the blackness underlying 
 
 Of fatherhood and motherhood apart 
 
 Who watch thee with half-blinded agonies! 
 
 172 
 
THE SONNETS 
 
 THE FIRST DREAM 
 
 I 
 
 We, love, who wait upon his waking hours 
 Through these soft years of soul-incipiency. 
 Had heretofore (soe'er his head might lie 
 Upon our bosoms pillow'd, or the bowers 
 By love prepared retain him) to the powers 
 Of sleep resign'd beyond all scrutiny 
 The self behind the shut Hds. And the cry 
 At waking well'd as from a world not ours. 
 
 And, whether he had held within his sleep 
 
 Strange vision uncompanion'd as our own 
 
 Or dreamlessness without one finite flaw, 
 
 We knew not. Till to-day a wonder deep 
 
 Spake from the half-waked lips, in trust smile-shown. 
 
 Of other little children whom he saw. 
 
 173 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 THE FIRST DREAM 
 
 II 
 
 And then we told him how his gentlest dream 
 Was not the truth of his wide-waken'd sense, 
 And only he within the world immense 
 Was with us, how the universal stream 
 Unheeding of a tragedy supreme 
 Flow'd on and over that first grief intense; 
 Till he within our hearts had anthem'd thence 
 Our childlessness — a psalm to troth's high theme. 
 
 But then said we: Dear child, the dream be true; 
 For faith is that within the heart of man 
 Which maketh truth; and 'neath our fostering 
 Dwelleth the seer-secret learn'd of you; 
 Waiteth a guerdon since the world began 
 Of unborn life to your companioning. 
 
 174 
 
THE SONNETS 
 
 FUTURITY 
 
 Beloved, 't would seem as though thy share of pain 
 Were meted in full measure: once to endure 
 The very pangs of birth without birth's cure 
 For thy rack'd soul's reluctance; and again 
 Thy hopes of motherhood to dare in vain! 
 'Tis very pitiful: perforce thy pure 
 Delight of life-devotion to abjure, 
 Despite the exacted sacrifice amain! 
 
 And yet, beloved, about thy fever'd bed 
 
 (As was not then when first came death to thee) 
 
 A soft, small step of one that tenderly 
 
 Looks up in search to serve thee ! — Were hope dead 
 
 In hearts that yearn upon that lovely head 
 
 And see in his the life-light which we see? 
 
 175 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 CONTROL 
 
 Haply by instinct only of a shame 
 In witness of companions speed-outshined 
 (Of mother or of father close behind), 
 And baby-boyhood fear of coward-fame; 
 Haply by hero-hardihood of frame — 
 I know not. But, in fortitude of mind. 
 Swiftly the tears are dried that flooded blind 
 For grief of the fall which tripp'd thee without 
 blame. — 
 
 An infant stoicism so prompt and new; 
 Such proud repression won of natural wrath 
 At pain unmerited! — Ah, may the path 
 Be scarce too smooth; that pitfalls, spirit-due, 
 Evoke, from wails suppress'd, art's aftermath 
 Of poet-utterances not a few! 
 
 176 
 
THE SONNETS 
 
 CONCERNING MELODY 
 
 Dear singing child of mine and of her heart 
 Who goeth hymning alway on the stair! 
 Dear babe of ours who singest everywhere, 
 Whilst yet thy lips unhelp'd may hardly part. 
 With man-assumption of articulate art. 
 Syllable eke from syllable ! what rare 
 Instinct of music did our mating bear, 
 To gift thee so with voice at thy life-start? 
 
 Thy tunes are tender and of sweet accord 
 With what in her, in me, must ever seem 
 A source of life not unmelodious; 
 A luminance — past embodiment in word. 
 Though spirit-rhythmic as that raptured beam 
 Which show'd thee first unto the tears of us! 
 
 177 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 TO MY BOY, ON HIS MIGRATION 
 
 I 
 
 I BUILD for thee a chamber set four-square 
 To every wind of heaven; but wherein 
 Through latticed casements as long days begin 
 The great, red sun with broad, benignant glare 
 May find a mellow fellowship; and where, 
 If wandering rains should dimly peer within, 
 A gleam of many skies with merriest din 
 Should answer the chill summons. For a flare 
 Of golden covering on every wall 
 Runs up to meet an evening, lambent glow 
 Athwart wide-tillaged landscapes: that thy play 
 May be encompass'd of an indoor day 
 Forever kindly; though the night may fall 
 Without, and coldlier stars may come and go. 
 
 178 
 
THE SONNETS 
 
 TO MY BOY, ON HIS MIGRATION 
 
 II 
 
 For I would have thee through the childhood years 
 As thy young chamber, airily to west 
 And east and south and north a rustic nest " 
 And nurture-space that knoweth nought of fears 
 But welcometh for kin whatso appears 
 In earth's sun-freedom, while the livingest 
 Of fire-warm hues within thy joyous breast 
 Shall glad thy forest-playmates. And when nears 
 Thy tired hour of twilight and a sleep 
 Stoops o'er thee, that thy breathing lifts alone 
 Within this chamber, may the guardian stars 
 Stream inward at thine open casement-bars 
 To yield an hint in dream of days full-grown 
 When love may garner what thy soul shall reap! 
 
 179 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 TO MY BOY, ON HIS MIGRATION 
 
 III 
 
 Yea, I would have thy boyhood learn to till 
 
 Unto some bourn of vivid artistry 
 
 Yon spirit-pastures underneath the sky 
 
 Of ardent apprehension. Feed thy fill, 
 
 O poet inchoate! of the well or ill, 
 
 The bright or dark of nature's panoply. 
 
 The glory or the shame that passeth by 
 
 These windows of thy wisdom! For e'en the thrill 
 
 Aleap in winter-passion, the storm-sweet sting 
 
 Aswirl in purport piteous of the snows 
 
 Shall not be thine in vain. — Come, rest thou here; 
 
 Where elder youth will watch, with chanticleer, 
 
 The coming of a morning: who arose 
 
 But yesterday as from thy slumbering. 
 
 1 80 
 
THE SONNETS 
 
 REMEMBRANCE 
 
 But then, the crib forsaken and these walls 
 That nestled thee in thy lost cradle-days; 
 These panes wherethrough the sun in soft amaze 
 First warm'd thy wonder! — Ah! whate'er befalls 
 Of splendor in the age that to thee calls, 
 Know thou, O little child, how thy sweet ways 
 Of infancy were perfect beyond praise; 
 And how no fane nor glory-marvell'd halls 
 Might e'er become thy manhood as this room. 
 Begirt with gentlest scenes of homelihead, 
 Approved thy fair beginning; nor thou, dead 
 In fame heroic, bow with mighty gloom 
 A nation's millions at thy laurell'd tomb — 
 As I am bow'd beside thy baby bed. 
 
 i«i 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 SEPTENNIAL 
 
 The spring was backward, love, that other year; 
 
 The winter over and its rigors spent 
 
 Forever of my lonely discontent; 
 
 But earth still lingering for the advent here 
 
 Of her who unto every ice-bound fear 
 
 Promised a solace of enfranchisement: 
 
 For all, the storm-worn spirit underwent, 
 
 A sun-warm'd flowering to fruition, dear! 
 
 The spring is backward, love. For who would wish 
 
 To hasten unto adolescence one 
 
 Who with his bud-time ways half-babyish 
 
 Enchants by hint of manhood unbegun 
 
 The blush and brilliance of life's wilderness — 
 
 Which yearly ripeneth manward none the less? 
 
 182 
 
THE SONNETS 
 
 TO JANE AT A THANKSGIVING 
 
 Because you two within the house of soul 
 Are one heart-hearthstone and together prove 
 Inly an union'd adytum of love — 
 Alike life's fane and hope-concentring goal; 
 Therefore, within the cycle of the whole 
 Annual influence of the spheres above, 
 Thy star and his as with one auspice move 
 And well-nigh in one dated orbit roll. 
 
 Wherefore a single birth-song to recall 
 The entrance of thy spirit as of his 
 Within faith's universe: his childhood-four 
 And thy fine tapers of a white two-score 
 Greeting and beaconing the truth of this 
 Conjunction of the love-light overall! 
 
 183 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 CULTURAL POWER 
 
 An overmastering philosophy 
 
 Of overmastery, alas! hath driven 
 
 The nations to insanity and riven 
 
 All bonds of human brotherhood. The cry 
 
 Of countless thousands outraged utterly 
 
 Of them who with the overfiend have striven 
 
 (Their bodies burnt and mutilate and swiven) 
 
 Lifts from the pit of his barbarity! 
 
 And in the heart of our humanity 
 The cry hath echo: from the depths of soul 
 A largess wrought of pity; a great ruth 
 Born of a virtuous insight of the truth 
 Of reverent sympathy: profoundly whole, 
 Christ's overmastering philosophy! 
 
 184 
 
THE SONNETS 
 
 IN IDES OF MARCH 
 
 I 
 
 A SEASON is it when the mounting sun 
 Shines daily largelier; the Hstening trees 
 Half-budded yet are waiting in the breeze 
 For far-arriven bird-wings, every one 
 Expectant of a song still unbegun. 
 Myself have many a year for dream of these 
 Life-prophecies with inward melodies 
 Thrill'd; and a singing-rapture blithelier won. 
 
 Though aye the month hath meaning too of those 
 (Our first-born; her whose being gave me birth) 
 Who, unknown each to each, yet side by side 
 In pitiful spring-death evermore abide; 
 Who heed not how each breeze that warmlier blows 
 Wafts from the skies a message over earth. 
 
 185 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 IN IDES OF MARCH 
 
 II 
 
 And elsewhere over earth the spring's advance 
 Hath heraldry but as a tide of death 
 (With surge of every soul that sorroweth 
 To anguish of the autumn's mad mischance); 
 A rush of ruining ranks with sword and lance 
 Athwart the winter's charnel-heaps; vow'd breath 
 Of vengeance over him who suffereth — 
 And justice though by hell's hot ordinance! 
 
 O love, how take such bud-time save in tears? 
 O love, how not rejoice, if presently 
 The lance-thrusts of my chamber'd malady 
 Turn in mine entrails; and a day of doom 
 Lay me with him and her — to wait the years 
 Which bring thee also to the dreamless room? 
 
 1 86 
 
THE SONNETS 
 
 IN IDES OF MARCH 
 
 III 
 
 Nay; nay! There lifts the luminance of life! 
 
 And, lo! the dignity of mortal things. 
 
 The broad soul-dedication, offerings 
 
 Of sweat and pain beneath the altar-knife. 
 
 Self-immolations of the lethal strife! 
 
 Hark! and the vivid sweep with breast and wings 
 
 Nestward of one that for the homing sings ! — 
 
 And you, to love and live for, son and wife ! 
 
 It matters little that the hands are tied 
 
 By human weakness, whilst the mind and heart 
 
 Godlike can apprehend; in feeling deep 
 
 The pathos of the elemental sleep, 
 
 Acclaim with myriad sympathies of art 
 
 The season-quickening of the solar bride. 
 
 187 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 STORM 
 
 Beloved, a driven hour is on the world: 
 A laden cloud-rack darkly over all 
 Onsweeping and the sheeted hail-gusts swirl'd 
 In fury on the earth — a tempest-pall; 
 And warningly the thunder of the fall 
 Of leaden, gale-lash'd surges (Ah ! high-hurl'd 
 Their spume along the ocean waste!); with call 
 Helpless, unheeded of the wings wind-whirl'd! 
 
 A tempest-hour! For, far beyond the sea 
 Whence cleaves this hurtling storm-wind, bursts in 
 
 flood 
 With sheet of leaden deaths upon the land 
 The driven pall of iron and of blood; 
 With consternation of the stricken strand 
 At call unto the cosmic charity! 
 
THE SONNETS 
 
 1915 
 
 I 
 
 Who had believed, O love, that these eight years 
 
 Had darken'd earth's humanities so far 
 
 That nation unto nation now (in war 
 
 Terrible, internecine!) dread arrears 
 
 Of rage with agonies and fury-fears 
 
 Were rendering each to each; while, at the bar 
 
 Of truth condemn'd, hell's horrid avatar 
 
 Teutonic raves, convicted of her peers 
 
 Yet wide-unpunish'd: for the wrong hath might? 
 
 O love, and thou and I have come to hate 
 
 The wrong and wish but war to wreak the right! 
 
 Who had believed? — And yet the Walhall-night 
 
 Enfolds, for all the outrage of earth's fate. 
 
 Our primal perfect peace inviolate. 
 
 189 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 1915 
 
 For righteous is the wrath, as we have learn'd, 
 
 (And very consonant with holy joy) 
 
 Which leapeth up in judgment to destroy 
 
 The seed of him who hath betray'd and spurn'd 
 
 His oath; his neighbor outraged hath and burn'd, 
 
 Tortured and crucified; without annoy 
 
 Provocative man, woman, girl and boy 
 
 Assassinate, tenfold thereby hath earn'd 
 
 The felon-end mankind must execute. 
 
 Yea, consonant with love, to lift secure 
 
 The future human race lest heart be brute! 
 
 And so an absolute union I impute 
 
 To us who through the passing days endure 
 
 Shocks of a strife, shall make the spirit sure. 
 
 190 
 
THE SONNETS 
 
 COSMOS 
 
 The salt, wild sea was in my years of youth 
 Breast-partner to the throes of surging thought, 
 Best boon-companion to a soul o'er-wrought 
 With violent impulse of tumultuous truth 
 Sans bourn to sane ambition, without ruth 
 Of reverence for authority in aught: 
 An oceanic spirit, gale-distraught; 
 An heart with want of harbor, in good sooth! 
 
 But now with thee to yield a bourn in all, 
 
 A measure of horizon immanent, 
 
 Enarm'd (beneath the chartings of the skies 
 
 In onward, reverent tranquilities) 
 
 I voyage, sustain'd along the firmament 
 
 As thy sweet, tameless breathings lift and fall. 
 
 191 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 LODESTAR 
 
 Athwart the welter of the flote immense 
 Our vessel glided; at her distant aim 
 Directed, yet half-swervingly she came; 
 Answering the purpose or the child-suspense 
 Of him, boy-arbiter of whither-whence. 
 Her tiny pilot whom the new-earn'd game 
 Of seamanhood the playmate waves to tame 
 Enchanted for the human competence. 
 
 And, thwart the foam humane with conquering prow. 
 His childhood-spirit to a reason'd goal 
 I tself directeth (ah ! the new-found soul 
 Grown to the stature of the why and how!); 
 Whilst right and left the wheel to every whim 
 Turns; and to right and left the heart of him. 
 
 192 
 
THE SONNETS 
 
 TWILIGHT 
 
 And now, while (dark upon a pain-worn bed) 
 Alloweth my soul, in sick discouragement, 
 Her failure — these my singing-fires nigh spent; 
 And only for remembrance some charr'd thread 
 Of thought whereby my birth-power had been led 
 To any self-control or world-content — 
 Now, whilst the zeal of poethood thus shent 
 Torments me, through the shadowing is shed 
 (The hour of hearth-side is it; homeward-hour!) 
 A sudden, sweet and vivid childhood-chant 
 High-quavering ardent in the echoey gloam: 
 A song-rebuilding of the genius-home 
 By him inheriting the wasted dower; 
 By him, to turn the soul-dusk jubilant! 
 
 193 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 ARTICULANCE 
 
 Beloved, and what then shall I say of thee 
 Whose poet stands disproven, self-confess'd 
 All-ineffectual in the task address'd — 
 How meekly, eagerly! — thy voice to be? 
 How shall I speak of love who bitterly 
 Avow ineptitude (whate'er the zest) 
 Of rhythm or rhyme of mine to love's behest — 
 That needeth speech of such nobility? 
 
 That needeth nobler than might any man 
 Proclaim; and scorneth nothing heart may give 
 Of humblest utterance till earth hath end — 
 Unto the last, though yet no line pretend 
 A glamour of the grandeur that shall live: 
 Thou counting love's what speech thy lover can ! 
 
 194 
 
THE SONNETS 
 
 OF HERITAGE 
 
 Ah, feeling in myself the fault avow'd 
 Of fruitless effort and a life at loss — 
 Who onetime aim'd at mightiest truths across 
 The infinite vistas and with voice aloud 
 Declared in thee the universe endow'd 
 Godlike and firmamental — from the dross 
 And scum of mine own spirit, feebly gross, 
 I gaze on him our offspring; and am proud. 
 
 Proud of a fatherhood to such a child! 
 
 For he in thy firm beauty is so wrought 
 
 And steep'd with thine, the magic of his mind; 
 
 That of the father-part how fear to find 
 
 The empty imagery, or for aught 
 
 Bewail in him thy being undefiled? 
 
 195 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 JUVENTUS MUNDI 
 
 O HANDS to work unwonted, little feet 
 At will upon earth's by-ways hurrying past 
 In half-pretended errand, mission sweet 
 Sith self-imposed by each caprice the last! 
 How at each fresh imperative (to meet 
 Child-mandates of imaginations vast) 
 Ye imitate a labor; yet and cheat 
 Toil of its sting — in joy each tool held fast! 
 
 Each tiniest skill in eagerness acquired, 
 In gladness wielded, for the half-work's sake! 
 O little hands and feet, so soft and small. 
 So unaware of universal thrall! 
 May ye, of play-imaginings inspired 
 Life-long, the mightiest artist-tasks partake! 
 
 196 
 
THE SONNETS 
 
 MID-DECADE 
 
 I 
 
 By whimsy of the birthday benison 
 
 (Oh! big and manful seems the small man-child!) 
 
 Behold the mother with pretension mild 
 
 Enarming in a rhythmic fro-and-yon 
 
 And lullaby of infancies agone 
 
 The five-year bosom-burden fun-beguiled! 
 
 Whilst he, in merry antiphon and wild. 
 
 Himself by song asserts the boyhood won. 
 
 Sobeit. An admiration ever new 
 
 Shall aid us in a life-time to defy 
 
 The pain of vanish'd guardianships, regret 
 
 Of cradled babe-possession ! — Dear child, and yet. 
 
 However afresh to love thy love shall try. 
 
 No speech than infancy can ring more true! 
 
 197 
 
POEMS DOMESnC 
 
 MID-DECADE 
 
 II 
 
 Ah, well I heed the weightier ethic worth 
 Of earnest toward child-service, word and tune 
 Selective to love-purpose, sonship-boon 
 Ideal! And, lo! the piety-rebirth 
 Haply in least achieved; at worst, in mirth 
 Or grief attempted, wreath'd or rugged-hewn. 
 An offering on art's home-altar strewn 
 And sacrifice to this the parent-hearth! 
 
 No doubt, dear lad, but every year shall feel 
 
 The waxing moral instinct: brought at last 
 
 To reverent, harmonied companionship 
 
 In rich-won adolescence. — But the lip 
 
 Of parenthood hath press'd and clipp'd too fast 
 
 Fulfilment in thy cradle-land o'leal! 
 
 198 
 
THE SONNETS 
 
 TO A RHAPSODIST 
 
 I'd ne'er have thought the nigh-forgotten rhyme 
 
 Thus touching in its infantile address; 
 
 Thus moving in remembrance of a time 
 
 Age-irretrievable! A boyish stress 
 
 And zest for courage of the goblin prime; 
 
 A childhood-rapture of the elfin-press; 
 
 Fantastic earnest of the. nursery mime — 
 
 I thank thee, lad, for thy fine artlessness! 
 
 Too far, too far, dear babe, am I astream 
 
 Down the long, narrowing sluice-sweep of the years; 
 
 Too sightless even for a drowning dream. 
 
 Foundering forever with ignoble fears. 
 
 But thou with art unguess'd hast time's tide turn'd; 
 
 And youth'd me in a vision long-unlearn'd! 
 
 199 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 INTERPRETATIONS 
 
 How sweetly self-sufficient is the verse 
 Of childhood to the childhood-utterance? 
 How absolute yon impulse to rehearse 
 In sage simplicity the fairy dance! — 
 There is an art of innocence, none worse 
 For being in the mouths of babes, perchance, 
 Announced: whom unbelieven things immerse 
 In faith, and man-rejected truths entrance! 
 
 Ah, could I, love, but once forget to task 
 The soul with inquisition of disproof; 
 Neglect, of viewless images to ask 
 The wherefore of their silence — nor, aloof, 
 Avow the poet-failure; but with thee 
 Take of our child such poet-ardency! 
 
 200 
 
THE SONNETS 
 
 THE FETE FORGOTTEN 
 
 And thou another year hast lived away 
 
 I n fond devotion of a perfect wife, 
 
 A perfect mother — through the world's sad strife 
 
 A poise of peace, a refuge in dismay, 
 
 A very present heaven of everyday 
 
 Where hell hath so got hold of outward life. 
 
 Where furious hates at last are largeliest rife 
 
 And men's divinity hath shrunk to clay! — 
 
 And thou through this sad year hast been as erst 
 
 Protectress, inspiration. Whilst my soul 
 
 So troubled and so self-estranged hath lain 
 
 That hardly for the solace of her pain 
 
 Had she remember'd still, as at the first. 
 
 To touch thy garment-blessing and be whole. 
 
 201 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 DIVINITY 
 
 Nor mine own festal eve hast thou forgot; 
 But crownest it, to one more wreathed stage 
 Along the years of our love-pilgrimage, 
 'Soe'er obscure the altar of thy lot! 
 Yea, thou of faith wilt not abate one jot; 
 But honorest this mine emptiness, for gage 
 In tenure of undying heritage: 
 Me fame according where a worth is not. 
 
 Deluded worshipper! And yet the smell 
 Of votive incense sunsetward ascending 
 Hath waken'd in thy satyr of the weed 
 Old premonitions of a god impending; 
 Echoes of inspirations, in a screed 
 Of heart-dawn and thy daily miracle! 
 
 202 
 
THE SONNETS 
 
 TO JANE, IN CRISIS 
 
 Truly, a very trifling agony, 
 A moment only of intenser dread; 
 And then the pain that had beset thy bed 
 Forever banish'd in a memory! 
 Though yet my soul which horribly sat by. 
 Mine eyes that saw thine eyes sightless and dead — 
 t^^How can they bear the bitterness then bred 
 Prophetic of the hour, our love must die? 
 But love is nowise now sick unto death 
 Nor vision shaken with the silly fear. 
 For, sight to sight, thy sweet-reviving breath 
 Returns with soul-light and a meaning clear 
 Enshrined. While, bravely with a fresh heart-faith. 
 We know that life hath never been more near. 
 
 203 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 ON ONE LEARNING TO READ 
 
 I 
 
 Now that thy tongue hath deftly earn'd a speech 
 Quaint, innocent, entrancing to the ear 
 Of hearts for whom thy baby-lips endear 
 Whatever wisdom they'd essay to teach; 
 Now that the utter'd word is thine, in each 
 Soul-circumstance, beyond the smile or tear; 
 Behold, a mystery beyond compeer: 
 The written word within thy vision-reach! 
 
 Thou tiniest novice at the temple-porch 
 So earnest of admission! Mayest thou find 
 Within, no ritual of the chill and blind 
 Nor yet the riot and the passion-scorch 
 Of souls a-reeking! But, the veil behind, 
 Thy vestal-mother and the still, white torch! 
 
 204 
 
THE SONNETS 
 
 ON ONE LEARNING TO READ 
 
 II 
 
 For as a mother open-arm'd and warm 
 
 Yet all-illumining with calm advice 
 
 (Unlike purveyors of a paradise!) 
 
 Shall learning talisman from soul-alarm. 
 
 Allow life-understanding without harm, 
 
 Whilst leading thee, through years of fire or ice 
 
 Alike, to bourn of passion-sacrifice 
 
 By wealth and breadth and strength of spirit-charm. 
 
 And, lo! with what self-sacrificial aim 
 
 In abnegation of all faith-demand 
 
 Men's wisdoms He about thee, gravely bland. 
 
 For thine informing toward a truth and claim 
 
 Which supersede them! — Be thy heart and hand 
 
 Reverent of the glory whence we came. 
 
 205 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 ON ONE LEARNING TO READ 
 
 III 
 
 And when, arriven in novel wisdom, thou — 
 Of human record the fresh-risen star — 
 Liftest, to whisper multitudes afar 
 Thine insights universal; then as now 
 May innocence of eye, the grave, bland brow 
 Of him whose poet-making need not mar 
 The magic and the peace of truths that are 
 Declare thee and thy pieties avow. 
 
 Ah, little son, beneath the portico 
 Spell out thy simple secret, at the feet 
 Of her who daily, hourly lessons sweet 
 In sympathy to all who love and know 
 Teacheth. And there thy father thou shalt greet 
 Haply together as we come or go. 
 
 206 
 
THE SONNETS 
 
 RENASCENCE 
 
 Ah! yesterday seem'd he no more a child, 
 Half-manly-grown in outdoor-boyhood ways, 
 A being too beyond the ingle-days 
 For heed of care and comfort. Crib-exiled, 
 By morning-sweetness of the world beguiled. 
 He faced with eagerness of early gaze 
 The six-year fascination of sun-maze; 
 Nor guidance craved nor warning of the wild. 
 
 But, now, by serious body's-hurt laid low 
 (Sustain'd in innocent enterprise; the pain 
 In bravery endured) he lieth — so 
 Dependent and appealing! That the hour 
 Of first-borne man-disaster bears again 
 What awe-fiU'd raptures of a parent-power! 
 
 207 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 READING ALOUD 
 
 It may be only how a hero blue 
 
 Horn-blowing calls the cattle from the corn; 
 
 Or how upon a faery-fecund morn 
 
 The magic-marvel of the beanstalk grew; 
 
 Or any boyish epic fancy-true; 
 
 Which he, in pride of talent lately-born 
 
 And tactful solace to our age forlorn. 
 
 With care explains and elocutions due. 
 
 But there he sits upon the hearthside stool 
 Already with power afresh to thrill the mind 
 Of men and angels by the nurse-lore stale. 
 For man and angel listen. And the pool 
 Is troubled of our spirits, that childhood-kind 
 New-make such wonder of a life-worn talc. 
 
 208 
 
THE SONNETS 
 
 AFTERMATH 
 
 So, dear, the tiny gladsome guests are gone 
 
 Who graced in childHness the pleasant feast 
 
 Of boyhood-anniversal; last and least 
 
 Departed; and the elfin revel done. 
 
 And, where the pigmy twinkling candles shone, 
 
 A little echoey scent of incense-ceased; 
 
 A little laughter left of fairy priest 
 
 His flock who bless'd upon the birthday-throne! 
 
 So, dear, for thy soon-following festival 
 More solemn service: he and thou and I, 
 Humane-eterne; with but that friend, from all, 
 Who most within the temple holily 
 Museth; and most upon the cloudy sky 
 Hath vision of the tone-truths coronal. 
 
 209 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 ON ONE RETURNING FROM A MISSION 
 OVERSEAS 
 
 But better is it that the happy door 
 Ope wide to her admittance at a touch; 
 Then shut behind her, entering in such 
 An holy homecoming: and nothing more. 
 Nothing — save, in your joy, the danger-o'er; 
 The pain for mission'd absence-over-much 
 Forever ended; and the spirit-clutch 
 Of soul to soul in love-remember'd lore! 
 
 And I, who leave you to her coming-home, 
 I carry nightward something of the gleam 
 From out your waiting windows wide astream 
 And vision of the hearth-fire warmth apart; 
 Sharing the resurrection in her heart 
 Who 'mid sea-shadows of death hath dared the 
 foam. 
 
 210 
 
THE SONNETS 
 
 GOSPEL 
 
 I 
 
 Dear wife, that we are happy as our hope 
 In daily mutual duty, joy of mind 
 For just performance of an heart-divined 
 Soul-common courtesy beyond the scope 
 Of folk for whom no intercourse may ope 
 The spirit-confidence of marriage-kind; 
 That we are dwelling as our faith design'd 
 And not as they who in the blindness grope 
 Of lone unsympathies without or plan 
 Or purport spirit-worthy: shall success 
 Harden with pride our hearts whose high self- 
 claim 
 Baseth in love-allowance, or the stress 
 Of inmost triumphing swerve pity's aim 
 By largess to enhearten whom we can? 
 
 211 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 GOSPEL 
 
 II 
 
 Nay; save our sympathies bore radiant fruit 
 (Though evanescent haply) ; to the grief 
 Of them in inward darkness respite brief 
 As by assurance of the right at root 
 Of all their dim unreason; if but mute 
 We sat and shone not; of best joys a chief 
 Were wanting from the beauty of belief, 
 And selfish ease, beneath the veriest brute. 
 Were ours in lieu of loyal harmony. 
 And so in awed humility we dare 
 Attempt the art-evangel of a song, 
 The vivid bourgeon, on the doubtful air. 
 Of our sweet, serious seeding — that erelong 
 Some soul may eat thereof and may not die. 
 
 212 
 
THE SONNETS 
 
 GOSPEL 
 
 III 
 
 And if, of all in the world, such soul were he 
 
 Our child who daily, marvel-manifold, 
 
 Grows myriadwise in promise boyhood-bold 
 
 Of vigorous achievement; if we be 
 
 In virtue of this psalm of thee and me 
 
 An inspiration unto joys untold 
 
 And manhood-masteries by love ensoul'd 
 
 In him our worshipp'd offspring — verily 
 
 Then were the risk well-taken and the curse 
 
 Of spirit-arrogance in splendor-boast 
 
 Not ill to answer; nor the grief beneath 
 
 Our joy by reason of earth's hopeless host 
 
 Who sink, for all earth's sunshine, dark in death, 
 
 Too heavy for the seraph of our verse! 
 
 213 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 INSPIRATION 
 
 How limitless upon the morning hour 
 The brooding of a wisdom over thee. 
 Who leadest with a patience lovingly 
 The boyhood-spirit forth to book-won power; 
 So passing daily down the infinite dower 
 Of world-without-end human mastery! 
 Dear heart, how half-divine the prophecy 
 Of open'd mind unto the lisping knower! 
 And, lo! the compensation; thou and I 
 Age-proven and all-wanting — infinite 
 Our unachievement! Yet in him our chance 
 Of human betterment by soul-advance 
 Beyond earth-understanding, clear and high, 
 Gleameth as at the first: that there be light! 
 
 214 
 
THE SONNETS 
 
 THE GREAT CRUSADE 
 
 Because, if late and still reluctantly. 
 Our leaders have allow'd the nation's wrath 
 Fierce-pent to flame in righteousness, a path 
 Opens unto the feet unused of me 
 Whose bourn exceedeth prophecy. And we 
 With heart-acclaim accept the sacred bath 
 Of fire and blood ; for service, duty hath 
 Long, long demanded of our recreancy. 
 
 The end we see not. But the way is known, 
 The sword-borne covenant ; a freedom-worth 
 Through world-obedience to the homeland cause. 
 Thou, my home-keeper! 1, who sally forth, 
 Salute thee in a strength nowise mine own 
 Save as I steel me in thy holy laws. 
 
 215 
 
POEMS DOMESTIC 
 
 AVE ATQUE VALE 
 
 Out of the bitter turmoil, to return 
 To thee; and in the love-tide of the year! 
 The farewell said to all the heart held dear; 
 Hard wind and icy wave and death-thought stern 
 Alone permitted of the soul's concern: 
 Till sudden thy soft speech upon the ear. 
 Thy sun-sweet presence vivifying near — 
 Though heroes fall afar and cities burn! 
 
 Ah, love, the unexampled miracle. 
 The nature-resurrection unforeseen! 
 Till now anew love's infinite farewell; 
 Soul's endless dedication, nothing loth. 
 In absolute offering: within us both 
 An heart-of-service ultimate, serene! 
 
 216 
 
THE SONNETS 
 
 ARMISTICE 
 
 Again the healing in thy garment-hem — 
 As His of Nazareth! — The world-wide war 
 Is ended; and hearth-rapture as of yore 
 Renew'd unto the remnant-ash of them 
 Who with their naked bodies sought to stem 
 The molten deluge. Unto them no more 
 The fiery sacrifice, who bled before 
 Verdun, Ypres, Baghdad or Jerusalem! 
 
 A victory universal and a peace 
 
 Prevailing by the bravery of men 
 
 In holiest wrath for every creed's crusade 
 
 Against all-blasphemy! And I too cease 
 
 My tiniest stint of sacrifice; again 
 
 Rendering to thee the manhood thou hast made. 
 
 217 
 
;jnnt. 
 
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