nO 
 
 SPRING IN LONDON 
 
 A POEM 
 ON THE NATURE OF THINGS 
 
 BY 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 E, P. DUTTON & CO. 
 
 1907 
 
SPRING IN LONDON 
 
 A POEM 
 ON THE NATURE OF THINGS 
 
 BY 
 E. A. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 E. P. DUTTON & CO. 
 
 1907 
 
LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
 Two Copies RccfciviG 
 
 NOV 21 1307 
 
 y£epyrixht Entry 
 CLASS Ou XXc. Nu, 
 COPY B. / 
 
 
 .0 
 
 0' 
 
 -bl 
 
 Copyright, 1907 
 
 BY 
 
 E. P. BUTTON & CO. 
 
 Ube ftnicherbociter press, flew l^ork 
 
SPRING IN LONDON 
 
SPRING IN LONDON 
 
 High on the window-ledge the burnished dove, 
 With rosy feet parading, courts his love, 
 Pausing awhile to send upon the air 
 His joy melodious for all men to share, 
 While she attentive feels the season thrill 
 With might resistless through each ruffling 
 
 quill, 
 Presage of days to come when love must give 
 Place to endeavour that new life may live. 
 And their young loves renew as those of yore, 
 At the sweet year's returning loved before. lo 
 
 Now on the sward, where tender suns caress 
 The pearly snowdrop's drooping loveliness, 
 
2 SPRING IN LONDON 
 
 The peacock wheels and shakes his jewelled 
 
 fans, 
 At once his longing and the sound that bans 
 The dear approach of others, while the air 
 Rings with his triumph cry and their despair. 
 
 Or, when the Morn, distrustful of cold 
 
 skies. 
 Keeps late her mantle, till the sun arise, 
 And, lifting it, strikes down into her heart, 
 Yet unawakened, with a warmer dart; 20 
 
 At whose compelling power the vital springs 
 Leap in the germ, and lo, a crash of wings, 
 A splash and plunge of w^aterfowl who lave 
 Their sudden ardour in the cooling wave ; 
 After his kind this utters on the air 
 His joy sonorous for all men to share, 
 While that attentive feels the season thrill 
 With might resistless through each ruffling 
 
 quill. 
 
SPRING IN LONDON 3 
 
 And Earth renews her race by field and flood, 
 
 As when He made them who pronounced them 
 
 good. 30 
 
 Or haply from the fierce primordial glow 
 Of worlds in being, through the urge and flow, 
 His spirit, labouring to express the plan, 
 Which through far aeons was to end in Man, 
 Drew forth from matter forms in rude essay, 
 Monstrous, barbaric, born to pass away. 
 And in the crash of continents upturned 
 Prepared new kingdoms, and the lesson 
 
 learned 
 (If we may take the fancy from his page, 
 Who Hmned it for us with immortal rage) 40 
 Of power made impotent before the will 
 Of one less strong, but whose more potent 
 
 skill 
 By art and order wins where fury fails, 
 And, seeming to be conquered, yet prevails, 
 
4 SPRING IN LONDON 
 
 Though taught by suffering to subdue his pride 
 And yield to rule at last. Thus as a guide 
 To deeper truth the legend we may take, 
 And find that it was written for our sake. 
 
 But from that other to more sacred lore 
 Turning, we may His purpose best explore, 50 
 And find it in the voice, if but we can 
 Hear it, which speaks within the heart of man, 
 Dreadful or kindly, fraught with peace or 
 
 woe, 
 Our guide, or following Fury, as we go. 
 For this, 't is sure, from all created kind 
 Sets man apart, his still-foreknowing mind, 
 And conscious knowledge, sense of loss and 
 
 gain, 
 Reflection, and the price of knowledge, pain. 
 
 But does not Nature, "red in tooth and 
 claw," 
 Make pain the same prerogative and law 60 
 
SPRING IN LONDON 5 
 
 For all her creatures? Pitying man, subdue 
 
 Your own self-pity, and believe it true 
 
 That He, who formed them with these powers 
 
 for joy, 
 For a wise purpose added the alloy 
 Of pain, without which being could not be 
 (Godhead itself from pain may not be free), 
 Or, being, in abortive sloth had lain. 
 Till schooled to effort by the rod of pain ; 
 They die in myriads, but the blow which kills 
 Spares them old age and its attendant ills. 70 
 
 For in reflection lies the power to draw 
 Things from their course determined under 
 
 law. 
 Which without effect, though for ends unseen, 
 Cradles the universe in lap serene. 
 Thus all things visible we see confined 
 To functions uniform in every kind. 
 Taking no thought, with neither choice nor will 
 
6 SPRING IN LONDON 
 
 Performing miracles of matchless skill. 
 Blown out of nothing in the void profound, 
 The whirling vortex forms the solid ground, 80 
 And on her fatal way, divinely led, 
 The rolling orb we call the Earth is sped; 
 To turn, her function, and, in turning, give 
 The alternation by which all things live. 
 And so, through night and day, she could 
 
 not choose 
 But weave the garment which she still 
 
 renews. 
 So in each kind untaught from hour to hour 
 Creatures emerging find to hand the power 
 They use without regret or haste or rest. 
 Since that they must, and what they must is 
 
 best, 
 By which their several natures unperceived 91 
 Take shape through effort and by wants 
 
 relieved. 
 And if through waste the inevitable law 
 
SPRING IN LONDON 7 
 
 Is seen to work, and with devouring maw 
 Mars in the process, born of stress and strife, 
 Myriads of forms to make a single life, 
 Is not the lesson that the life must be 
 Less perishable than the forms we see, 
 More precious in the sight of Him who lends 
 To form the power of living for His ends? 100 
 
 But in reflection and the backward throw 
 Of judgment gathered in the ebb and flow 
 Of mortal circumstance and human cares, 
 The plaint of story and the theme of prayers, 
 Comes hesitation and selection made, 
 Motive, the object and the issue weighed. 
 And for the creatures what the law makes 
 
 plain 
 Becomes in man a sense of doubt and pain. 
 So wrested from its native use we see 
 Each several impulse, which in them is free,i 10 
 By absence of reflection, from the sense 
 
8 SPRING IN LONDON 
 
 Felt in mankind as loss of innocence: 
 Anger, the fire of courage and the glow 
 Which braves extinction, made in the man the 
 
 woe 
 Which works in envy, though by grace divine 
 Transformed to energies of thought which 
 
 shine 
 In deeds of service; love, the source of all 
 Delight in nature, whose imperious call 
 All things obey for increase, made the play 
 Of thoughts destructive and of deeds which 
 
 slay 1 20 
 
 Spirit and flesh, or, to subjection brought, 
 The spring in man of fancy and of thought 
 Transcendent, where through forms of art we 
 
 find 
 Kindled a sense of longing in the mind. 
 Thus it appears that man, to law though 
 
 bound. 
 In a distinctive liberty is found, 
 
SPRING IN LONDON 9 
 
 Unshared by those for whom the word on high 
 Was final in "Increase and multiply." 
 In these we see His works, in these behold 
 The operation of His power unfold, 130 
 
 But not in these His nature is revealed, 
 There the word given or the book unsealed, 
 Fair to behold they still must bear their part 
 The oracles of God are in the heart. 
 
 Of this the witness among men of old, 
 In the divine foreknowledge, we are told. 
 Was left, lest strength o'ergrown in labours 
 
 rude 
 (The hard condition of an earth subdued^) 
 Should lose the sense of Right^ through pride 
 
 and lust 
 
 Spurning her ancient alters in the dust, 140 
 
 And obdurate to pity, faith or ruth, 
 
 > Genesis i: 28. 
 
 2 Mky} of the Greeks. \ 
 
lo SPRING IN LONDON 
 
 Men should turn beasts and miss the way of 
 
 truth. 
 Thus to the varying needs of race and clime 
 Voices responsive through recorded time 
 Come from the borderland which lies be- 
 tween 
 Things grossly visible and things unseen. 
 Always the spirit, for the spirit's needs 
 Watching unwearied, cherishes the seeds 
 Of its self-knowledge, through which lies the 
 
 way 
 To its unfolding in the light of day, 150 
 
 Planted divinely ere the world began. 
 Which was to bear the destiny of man. 
 And as the good which is not won through pain 
 And effort for the spirit is not gain. 
 So all the story of this world of ours 
 Is but a ministration to its powers. 
 Which through our common life the impress 
 find 
 
SPRING IN LONDON ii 
 
 Of act, restraint and discipline of mind; 
 For pleasure weakens, and a way to Heaven 
 Through thought alone to mortals is not given. 
 
 Late grew the power of thought, and later 
 
 still 1 6 1 
 
 Of thought in action, where the conscious 
 
 will 
 Judges, corrects, prepares, restrains, intends, 
 Renouncing present for remoter ends, 
 Unsought by earlier life, whose weaker view 
 Was bounded by the simple wants it knew, 
 Slowly maturing under stress of change 
 And circumstance to sight of longer range. 
 And as the powers adapted to the strife 
 Of earthly being gathered shape and life, 170 
 And took in time the kingdom in control 
 Held long in trust by forces of the soul. 
 Less in the field of consciousness was found 
 The presence of those ancient forces, bound 
 
12 SPRING IN LONDON 
 
 In legendary story and dethroned 
 
 By younger gods. Calm was the life they 
 
 owned 
 In the light's borders, and tradition feigned 
 The age as golden in the days they reigned. 
 So still in men called savage we may trace 
 Instinctive powers once common to the 
 
 race, i8o 
 
 Who, on a lower plane of life than ours, 
 In thought unformulated pass the hours. 
 And, lacking foresight, also are more free 
 From care and apprehension than are we. 
 
 Who has not wondered, under southern 
 
 skies. 
 Hearing the sounds monotonous which rise 
 From throb of drum light touched by swarthy 
 
 hand. 
 The cries far carried through the silent land, 
 Passing for song, where, swaying to and fro. 
 
SPRING IN LONDON 13 
 
 The circling bands of frantic dancers go, 1 90 
 About and round, and ever and anon 
 Women's shrill voices urge the measure on, 
 And from his pillow, strewn beneath the 
 
 dome 
 Of alien stars, he sees again his home — 
 Who has not wondered whence the pleasure 
 
 springs, 
 And what it is which lends the spirit wings, 
 Waking in repetition sudden fires. 
 Kin to the unity the soul desires, 
 Which with more joy those breasts impassive 
 
 fill 
 Than all we offer for their good or ill? 200 
 
 And yet those forces, though beneath the 
 ground 
 Of our life's level captive held and bound — 
 Not otherwise than, hurled from heaven's 
 abode. 
 
14 SPRING IN LONDON 
 
 The fabled Titan feels the crushing load 
 
 Of Etna, but, immortal, yet may brave 
 
 The power which quelled his fury, and a 
 
 wave 
 Of fierce destruction send, if so he can, 
 On fruitful fields, and wreck the works of 
 
 man — 
 Sometimes burst forth, like unsuspected 
 
 springs. 
 And flood the plane of customary things. 210 
 Of such are primal instincts, seen most clear 
 Where love in weakness triumphs over fear, 
 Desires and passions, forces of the soul 
 The will must break, and broken may control, 
 By habit and suggestion, to inspire 
 Our weak intentions with a living fire. 
 
 Again in insight we may see made plain 
 Things sought with labour, and long sought 
 in vain' 
 
SPRING IN LONDON 15 
 
 As when, in some rude age, a man appears, 
 And holds a mirror up to future years, 220 
 With royal ease embracing in his view 
 Thoughts, actions, manners, lives of every 
 
 hue 
 And colour, in relation so combined 
 By art of words mysterious, that the mind, 
 Receiving of their import, sees its thought, 
 Formless before, expressed, and what it 
 
 sought. 
 But could not find or utter, at its call 
 To nourish and delight itself withal. 
 
 Homer wrote Homer, that is my belief. 
 In this preferring Andrew Lang to Leaf,^ 230 
 And Johnson, with a poet's judgment, said, 
 That of the books of all the Iliad 
 No one could be displaced. The sacred fire 
 Burns not in syndicates; schools may inspire 
 > Homer and his Age: Andrew Lang. 
 
i6 SPRING IN LONDON 
 
 Art imitative; but the primal spring 
 Rises in solitude. So for a thing 
 Sacred I must revere the book which holds 
 A dead world's living utterance in its folds, 
 Subject to no corruption, bearing on 
 Witness to other men, when we are gone, 240 
 That spirit is, and, of the things we see, 
 Is the one true and sole reality. 
 
 With difference in degree, though not of 
 kind. 
 We see how insight works in human mind, 
 As though some special purpose to attain 
 Each race had found its being, nor in vain 
 Suffered in turn and hoped beneath the sun, 
 And ceased from living when its course was 
 
 run. 
 Thus Greece in thought, in action Rome pre- 
 vails, 
 While that in action, this in insight fails, 250 
 
SPRING IN LONDON 17 
 
 The one prepares the soil, the other lays 
 Lands to broad lands, and intersects with 
 
 ways 
 The world for its estate, ere yet was sent, 
 For the life-giving and the nourishment, 
 The stream of revelation rising pure 
 In the recesses of a race obsctire, 
 Narrow, tenacious, setting all its store 
 On gain and reverence of ancestral lore, 
 For if upon a world yet unsubdued. 
 Peopled by beings ignorant and rude, 260 
 Had dawned the consciousness of things 
 
 divine 
 In all its singleness, as rays, which shine 
 For light, in too much ardour may destroy. 
 So in the world the powers which we em- 
 ploy 
 Had withered in the unfolding, and un- 
 trained 
 By life's endeavour spirit had remained. 
 
i8 SPRING IN LONDON 
 
 And yet, though to the light his eyes were 
 
 sealed, 
 Which at the time appointed was revealed, 
 Not less with piety and reverence due 
 The art of Homer shows the good and true 270 
 In human conduct, winning through delight 
 Men's hearts from baseness, and the sense 
 
 of right 
 Commending to a world of men whose life 
 Lay most in deeds of violence and strife. 
 And if his deities, with men confused, 
 Shared in man's nature and their powers 
 
 abused, 
 Yet so man's life, unequal yet to soar 
 To purer contemplation, was the more 
 Ennobled, than if earth and heaven lay 
 Impassably apart; and so the day 280 
 
 For him was sacred^ and the night divine, 
 
 yiEpov f/ju6p — "the sacred day": the epithet 
 being used descriptively and without emphasis or 
 special significance. 
 
SPRING IN LONDON 19 
 
 As part of nature, breathing in his line 
 In her unconscious beauty and the power 
 Which rends the forest or uplifts the flower; 
 Ere yet the sun of innocence went in, 
 And on the earth the shadow cast of sin — 
 An idle thought perchance, and idly turned. 
 For with reluctance is the lesson learned 
 That painful are the ends which men pursue, 
 And distance lends enchantment to the view. 
 But let it pass; by innocence I mean 291 
 
 Absence of feeling of the gulf between 
 Man and his thought, and not a state from 
 
 crime, 
 The issue relative of place and time, 
 Exempted; and by sin, the sense which feels 
 The sinning, where the light of grace reveals 
 The far remove from purity and truth, 
 The way marked out through penitence and 
 
 ruth 
 To better purpose, which no human law 
 
20 SPRING IN LONDON 
 
 May satisfy, though still it hold in awe 300 
 Crime, as it can, and must, to vindicate 
 Security and order for the State; 
 And so it came to pass that love prevailed, 
 And found a way where law and justice 
 failed. 
 
 Truth lies uneasy on the bed of power; 
 And earthly rule at best is for the hour; 
 The force controlled to light our path and 
 
 guide 
 May, if ungoverned, turn to hate and pride; 
 And 't is the law of spirit, and its sin, 
 Power and dominion over men to win, 310 
 And so perchance were trial and distress 
 Set for their portion, who, possessing less 
 Of the world's kingdom, are endowed the 
 
 more 
 With the hid treasure of the spirits' store. 
 Spiritual men in every age, we see, 
 
SPRING IN LONDON 21 
 
 Are more remorseless in authority 
 Than those who, fashioned of a grosser clay, 
 Are less apart from men, and find a way 
 More easy for their halting steps to tread 
 Than that more steep by which the soul is 
 led. 320 
 
 In the persuasion of example pure 
 Lies more the remedy and sovereign cure 
 For human ills than all that men for man 
 By laws have ordered since the world began. 
 
 When stretching far before the hirnian face 
 Lay the ungarnered harvest of the race. 
 Hardly in thought arising from the soil 
 It was to work with patience, skill and toil, 
 The mind, on action bending, had not turned 
 Its gaze within, nor yet the nature learned 330 
 Of its own reflex image to explore, 
 And what was unexplained became the lore 
 Of men by reverence fenced about and fear, 
 
22 SPRING IN LONDON 
 
 Called variously magician, augur, seer 
 Whose art, in pristine purity, believed 
 In deeper wisdom through the soul received 
 In dreams or contemplation than was found 
 Amid the concourse of the world around. 
 Kept then and guarded were the secret 
 
 springs 
 In symbols old and fond imaginings 340 
 
 Of mystic import, serving for their hour, 
 But bursting as the sheath which binds the 
 
 flower. 
 At the due season, when the spirit stirs 
 In riper consciousness, nor mounting errs 
 From its true nature, though it leave be- 
 hind 
 Some drift of beauty tossed upon the wind. 
 For through the forms adapted to our needs 
 And natures, varying widely as our creeds. 
 The spirit presses, moving still in mind 
 The last expression of itself to find, 350 
 
SPRING IN LONDON 23 
 
 In the long cycle of its journey through 
 The manifold to apprehension true. 
 
 So too the Greek, whose love of life required 
 Corporeal form for what his soul desired, 
 And in his fancy peopled lands and seas 
 With shapes of beauty for divinities. 
 Yet through the days he passed beneath the 
 
 sun 
 Still in the many recognized the one, 
 As where in Homer, at his need extreme, 
 The king of men invokes the lord supreme, 360 
 And he whose mighty line, like wave on 
 
 wave, 
 Burst on the multitude he sought to save 
 From folly, pride of wealth and lust of power, 
 Speaks through the Pythian priestess, at 
 
 the hour 
 Of invocation, where she traces through 
 The line oracular in order due. 
 
24 SPRING IN LONDON 
 
 ** And last in this my prayer on him I call, 
 Zeus the supreme and highest over all." ^ 
 
 So also when the centuries had brought 
 The world together, and the power of thought 
 And sifting speech had rifled all the store 371 
 Of ancient faith, and widening more and more 
 Between the many ignorant and few 
 A gulf was set, and one, who writing knew 
 The world's philosophies, essayed to find 
 Solace in formal knowledge and to bind 
 The soul to matter, yet the song he vsings 
 By its own native power at times takes wings, 
 As, breaking from his grasp, it leaves the 
 
 ground, 
 And mounts in harmony of solemn sound, 380 
 Requiring still of unresponsive skies 
 The present deity its theme denies, 
 Yet must imagine, in its flight unfurled, 
 1 Aeschylus, Eumenides. 
 
SPRING IN LONDON 25 
 
 Beyond the flaming outworks of the world. 
 Beyond the flow, beyond the ceaseless strife 
 Of atom hurled on atom and the life 
 Resulting, in his mind there seemed to be 
 Some seat apart of careless deity. 
 For what is God, he thought, must, under fate, 
 And in its nature, keep a timeless state, 3 90 
 Removed in utter distance, where no sound 
 From world of ours disturbs the peace pro- 
 found. 
 Needing us not, immune from all our cares. 
 Untouched by anger and unmoved by prayers.^ 
 
 1 The lines of Lucretius of which the six preced- 
 ing lines purport to be a translation, are well known : 
 Omnis enim per se divom natura necessest 
 Immortali asvo summa cum pace fruatur, 
 Semota ab nostris rebus seiunctaque longe; 
 Nam privata dolore omni, privata periclis, 
 Ipsa suis pollens opibus, nil indiga nostri, 
 Nee bene promeritis capitur neque tangitur ira. 
 De Rerum Natura, ii, 646-651. 
 
26 SPRING IN LONDON 
 
 Oh, how shall I, ungraced, with lips pro- 
 fane, 
 Approach more nearly to the blessed train 
 Of those who, pure in heart, in patience wait 
 The heavenly vision, when the opening gate 
 Of passage from this life rolls back and brings 
 Before their sight the promise of the things 400 
 God hath prepared for those whom love has 
 
 brought 
 Into His harmony in will and thought? 
 How may I dare to teach, who have not 
 
 known 
 The way of knowledge, nor yet made my own 
 The lesson of that life which on the earth, 
 Even as those words were uttered,^ had its 
 
 birth? 
 Enough if late, and with unworthy hand, 
 I bring my offering weak, and hope to stand 
 J The peom of Lucretius was probably written 
 •Bbout 55 B.C. 
 
SPRING IN LONDON 27 
 
 Somewhere afar, and point to men the way 
 Their steps, Uke mine, may follow to a day 410 
 Of clearer knowledge, running golden through 
 All art and nature to the one and true. 
 
28 SPRING IN LONDON 
 
 II 
 
 'Tis something sweet the road of life to 
 
 tread 
 By friends companioned and by courage led, 
 And hopes high-mounting, ere the hand of fate, 
 Falling in envy, has laid waste our state ; 
 Who can repair our loss, and what restore 
 The joy and comfort which we knew before? 
 Who can give back the flawless heart, the 
 
 name 
 Unsullied, or unspeak the word of shame, 
 Undo the deed disastrous, or declare 9 
 
 Things are the same again as once they were? 
 For time contains them, and earth rolling on 
 Bears them away irrevocably gone. 
 
 Hear Shakespear's art — not as the world 
 believes. 
 
SPRING IN LONDON 29 
 
 Most deeply conscious where it most deceives — 
 Shred in, in some great page of pomp and 
 
 power, 
 The tumbled petals of life's fragile flower, 
 Killed at the wayside by self-censure's frost. 
 The tragedy of reputation lost. ^ 
 
 To err is human; ay, but who may bear 
 Human forgiveness? Love, now here, now 
 
 there, • 20 
 
 May win us from ourselves, and give the 
 
 brain 
 Pause from remembrance and the heart from 
 
 pain. 
 And from a woman's eyes there still may 
 
 shine 
 
 1 As Cassius in Othello, Act ii, Sc. 3 : 
 "lago. What, are you hurt, lieutenant? 
 Cassius. Ay, past all surgery," &c, 
 and Enobarbus in Anthony and Cleopatra, Act iv, 
 Sc. 6 and 9 : 
 
 "I am alone the villain of the earth," &c. 
 
30 SPRING IN LONDON 
 
 Undimmed the pity which men call divine; 
 But we are what we are, and from the round 
 Of separate being no escape is found, 
 As often as we look within and trace 
 The path of self, and meet it face to face. 
 
 Who on that retrospect may pause and say, 
 " Here I was satisfied, or there the way 30 
 Led to the summit of my hopes, and brought, 
 Had I but known it, all the joy I sought?" 
 Who rather, as he journeys, has not found 
 The top surmounted but the rising ground. 
 Which, as he climbs, still opens on his view 
 Remoter heights which melt into the blue? 
 Vainly we would recall some golden hour. 
 When youth and fancy thought to weave a 
 
 bower 
 Of bliss perpetual, and the skies above 
 Flushed roseate with the dawning fires of 
 
 love; 40 
 
SPRING IN LONDON 31 
 
 The day has been upon us and its strife, 
 The dust and heat, its glories and its life, 
 The good, the ill, the pleasure and the pain, 
 Laughter and tears, the losses and the gain, 
 And soon upon our journey will appear 
 The sacred Night, with all her signs austere, 
 As passing from the bounds of light we tread 
 The way still onward where our steps are led. 
 
 But leaving fancy, which an idle time 
 Employs for pleasure, trace we in our rhyme. 
 Which, straining now to see the end in view, 51 
 Presses more onwards, how the old and new 
 Find contact, and the present from the past 
 Takes its inheritance. In time the last 
 We stand upon the earth, and hear the claim 
 Full oft of progress, happy in a mane 
 Which saves a world of thought, and gives 
 
 a tone 
 Of elevation to the things we own 
 
32 SPRING IN LONDON 
 
 For locomotion, and to ease the toil 
 Due, for the sin of Adam, to the soil. 60 
 
 True, that in living we must find delight 
 In ordered excellence; but from our sight 
 How shall we banish all the things which show 
 In health our weakness and in joy our woe, 
 And prove us, when as gods we fain would be, 
 Beneath the laws of frail mortality? 
 
 Desire soon spent, how soon its garland 
 clings 
 In galling fetters, and the joys it brings, 
 To nothing leading, find the aimless feet 
 Back where the end and the beginning meet 70 
 In the same circle, where upon the plane 
 Of lost direction men pursue their pain. 
 Now rise before them palaces and trees. 
 Nodding in fancy to the parching breeze, 
 Pools at their feet appear, and shrinking take 
 The azure semblance of a distant lake, 
 
SPRING IN LONDON 33 
 
 With woods begirt, and bearing on its 
 
 breast 
 The fabled isles of happiness and rest. 
 An ancient moral, but as true to-day 
 As ever, that the flesh may not allay 80 
 
 The cravings of the spirit. But what need 
 To ply examples? He who runs may read. 
 
 So too for those who in restraint have 
 
 brought 
 The body's needs, and with insistence sought, 
 Through toil and abstinence, to wrest some 
 
 power 
 To have and hold beyond the passing hour 
 From life's great storage, if upon their view, 
 Bounded by space and time, no ray break 
 
 through 
 From the eternal, how their portion must 
 Appear in moments as a heap of dust, 90 
 
 Where ants assiduous hurry to and fro, 
 
34 SPRING IN LONDON 
 
 Some carrying corn, some young, and some 
 
 who go 
 Idle while others toil, and all a vain 
 And blind endeavour on a barren plane. 
 And what of those the more, for whom the 
 
 gift 
 Of life is labour in the endless drift 
 Of circumstance and hazard, by the day's 
 Necessities conditioned, if their ways, 
 By wife and child though cheered, have yet 
 
 no end 
 But food and raiment, and endurance lend loo 
 No hardihood to spirit, nor employ 
 The freer soul in thankfulness and joy? 
 Or those whose living seems to give the lie 
 To earthly visions, chastening the high 
 Hopes for the race's future entertained 
 Through knowledge of the powers of nature 
 
 gained ; 
 Broken, diseased, degraded and outclassed. 
 
SPRING IN LONDON 35 
 
 Hungry and squalid, lives in lying past, 
 Perforce or in their weakness, yet at call 
 Some drift of kindness running through it all ? 
 And truly poverty may sacred be ; 
 But without hope, and if the things we see 
 Round and complete our little life, ah, then, 
 Let the word die unspoken, and the pen 
 Fall from the hand; of all beneath the sun 
 What profit have we when the day is done? 
 
 Not new, but with the growth of spirit found 
 More painful, are the things we see around 
 Our daily path. 'Tis in ourselves that lie 
 Pleasure and pain. Insensibility 120 
 
 Cloaks its condition, and forgets to find 
 The rents which others pity whom the wind 
 Buffets in furs. So of the spirit ; all 
 Are not born equal, and what some men call 
 Meat is for others poison. So with trust 
 In purpose for the whole the part we must 
 
36 SPRING IN LONDON 
 
 Accept, nor vainly clamour in the face 
 Of Heaven, because its ends we cannot trace. 
 There is no pain but what the spirit feels; 
 Spirit in triple brass the body steels; 130 
 
 And food and raiment have no power to give 
 Health to the conscience, since we cannot live 
 By bread alone, and every flower that springs 
 Is clothed, we know, more gloriously than 
 kings. 
 
 But, of the growth of spirit, does the span 
 Of life allotted to each several man, 
 With all its incompleteness, give the clue 
 To life's endeavour? May it claim as due 
 To one existence, severed from the whole 
 In space and time, if even for a soul 140 
 
 Immortal be the issue, all the blind 
 Attempts and failures in the ranks behind? 
 Were those more worthy whom the sacred 
 song 
 
SPRING IN LONDON 37 
 
 Of bards has rescued from oblivion's wrong, 
 Than those unwept before them, who, as 
 
 brave. 
 Are folded in the silence of the grave ? 
 Did violence prevail that we might go 
 In safety for some threescore years or so? 
 And that the rays of kindlier truth might 
 
 light 
 Our path have millions wandered in the 
 
 night? 150 
 
 And do we darkling go in doubt and pain, 
 That ages hence may have a way made 
 
 plain? 
 Perchance, as some have held, the answer lies 
 In life renewed, and, when the body dies. 
 The spirit in its proper elements. 
 Rarer or grosser, is enlarged or pent, 
 Till, at the time appointed, for its needs. 
 Or through desire, it gathers up the seeds 
 Once more of body, and communion find 
 
38 SPRING IN LONDON 
 
 Again through sense and instrument of 
 mind. i6o 
 
 So in this view, the lives of men — compared 
 To waves, which separate, yet in oneness 
 
 shared 
 Of the great ocean, travel to the shore 
 At last — though 't is illusion, for the more 
 The movement or the less, the volume fills 
 The same content, and what its motion spills 
 Upon the edge escapes not, but remains 
 Part of the volume which the whole retains ; 
 Whereas the claim of spirit, pressing through 
 All life and being, all we think and do, 170 
 Lies in identity — so, in that view. 
 The lives of men may be the passage through 
 Of souls, in number finite, sent to gain 
 Knowledge through suffering on a mortal 
 
 plane 
 And if, the thought repelling, comes the old 
 Objection that existence manifold, 
 
SPRING IN LONDON 39 
 
 If such there be, yet leaves upon the mind 
 
 No memory of the stages left behind, 
 
 Is it so certain that the self we know 
 
 In waking hours, to which impressions flow 180 
 
 In infinite gradations, is the whole 
 
 Sum of our being, or that what the soul 
 
 Assimilates is only what the brain 
 
 Has power, in grosser texture, to retain? 
 
 Bodies deemed solid now are known to be 
 
 To forms of matter from all hindrance free, 
 
 Which stream in viewless energy through all 
 
 The cosmos of the infinitely small. 
 
 Whence comes refreshment, when upon the 
 
 eyes 
 Sleep has descended, and the body lies 190 
 Relaxed and motionless? We wake and feel 
 Our life renewed, the more if o'er us steal 
 A lethargy so deep the hours between 
 Seem blotted out as though they had not 
 
 been: 
 
4P SPRING IN LONDON 
 
 Surprised at times to find a thought made plain, 
 Whose thread ere sleeping we had sought in 
 vain. 
 
 That time we slept, we must admit, from 
 death 
 Differed in nothing save in drawing breath ; 
 So utterly the deep oblivion drew 
 Our being from us; to all trace or view 200 
 Lost for the conscious mind ; and some main- 
 tain 
 That forms of matter subtler than contain 
 The sleeping body, passing from it keep 
 The soul attendant through the hours of sleep ; 
 And yet not wholly, else would cease the 
 
 breath. 
 And o'er the limbs the pallor pass of death. 
 
 Also there are who, seeking to explore 
 Minds God-afflicted, or to gather lore 
 
SPRING IN LONDON 41 
 
 In paths, if not forbidden, yet where some, 
 Rashly adventuring, into woods have come 210 
 Of error and distress, or darker woe. 
 Conclude (though here is little that we know) 
 That consciousness is complex, and the sense 
 Of waking life derives its sustenance 
 In part from life upon whose powers less 
 
 frail, 
 Though unperceived, nor death nor sleep 
 
 prevail. 
 And sometimes to the surface may arise 
 This portion of our being, and surprise 
 The senses — as we think — ^though that may be 
 Illusion — when with eyes we seem to see 220 
 A loved but distant presence, or to hear 
 Its footstep falling on the startled ear, 
 And learn, not unprepared, that on that day. 
 And hour, the life which loved us passed away. 
 This too with sense-perceptions may contend 
 In dreams, if sleep be light, or waking blends 
 
42 SPRING IN LONDON 
 
 With sleeping, and the senses lightly bound 
 Retain some motion; but of sleep profound 
 The path is dreamless, that is, conscious mind 
 No trace, in waking, of its course can find. 230 
 
 But leaving these and other states which 
 
 show 
 
 Hints of remoter consciousness below 
 
 The field of apprehension, let us draw 
 
 Into our theme some evidence of law 
 
 Working through diverse being. Can it be 
 
 That chance determines such diversity.^ 
 
 I speak not of condition, but of mind, 
 
 Rather of spirit; for where one will find 
 
 His pleasure, there another taking part 
 
 Meets but with pain and heaviness of heart. 
 
 240 
 
 Yea, there have been who, in this world of 
 
 ours 
 Moving as strangers, felt within them powers 
 
SPRING IN LONDON 43 
 
 To circumstance ill tuned, and in their ears 
 Heard words of warning, gathering through 
 
 the years 
 In weight imperious, to renounce the ways 
 Of human fellowship — such as in days 
 Of old were prophets, or who labouring 
 
 brought. 
 Through forms of art, the visions which they 
 
 sought 
 Into the hither verge; and less to-day 
 Perchance the call for such, whenas the way 
 Of life runs broader, and from door to door 251 
 The word more swiftly travels than before. 
 "No prophet speaks and every vision fails, "^ 
 So, as of old, men cry; but what avails 
 That one be great, while others in the mire 
 Are sunk of ignorance and low desire? 
 What need of prophets, when the light they 
 
 saw 
 
 » Cf. Ezekiel xii: 22. 
 
44 SPRING IN LONDON 
 
 Before the rest is risen, and the law, 
 For the hard journey given, has yielded place 
 To the diviner liberty of grace? 260 
 
 The word is nigh us, and that all might know 
 Its virtue was it given long ago 
 To some, who labouiing set it as a seed 
 To spread and blossom for our later need. 
 For us. it seems, the word prophetic came, 
 For us the burden and for us the shame 
 Were borne, who in the broad and beaten way 
 Of man's estate enjoy a brighter day, 
 And in the spirit's freedom are more bold 
 Than those called greatest in the world of old. 
 And idly do they talk who in their hour 271 
 And generation find the source of power, 
 And from some script new-written trace the 
 
 cause 
 Of life's enfranchisement, or seek in laws, 
 Though good, its growth. And herein may 
 
 we see 
 
SPRING IN LONDON 45 
 
 How love and patience triumph, and how free 
 From care are those, who, counting all things 
 
 less 
 Than the divine endeavour, can express. 
 With no accessories of wealth or art. 
 The beauty of the grace-illumined heart, 280 
 Shining on homely doings, and the round 
 Of duty gladdening, as the sun the ground. 
 And these in lowliness of heart attain 
 A deeper wisdom than with toil and pain 
 Men find through knowledge; and to such is 
 
 given 
 On earth, though few, to share the peace of 
 
 Heaven. 
 
 But why, if before all this state is blessed. 
 Should not all find it, and attain to rest 
 From strife and passion? Surely so would 
 
 cease 
 The world to be a world, for its increase 290 
 
46 SPRING IN LONDON 
 
 Is rooted fast in evil, and through strife 
 To win possession is the law of life. 
 To this opposed, a higher law, it seems, 
 Wins on the world, and to itself redeems 
 Spirits in being; for through all we find 
 Deeper divergence than depends on mind, 
 Tastes or attainments. Gloze it as we will, 
 Rooted in spirit must be good and ill, 
 As principles opposed; and these between 
 The soul is moulded; and its powers unseen 
 Are greater than we know, ill-mated here 301 
 The more as they are quickened; yet appear 
 Growth good and evil, and to either tend 
 Increase and incHnation; and the end 
 Of being is not compassed in the span 
 Which folds about the pilgrimage of man. 
 
 Ah, without hope beyond the grave, how 
 vain 
 And barren are the schemes we entertain 
 
SPRING IN LONDON 47 
 
 Of human happiness ! Though youth untried 
 May vaunt each new specific, yet abide 310 
 Death and decay and tears ; we but begin 
 When we must make an end; wife, children, 
 
 kin, 
 All must be left, the works we call our own. 
 The words and doings, friendless and alone 
 To pass we know not whither, or, if fate 
 Decrees, to watch their going, and to wait 
 Our end in sorrow. Not that, even so, 
 We may not bear in patience ; but the foe 
 Of cheerfulness is thought, unless its sky 
 Is lit by hope; so men distraction try, 320 
 And seek in crowds contentment ; but if this 
 Is all we win to, something seems amiss 
 With the philosophy that bids us find 
 Our happiness in health and powers of 
 
 mind. 
 And why, if this be all, should some pursue 
 Dreams for realities, and count them true ? 
 
48 SPRING IN LONDON 
 
 Ay, and those not the least by greatness 
 
 weighed 
 Of understanding ; masters who have laid 
 Their spirit on the world ; or, rather, stirred 
 By strong compulsion, who enshrined the 
 
 word 330 
 
 They needs must utter in the forms which 
 
 lay 
 To hand in nature, and upon the way 
 Set landmarks of the soul, to ages hence 
 In witness of its working and the sense 
 Of things by time untouched, and judgement 
 
 still 
 Waiting, though long deferred, on good and 
 
 ill. 
 So, in an instance, speaks the volume where 
 Is shown the vision of the soul laid bare. 
 Seen doubtless through the medium of an 
 
 age 
 Of iron, yet all human, in the page 340 
 
SPRING IN LONDON 49 
 
 Prophetic of the Florentine, who threw 
 On darkness visible the forms he drew 
 Of souls in torment, doubting not that love 
 Without that justice could not perfect prove, 
 Or that the song which blanched his cheek 
 
 had less 
 Than a divine uprising, and in stress 
 And storm was gendered for some purpose 
 
 high 
 Beyond the counsels of mortality. 
 So on the gulf impassable between 
 Perfection absolute and evil seen 350 
 
 Dwelling, he showed it under forms which, 
 
 crude, 
 Yet speak conviction ; for the age was rude, 
 And lust and insolence could then appear 
 Unmasked, and in those lines we seem to hear 
 The cries of earth redoubled, where in hell 
 Vengeance is wrought, and on the dark air 
 
 swell 
 
5© SPRING IN LONDON 
 
 Cries hoarse with anger, voices rent with 
 
 pain^ 
 From those who, living, sought the body's 
 
 gain. 
 Stifled the spirit and denied the light, 
 Now sunk in darkness and unending night, 360 
 Blaspheming God, their seed, the time, the 
 
 place 
 Of their begetting and of all their race.^ 
 
 Can this be written, and yet men believe 
 
 1 Cf. Dante, Inferno, iii. 22 seq: — 
 
 Quivi sospiri, pianti ed alti guai 
 Risonavan per 1' aer senza stelle, 
 Perch' io al cominciar ne lagrimai, 
 
 Diverse lingue, orribili favelle, 
 Parole di dolore, accent i d' ira, 
 Voci alte e fioche, e suon di man con elle, 
 
 Facevano un tumulto, 
 
 2 Dante, Inferno, iii. 103-105: — 
 
 Bestemmiavano Iddio e lor parenti, 
 
 L' umana specie, il luogo, il tempo e il seme 
 Di lor semenza e di lor nascimenti. 
 
SPRING IN LONDON 51 
 
 There is no judgement? or that those who 
 
 grieve 
 The spirit's striving, which in man appears 
 The ordered purpose of his transient years 
 (Whether to make the soul or to restore, 
 Mind veiled in matter may not here explore), 
 Can, when the body passes back to dust — 
 If self endure, as still endure it must, 370 
 Or all the effort here and all the pain 
 Of life and living were a dance insane 
 Of atoms somehow drifting into shapes. 
 Thought of by apes as men and men as apes, 
 Indifferent which, since in the end they all 
 Are as they had not been, and, where they 
 
 fall, 
 Rot in corruption — can they hope to win 
 Help in the anguish which amerces sin? 
 Happy perchance if only they retain 
 The power of suffering, and may come through 
 pain 380 
 
52 SPRING IN LONDON 
 
 Into the borders of those fields of light, 
 Then dimly seen beyond the enclosing night, 
 Seen with what wonder and with what desire, 
 The bourn of love denied, where souls aspire 
 In the immensity of worlds concealed 
 Beneath these shows of matter, but revealed 
 About, above, beneath us, in no skies 
 Remote and strange — oh, grant it Heaven! — 
 
 when eyes 
 Forget their lustre, and the light of day 
 Passes in darkness like a dream away. 390 
 
 The shadows fall, and on the quiet air 
 Earth breathes her fragrance, like a soul in 
 
 prayer. 
 Here where the city's heart still keeps a place 
 For flowers and v'erdure and the waving grace 
 Of trees, now motionless against the blue. 
 Dim, darkening heavens. And now a rosier 
 hue 
 
SPRING IN LONDON 53 
 
 O'erspreads the west, and on the skirts of 
 night 
 
 Glows and is gone. Then opens on our sight 
 The deep and moving wonder, whose amaze 
 At times appals our vision as we gaze, 400 
 And find no answer, but where, freed from sin, 
 The soul in innocence responds within. 
 And knows no doubt or fear, but in the hanp 
 Of Love and Wisdom feels its being stand. 
 
 Finis 
 
NOV 21 i9D?