I Songs of Exuberance By the Same Writer The Silent Heavens : A Divine Comedy With a Postscript on Mystery Plays for Modern Readers Op. 2 London : A. C. Fifield 13 Clifford's Inn, E.G. Songs of Exuberance, Together with The Trenches. By Osbert Burdett Op. i London: A. C. Fifield, 13 Clifford's Inn, E.G., 1915 COPYRIGHT All rights reserved PRINTED BY WM. BRENPON AND SON, LTD., PLYMOUTH, ENGLAND. DEDICATION TO FLORENCE: DOMNUL4E MEAE DILECTISSIMAE T LAID a snare to trap my youthful love, And baited it with rhymes, and prank 'd it out With musics, that my unsuspecting dove Might think no dangerous enemy about. Poor beguiled She struggled to fly, too late ! Her wings were meshed with metre, limed with song. She dropt, a captive to her eager mate, Pleading wild-eyed such tactics did him wrong. But, as the fowler strokes the wounded wing Of the poor bird his hawk has struck to earth, Smoothes the limp neck, and sighs that death should bring So rough an end to such a lovely birth / sighed : to all but song was tameless She : 0, may she not prefer my song to me. 1910 861250 Preface I HAVE copied Samuel Butler in following the mode with which musicians indicate by the term " op." followed by a numeral, the order of the composition of their works. His defence of this imitation remains on record, and I certainly cannot improve upon it. But in addition to this, perhaps inspired by his illuminative ideas on the significance in practice of the theory of descent with modification, I have gone further back and have followed a still more respectable precedent, namely, that of affixing to each poem the date of the year in which it was written. This looks, I am afraid, rather like presuming unwarrantably upon the interest of posterity, for the affixing of dates to works of art is the only really unequivocal task left to editors and com- mentators, and though I share the trades-union pre- judice against doing other fellows out of their job, two things may be said in favour of forestalling them. The first is that the practice requires no apology, for nobody who is not interested in the development of the verses need worry with the dates at all. The second is 7 8 Preface that what is valuable in any man's thought or in any religious system, or in any philosophy is not the con- clusions which it records but the process by which they have been arrived at. Nothing is more startling to the student of compara- tive religion, or of comparative science for the matter of that, than the similarity of the " truths " at which the various religious and scientific systems arrive. Huxley showed, for instance, that the Western theory of evolu- tion was implicit in the Karma doctrine of the East. When an ordinary person observes for the first time that, in spite of the most bitter controversial differences, it is practically impossible throughout life to guess from a man's actions which particular body of doctrine he calls his own, he argues, if he is a shallow thinker, that all bodies of doctrine are equally futile, but if he is what Butler would have called a " njce person," he sees, as I am arguing, that it is not the conclusions at which one arrives but the process by which they are arrived at which are really important to be known. Any fool can adopt conclusions. That is why churches and sects and scientific and artistic societies of all sorts gain adherents so easily. It takes a wise man to arrive at them, which, in turn, explains why the lives of teachers differ so much from those of their disciples. A proverb, or a law of Nature, or a dogma, is the end of a very long process of thought ; and proverbs are like offences in Preface 9 this, that it needs be that proverbs come, but woe to the man's fame by whom they come. It is an accident if his name survives. This, apparently, is History's acknowledgment of the fact that nobody seems able to learn wisdom from them. To digest a proverb, or a clause in the creed, some crisis has to force us to experience the process out of which it has burst into light, like a star in our darkness, with pain, and speed, and travail. It is the process, rather than the proverb, which we have to know. To my own verses, therefore, I have affixed the date of the year in which they were written, so that anyone who is interested to understand certain obvious contra- dictions may have a clue, if he wishes to pursue it, as to whether any particular poem is the simple expression of a mood, or the embodiment of a belief which, as the date will explain when compared with those affixed to poems written later, I have continued to hold from one time to another. Further than this it would obviously be silly to attempt to go. Ruskin's own indignant foot- notes of criticism in the later editions of his books remain to show how foolish it is even for an inspired writer to take his beliefs too seriously. Orthodoxies tend to become evil because they tend to become static by the familiar process of exalting the letter above the spirit. Thought should grow like every other living thing, for which what is true to-day may very likely i o Preface require to be restated to-morrow. Indeed two wise writers have described Truth, the one as " a contra- diction in terms/' and the other as " that whose con- tradictory is also true." By pursuing the track my thoughts have taken in these poems the reader can judge to what extent they have been growing, if he has a mind to try. If not, the dates can be forgotten as easily as the verses. OSBERT BURDETT. BUSHEY, 1913-191$ Contents Page The Trenches 15 LYRICS OF THE JOY OF EARTH : Ode to the Spirit of Rain . . . . 23 In Dover Museum 26 The River's Burden . . . -27 Under the Leaves 33 A Night on the Woodland .... 34 Over the Stile 40 Between the Bramble and the Briar . . 41 After Four O'Clock 42 The School of Summer .... 43 Burrage .45 The Wind in the Boughs .... 46 My Little Songs 47 February Sunshine 48 The Pool 50 A May Morning 52 The Dover Cliffs . . J . . . 53 The Weather 55 Summer Haze 56 The First of March 57 A July Day 58 After Drought 60 ii 1 2 Contents LYRICS OF THE JOY OF EARTH : Page Earth and Old Age 61 On the Common ..... 63 The English Inn 64 POEMS ON CHILDREN : Viola's Song . . . . . 67 A Child's Eyes 69 (I) For Katie 70 (II) Her Answer 72 The Eternal Symbol 73 A Song for One and Twenty 75 The Crayfish-Catchers .... 77 Premonitions . . - . . . . . 78 Hymn to the Body . * 81 Lines to Shelley . . .... 84 SONNETS ON PEOPLE AND PLACES : The Creation . ~ , .... 91 Hilaire Belloc ...... 92 Philip Webb V . . . -93 The Death of Swinburne .... 94 Meredith . 95 (I) Samuel Butler . : - . . . .96 (II) Samuel Butler 97 In Parody of Edward Cracroft Lefroy . . 98 Bruges . . * , - 99 Oxford 100 Meditation at Twilight . . . . 101 On Bunyan's placing the Village of Morality hard by the City of Destruction . . 102 Contents 1 3 SONNETS ON PEOPLE AND PLACES : p age Personality . . . . . .103 Resipiscence ...... 104 The Hour of Awakening .... 105 On a Friend's Marriage : He (I) . . . 106 On a Friend's Marriage : She (II) . . 107 The Question ...... 108 The Intellect ...... 109 Love and Language . . . . .no Love in Loneliness . . . . . .in The Two Silences . . . . .112 Easter Morning . . . . . . 113 The Unpursued . . . . . .114 The King of Terrors 115 First Feeling Old 116 The Absolute Onion . . . . 117 SONGS OF THE SUNSHINE : Sunshine and Song-books . . . 123 Star Song ....... 124 A Lover Waiting ..... 125 Where shall Love find a House ? . . .126 Bed Song 127 Spring Song . . . . . 128 A Don of Fifty Communes with Himself . 129 Growth 131 A Message from the Muse . . . . 132 HIGGLEDY-PIGGLEDY : The Choice 137 A Week Later 138 14 Contents HIGGLEDY-PIGGLEDY : p age Fallow Time 139 The Young Wife . . . . .140 The Little House 141 The Way of the Will 142 Love's Philosophy . . . . 143 The Meeting . . . . . . 144 Jaques's Letters 145 Citywards . . . . . .146 The Anniversary : Time's Revenges . . 147 Listlessness 149 The Seed in the Heart . . . .151 Lines for a Friend's Volume . . . 154 The Print Room at the British Museum . . 156 The Everlasting Voices . . . . .158 Receptivity 159 Bibliographical Note 160 The Trenches To the Memory of Rupert Brooke, a fellow Kingsman (The Youth, Two Soldiers, God, Fear, Death, and the Life to Come.) Juvenis quidam : If I go ? The great adventure's waiting ! War, riskiest, most exhilarating Of all man's sports, the sportsman has to-day : Sport naked, pure, and bloody-fronted, For man the Hunter man the hunted, Sport for the king of all the beasts of prey ! Miles quidam : " If I should die " : or there or here It can be once, once only. There I shall face Death, here wait his search for me. Nay, I'll go where " every man is wanted," (So they say) who never granted Me, in time of peace, worth much to be. 1 6 Songs of Exuberance Miles secundus : e; '] : '.Life still so green, So,muclTe The brown leaves float and fall On this still pool, where each tall tree Drops shadows over all, And the heart finds peace in this leafy dell Where the silence has sweet things to tell. Shadows are mirrored in its glass ; A whole world lies below : Inverted trees and hanging grass, While the silver clouds bestow Colours there more soft and rare Than are ever found in the upper air. The pool has a playmate in the wind, Whose ripples come and go Like gentle smiles on the face of a friend Happy as I and thou, Who stare at our shadows on its face Sharing the sweetness of this place. This hollow is in the steep hill's side Skirted by trees, beneath The stagnant pool where the shadows ride Soft as the thoughts of death, Or sleep, to one who weary with care Has sought repose where green fields are. The Pool 5 1 The leaves all day sail to and fro On the water's face, Where the life above and the dream below Unite in one meeting-place. Oh could you and I so blend in one view The dream-world and the daylight too ! If we could live here all the year Should we not also find Imagination burn more clear In a more receptive mind ? With a tent and fire beside this pool Mere living would be beautiful. What are the joys of solitude But a thronged yet empty place With Jacob's ladder set in a wood Of peopled loneliness, Where every sense is tuned to seize The music of the tranquil breeze. I think one's troubled face would grow In softer curves, one's eyes More windy blue, with voice more low And ears more apt to prize (If one lived here) the swaying trees Which bear each season's messages. For in this dell, and by this pool Descends, as at a shrine, 52 Songs of Exuberance A radiant peace so beautiful, With shadows so benign That travellers sleeping by this hill Would sadly wake against their will. 1915 A May Morning WE walked along and let the road unfold Its changing dips, its curves of long delight, The sunlight through the branches streaming, The buds just open from their dreaming, As at each turn the roadway ran in sight, Earth was still drowsy from the winter's cold. Sweet was it thus as we were wandering : A sudden light now lit upon our way Two laughing men who sawed for pleasure A beam, while, huddling in their leisure, Sheep crowded under trees beset with may. Whence came that light which set our hearts to sing ? A cock crew hard, and at his stertorous cry A subtler music than musicians know, Where melody was lost in sweeter issues, The soul being drawn from out the senses' tissues, Started to life at this cock's stertorous crow. And some old memory stirred my friend and I. Two laughing men, some sheep, and the wide sky. 19*3 The Dover Cliffs 53 The Dover Cliffs FREE of the town, on Shakespeare's Cliff I turned To watch the thin arms of the harbour glow In the pale sunshine. Well has this cliff earned The fame sweet Will's outlasting lines bestow ! The heavy breakers pounded on the shore And flung their spume high up the shingle beach But to return with rasping voice once more As rank on rank new waves beat up the breach. Exulting in the sunshine and the breeze, Which fanned the grass, and hissed in it like fire, I swung along the cliff-path in full ease, Rinsed by new spirit tide-waves of desire. But here the chalk in mortary ruts has run, Where the scant traffic had sufficed to make Cups in the chalky soil, whose oozings dun Suck limpet-like, each ooze a mimic lake. The beacon hill once by, I strode adown Slopes of greensward all lonely to the sea, With only gulls and steamers to discrown The peaceful absence of humanity. But lo ! ahead a little cabin reared Few fragile boards against the windy sky, And through one pane a lonely coastguard peered Inviting me to talk with eager eye. " It's lonely work up here, sir, yet 'tis so I could not leave a life spent near the sea 54 Songs of Exuberance But I should thin away, like flowers that blow In some starved playground of a pent city." " How do you while your hours away ? " I cried, For this is truth, as every man may know, It is to strangers who are quite untried Men most unpack their hearts of joy or woe. " I have a wife at home, sir, and ten sons, The first of whom have early gone to sea, While I sit here and think out rebus-puns For money in her latest pregnancy. Perhaps my wits are dull, sir, but it seems A hopeless task for me to win a prize. Each week I buy the paper for its schemes Though every name but mine rewards my eyes. For verbal jerks and wordy quips they give, If they do give indeed, sir, tens of poun's, And it seems hard that I, who need to live, Cannot filch from these lonely hours two crowns." I looked at him amazed, (a gentle soul Shone in the porches of his deep-set eyes), That he, who sat so far from men's control, Should be the puppet of their enterprise. " If you should ever need," he said again, " Scraps of ship-lore, or memories of the sea, Come back, since mutual aid is good for men, And share my talk, and spend an hour with me." He ceased. The sun embanked on streaming clouds Left the blue sky half widowed of his light, So I turned westwards, till the corded shrouds Of Folkestone shipping swam into my sight. The Weather 55 The Warren sprawled below, black ash and gray As burnt by fire, it scarred the Cliffs' steep side, Where winding paths led downwards to betray The careless traveller to the rising tide. The yearning sea, the wistful man above, The wind in the cliff grasses, the brief sun, A walk alone, what more need men to prove That life is passion, and all life is one ? 1913 The Weather WEATHER in town is one. It rains or shines And men work on, indifferent to the speech By which great Nature tries her law to teach That every mood of the sky a joy assigns. But on the woodland, where the tall gaunt pines Draw out the stop of every wind, and reach Bare tufted arms that sigh as on a beach, Each day bears its own burden nor repines. In autumn when the elm trees toss and fret, When winds blow blusterous clouds across the skies And townsmen sigh bad weather, and regret Their fireside comforts, the rough man descries Here too a season's sweetness and his eyes Reflect the weather and applaud the wet. 1912 56 Songs of Exuberance Summer Haze ABLOSSOMY garden sheltered by tall trees, A murmuring stream, Green mounds and summer scents to make me dream, A leafy music for the wandering breeze To improvise in sun-sweet harmonies : These where I lie Make up the happiness of hot July. Or in the busy farmyard by the stacks An echo of the men Calling, a boy astride the jingling backs Of the cart-horses in whose lurching tracks The wain returns ; the cock treading the hen : These in an August sun Make life sweet labour, sleep a thievish one. Or idly on a fading afternoon, Where yellow fields Bend backs to winds as tides to the new moon, The buxom earth a music-harvest yields ; Delicious songs of undetected tune, An orchestra of scent Proclaim the way which sweet September went. And where the river spreads out to a pool A lazy splash Of a fish rising, where the ripples wash, Breaks on the stillness which elsewhere doth rule, The First of March 57 Sound questioning Silence as more beautiful : Two graces here Flatter with equal music at my ear. The birds fly later in this summer air, Scorning to nest While the sun lingers in the rose-gray west As though, face-buried in sweet Vesper's hair, He had mistook her for Aurora there ; Night overborne Lets to-day's lightfoot hours melt into dawn. 1914 The First of March NOW when the trumpet of the daffodil Runs in glad sound across the dome of Spring, And mating birds chatter on every hill, And even townsmen's thoughts are on the wing, And every thorn in tiny leaf of green Stars with fire-clusters hedge-ways by the road, And slanting sunlight glows in a new sheen, And earth is staggering less beneath her load : I, Atlas-armed, can people the young day With dreams more joyful than the winter night Evoked from fireside ease and drowsy lay, Day-dreams that kindle in the warm sunlight Cities where Life may dwell, and all men be Sharers in Nature's immortality. 19*5 58 Songs of Exuberance A July Day SUNLIGHT is rippling over the grass Where the shadows dart and the blithe birds pass Chasing each other to and fro In a dance on the lawny floor below. From leafy branches overhead A trellis to the sky is spread On which with petal-shimmering gleams The golden rose of morning beams. And the humming bee and the waving bough Sway in a measure stately, slow, Drowsing the ear and drowsing the eye With rhythm of dance and melody. For even the scattered stones grow warm And the drifting flight of gnats in a swarm Hangs like a cloud in the brilliant air, An eddy of life in the atmosphere, While the soft toads pant in the leafy shade Where the spiders are busy in ambuscade. The stream may be crossed from stone to stone, And the water chirps, and the dandelion Burns with hard light on the grassy sea In constellated brilliancy ; And the moon hangs whitely overhead Like a puff-ball from the thistle sped Floating about in the crystal sky For the winds to tell the hour by, As the sun shows it clear in the liquid blue Which his arrows are piercing through and through. A July Day 59 About my path, about my ways, O moon to the tide-waves of my days, Here in the fields, here by this lawn, At noon, at night, at eve, at dawn, And now in summer's pageantry Each stone, each insect lifts to Thee A happy wing, a veined side, A joy in warmth, a song of pride : To you the glow-worm's emerald fires Flash like a sunlit city's spires ; And every dip of every wing Leaves the air of you echoing. Veiled like the strength within the sea, Or the impish power of mercury, Or the seven beams in the ray of light, Or the weight of air, or the steps of night, Or the way two faces love and meet Indifferent to thousands in the street, Or the rainbow's end or the rim of sky, Or the cadence which is poetry, In all I hear, or feel, or see, Nowhere revealed, but an energy Behind all else, and as sharply clear As the horizon everywhere ; In nature, in the trance of art, In reverie, in the human heart When some enchantment breaks the spell Which makes us fear our love to tell, Unnamed, but not unknown, to Thee Could I give what you give to me : One moment, one entranced glance, 60 Songs of Exuberance One smile upon your countenance, Your whisper in the stream's refrain, Your footstep falling in the rain, Your shadow in each flight of birds Skimming the lawn : this into words, No heart so dull, no brain so narrow But would fall half in love with sorrow : Missing you, and being missed Tis sweeter far than being kissed. 1914 After Drought THE glassy river steams in the hot sun, As, parched with drought, the stagnant pools are shrunk To narrow puddles ; earth has hardly drunk One cloud since this long summer has begun. But hark ! a breathing wind begins to moan, Puffs the thick air, and warns the cracking trunk Of every thirsty tree that its dry punk Will be assuaged with water-spouts anon. The river hears it coming, feverish gasps Trouble the waters ; even the still scum Stirs when the presage of a black cloud clasps The welkin : one dark moment earth is dumb. Then bursts the downpour, gurgling voices strain, And every runnel ripples with glad rain. 1910 Earth and Old Age 61 Earth and Old Age MY heart was struggling with a tide of tears, My dreams were brief and cold, Horizons narrow-bound with pain and fears : I knew the bitterness of being old. Love left me, I was glad to lie alone, To nurse my pride apart. No face of those I knew had power to atone All the life-bitterness which filled my heart. The earth grew small, my weak cry was to be Where no pulse teases death, When Nature's sky-wide arms encompassed me : I knew the wind's song how it comfort eth. I felt her wild, wild heart against mine beat. Her voice rang through my soul : " My flowers are fain of Time, his scythe is sweet ; On the ripe corn sets autumn's aureole. " When snowdrops lean towards the pale-faced snow, Their drooping heads give token That they are children of the soil and know Earth's heart with parting is a mother's broken. 62 Songs of Exuberance " Why do the curved waves plunge upon the shore, Strain up the sand for Me ? Their sense of separation kindles more From their communion with the boundless sea. " They spy the moon as she shakes out the stars, The couriers of the air ; The tides ride back and forward at the bars, And envy every sail which passes there. " The pale stars wander in slow tracks of fire, Despairful of the sun, Who tramps his rounds undimmed by their desire To win beyond their confines and be gone. " I watch their strife to burst their separate bounds, All barriers from Me. They bleed in beauty from a thousand wounds, To lose the limits of themselves in Me. " Not finding Me the flowers wilt and fall Back to the bosom of Earth, Like children tired of play with yearning call For freedom from the ragged school of birth. "... A dim veil hangs between all life, and I, I only thin a place Where beauty opens windows to your eye From out the time-worn tenement of space. On the Common 63 " Amid the mocking and fleet-footed years Your mother, Earth, is fast. You weep when old, have you forgot her tears When first from her eternal arms you passed ? " 1909 On the Common O HELTERED by pines and leafy woodland beech O Stands Padworth Common, lonely and shut in, Scanty with yellow, tender streaks of whin, With subtler notes than Silchester's to teach ; A spot sequestered, such as travellers reach When twilight settles, and the views begin To narrow to the footfall's step, as thin Shines out the inn-lamp's comfortable speech. Such tender beauty England gives alone, And here, for some deciduous last day, This empty cottage draws my eyes to play With far domestic idylls of my own, Where Earth might take my hand and Love condone The exile of my early feet to-day. 1910 64 Songs of Exuberance The English Inn THE end of every journey is an inn. The Brambletye, The Cock, The Rose in June, The Spreadeagle, The Dun Cow, The Half Moon, Castle and Ball, The Feathers, The Linch-pin, The Bishop's Blaize, The Bent Arms : These, and in How many another, have I drank at noon, Or slept by night, or lazed and hummed a tune ! The end of every journey is an inn. Men converse in the inn and the tavern. Silence reigns in the strangerless club, Where a deep-cushioned, leather-lined cavern Apes the ease of a bench in a pub. Men are members in one ; but Zeus, Wotan of old Met men as Strangers, so the tale is told. Note. For a description of The Rose in June consult Mr. Walter Raymond's The Book of Simple Delights, which also suggested to me the first line of this sonnet. Poems on Children Viola's Song 67 Viola's Song T^AUGHTER of the light and air, jLJ First-born daughter born to-day, May it be your grace to wear The glory of the autumn hair, Red-gold hair of Monica. Daughter of the air and light, Spring-flower of your father's heart, May yours be the grace of height That is his, a laugh as bright, Eyes as quick as his for art. Daughter of their youngest prime, First-born daughter born to-day, Like them, may you be free of rhyme, Earth and painting, music's time In your feet, and gay as they. Love-child, born within the fold, Lamb, thy shepherd lovers pray What will keep out winter's cold, They gone, you grown a shepherd bold ? Guilelessness, my Viola. 68 Songs of Exuberance Gayest of the virtues this ! (First-born daughter, laugh with me,) Dancing through your father's bliss, Glinting gold in mother's kiss Gleams the sword Humility. Therefore clasp it : it will keep Flame-like in the hand that dares Hold it fast ; and let it leap When the world your conscience tears ! Hold it, for the worth it wears Will light you through your life to sleep. 19*3 A Child's Eyes 69 A Child's Eyes I THANK you for the mirror in your eyes, Which shews the image of your dreams of me, Where what I would I am eternally : The soul's core of myself without disguise. I thank you, love, that when my deeds despise The hopes which mothered them for what they be, Your eyes look through the veiling hours and see The soul itself our greatest enterprise. Thus, when my dreams like broken playthings lay Among the childish wrack of things foregone, In tenantless and cowardly disarray, Your eyes forbade the world's comparison. ' God will not ask/ they said, ' what you have done, But what idea of Him lit up your way/ 1909 jo Songs of Exuberance For Katie OTHOU dear daughter of the Summer's pride, Bearing the boon of youth's perpetual Spring, How to thy youth does my poor manhood cling, In your years seeking what my own denied ! O piteous drooping mouth, Freighted with too much beauty : A sun-forsaken South It cries in daily drouth Against deciduous day and separate duty. Why seek within my arms A surcharged ecstasy from thine alarms ? Can I, indeed, a leper with the smears, Which fleck the dusty columns of my years, Offer to thy sweet harms Easement and peacef ulness ? Can then the ocean Offer oblivion to the hunted storm ? That thou shouldst set in motion The secret fibres, the confused emotion, Which lurk within thy tears, and crowd thy form To one who, bound on other business, Must piteously press Towards the beckoning armies of the dawn. For Katie 71 Thou hast not felt their mark : On thee they smile, But their spears early claimed me as their own. In primrose-time thou sweetly didst beguile, But ere on thy child's heart I could embark, That dear-loved ark Far from me by some mighty wind was blown. And all alone They pitilessly set me on their mission, To chronicle the purport of their vision : They claimed me as their own. It was my fate to be Dishonourable, dearest, even to thee. For when my face grew fair Amid the radiance of thy childish hair, Another Hand would press Between the falling wonder of each tress, Plucking me back from there. Another Voice would say : " Return, poor runaway, Who thoughtst to gain a long abode Beyond the finding out of God." 1908 72 Songs of Exuberance ii Her Answer BUT your eyes sadden when you speak of me. Your mouth makes mournful music to my own, As though my childish days were sere leaves blown Across dark stretches of your memory. Yes, I laughed often then, The tresses of my hair Laugh in the sun again, Still dance upon the air ! You dream of yesterdays In songs of sorrow ; I laugh at your dismays And cry to-morrow ! I 'mid the groundswirl of the leaves in spring, Am heedless as they. Your thoughts : what days have brought, will one day bring, Leave me at play. Memory to you is sadness that days were born to die : I only feel that life, so good to me, has passed you by. 1908 The Eternal Symbol 73 The Eternal Symbol I THOUGHT of young faces now gone from me, Of one that I knew, imperturbably sweet, When fifteen summers had passed and grew Into sixteen Springs at the end of it ; Waves of hair that were frail in the breeze, and fell Below the fair curve of her shoulders and clung, As though each hair were a sensitive nerve Rejoicing to dance to the tunes the wind sung. I said : She has gone on her own wild way To a Surrey town where the folk were kind, And liked a girl in a graceful gown And loved the smile of a frank young mind. Yet I tried once more in the memoried lanes To lure the old life, to be once more fifteen, But the school children knew not, though fun was as rife, No share had she now in their games on the green. So I thanked the gods for a trail turned back, For an unspoiled hope, for a dream that would last. Then I gave up casting her horoscope : I would worship a star that foretells the past ! 74 Songs of Exuberance To the luring West I wandered on Where the Cotswold Hills slip down to the sea ; The breezes they blew were so many thrills To shake off the thrall of the past from me. . . . The weeks passed, I walked through a market-town, And there, on the kerb with a book on her knee, One sat, as though men had no power to disturb The picture-dreams she read studiously. We adventured together, that child and I, Saw tall Troy down, and stole the fire ; Thus she, whom I lost in a Surrey town, Had found me again in Gloucestershire. 1910 A Song for One and Twenty 75 A Song for One and Twenty THE old, glad days are over When once I used to say : ' A sprig of four-leaf clover Will bring me luck to-day/ No more upon the hill's side I chase the shadows now ; The fields my childhood played in Must wrinkle to the plough. No hope for me lies hidden In any flower or stone, Such make-believe's forbidden Now I am Twenty-one. In clover's stead I see now The Good and Evil tree. This birthday is the exit From Eden's gaiety. I now must drive the ploughshare Through fields I did not sow, And my hand speed the line there An arrow from the bow. The hills I used to play on Are bitter heights to climb. No clover now shall rescue The sudden chance of time. Songs of Exuberance Ah ! let me keep the vision Which made my girlhood glad, Those dreams too have their mission For lass as well as lad. Wherever fate may lead me, Through mists of sand or spray, The years which follow after Those dreams will not betray. 1908 The Crayfish-Catchers 77 The Crayfish-Catchers WHEN little boys escape from school And flies begin to whirl in the air, Like figure skaters, over the pool, When trout may rise, and skies are fair To evening, when the mists have power : It is the crayfish-catchers' hour. A round, flat net, a spool of cord, A bloater, a small piece of string To fix the bait, a gravelly sward Under the water where to fling The net, and watch the bait allure : f The crayfish-catcher needs no more. " Oh ! see him come ; he creeps his way. . . . Wait . . . now he's on, pull hard/' a splash. The bloater sparkles on the quay, The net is scanned, two fingers dash Upon the carapace of the fish. " When boiled he makes a lovely dish." I saw six of the tribe thus caught. A few slipped back for further joys. Medical students, chefs, are taught To prize you, crayfish, as these boys Do. One for the decor that you make ; The student for dissection's sake : 7 8 Songs of Exuberance From rostrum back to telson he Divides your stiff integument. The stalked eye, pleurobranchiae, The stomach in the head, the vent, He explores all. My debt is this, Astacus ftuviatilis I 1913 Premonitions YOU have been here, just thus, before ! Nay, rather feel, some hour will be Of which the wings now brush the door, Of which the eyes, now veiled, will see The radiance promised ; as a spring, When skies are blue in wintry weather, Unlocks the hearts of birds that sing, In fancied courtship, on gay feather, As through the keen, blue air together They wing, and fancy it is Spring. New modes of beauty, laws of verse ! A ninth string added to the lyre ! Breathes there not through the universe, On this keen day of frost and fire, A song half heard, a phrase half rung Upon the anvil of the brain ? A song some future poet has sung With some unborn, yet loved, refrain, Which makes us dizzy with pain Of an old, strange, unuttered tongue ? 19*5 Hymn to the Body Hymn to the Body 81 Hymn to the Body T^LOWER of the flesh, the costliest pall That God could vest the soul withal, What human speech could find surcease Of praise to you, God's masterpiece ! Yet since you are the temple Where I dwell, The house That I espouse, Tis seemly sure your priest should tell Some hymn in praise of what God's hand now rears, By which as peers 'Men rise to be his equals and to see In their own flesh their true divinity. Turret of ivory builded in one act, Of memory compact, What carpentry to make has gone, The scaffold of your skeleton ? No idle masons they, no drones, Who bound the fabric of your bones, In a mosaic unison. I know the place, a narrow room, Upright most like the final tomb The structure falls to pieces in, A silent womb, Where piece to piece F 82 Songs of Exuberance Was set, within the short year's lease Allowed before the work must cease. Where grows, As bud from rose, The fane of flesh these sinews underpin. What carpentry, I needs repeat, Laid the foundations of your feet ? O mystery of flesh, supple and firm, Yet fated for the worm ! What pigments mixed to make you glow That our eyes must be dazzled so ? Methinks you are as a masterpiece which one, Some lazy painter, eager to convey A momentary beauty of the sun Upon his canvas, waited not to weigh The cost in years which hurried work must pay, But foolishly forgot Time lingers not, How works of art will soon betray Their cousinship to duller clay, How time cares not for such as they, How of all beauty best he loves the beauty of decay. God too is careless, Though our flesh, To fashion in His business, So small's the mesh, That alien threads of twisted pain Have been entangled in the skein. Hymn to the Body 83 Day out-vies night in constant chase, Your jealous beauty to efface. The arts hold all that man can do, To conquer time a year or two. Hard marbles he has taught to know Your sweep of line, your curves' soft flow, While his dull pigments mimic fires Which many a lover's glance inspires. In God's own image God began ; By art mankind surpasses man. 1908 84 Songs of Exuberance To Shelley SINGER of sky and sunlight and pale streams, Whose life was like a free unfettered river Bearing along an argosy of dreams Wind-blown upon by those whose cold looks shiver Such passionate hearts as thine, (which seem to quiver On earth like newly-lighted butterflies And clap their wings in joy that the great Giver Has bid his sun on all the world to rise) : The Hope you raise in us like your song never dies. Life is more wonderful because you were For thirty years a lyre on which was breathed The music of a world-becoming air Richer in life and love than was bequeathed To men before you. All that early seethed In my boy's clamorous heart of vague desires Resolved their discords as on them was wreathed (Like some wild-rose above a hedge of briars) Your crown of pansied thoughts bedewed with rainbow fires. Whether between broad banks or rocky shores Your life flows on in rhythmic and strong tide, Swift in its course unerringly it draws By many a reach, by many a bending wide, Towards that sea where the free waves provide Exuberant life and love for all to share, Where liberty of soul is not denied, Where wealth is served not by the slave despair, But where all men are free as the sea-breezes are. To Shelley 85 For all the world to you was as a song Falling like dew upon the expectant soul, Which, listening to that music, grows more strong And constant in pursuit of the dim goal That shadows man like some faint aureole : As winter sunshine presages the spring, As the bright quartz gleams in the blackened coal, As of the sea the hurrying rivers sing, So Nature to our ears a star-born hope doth bring. Now, that desired Beauty whom you vowed To serve in song, and ' studious zeal ' and love, Has set you as her rainbow in the cloud, A radiant bridge between her throne above And those dull mortals whom she cannot move By mere delight of being. Dazzling child, The modern world's first offspring, you shall prove A light of life for us, unreconciled To those in days remote who saint or sage were styled. You commune with me now, and I recall Enchanted hours, a truant out of doors, When whispers of some wood or waterfall Drowsed my full-flooded heart like mandragores. My body seemed to sleep, but through its pores Flowed-in a tide which bore my fainting sense To spheres in which the mounting being soars Up like the lark into the blue expanse, Then ebbed, a dying wave into the dim distance. 86 Songs of Exuberance The painter gazing on the daffodil, The cowslip, or the gracile pheasant's eye, Finds in the form which their pure colours fill Suggestions for some future harmony. So, gazing on your life and songs, do I Discern a pattern from which each may draw Suggestions for his personality To push between the stones of moral law A flower-like soul, full-grown, unique, and without flaw. How many men and, later, women too Will thank you for the way you led before ! These, your true heirs, unthinkingly will do Those deeds whose doing drove you from the shore Of England into exile ; evermore New generations will enjoy the fee Your life fore-shadowed and your eyes foresaw, Where love is the sole law of liberty And men are equal in all, but their capacity. There was a burning arrow in your heart Which warmed it still in spite of bitter sneers, And when your children were withdrawn apart It made you ' meek and bold ' though full of tears. There stood a comrade undismayed by fears, While life remained, forever at your side, To whom you gave a spirit more than hers When first you bound her to you as your bride. So love undid the wrong which hate had magnified. To Shelley 87 You saw Life as a warm and radiant form Walking the earth, a tangible desire, Clear as the star which rides above the storm, Close as a friend's face leaning o'er the fire ; But no frail child of fancy. To aspire, To you, was a new creature half in being. To give it life and form, and not to tire Was only proof that you were clearly seeing, For dream and deed are merged in Man's freewill decreeing. But in our panic world a child, though born To spread its tendrils on the happy air, Finds its free growth is met with frosty scorn From those whose hearts are darkened with despair At memory of all they did not dare. Grown savage by the chain authority They bend the tearful child to what they are, A slave, the champion of all tyranny, The prey of fear, and dupe of dead morality. Justice and Truth, Freedom, Equality Were no phantasmal shadows fancied here To screen the sun of stern reality, But living presences as loved and near As friends, or children, or whate'er is dear To man ; whose ways and countenances grow Familiar as a child's throughout the year, Hallowing the house, making the calm heart glow With happiness assured, untouched by fear or foe. 88 Songs of Exuberance You saw the future as a radiant star Which drew you through the present world of pain, Like some tossed seaman glimpsing it afar Between dark rifts of cloud and stormy rain. You followed gladly, knew it was not vain For that starred hope all sufferings to endure ; For what though waves and shrieking hurricane Threatened to swamp your vessel with its roar, Mankind will one day land on that discovered shore ! 19*5 Sonnets on People and Places The Creation 91 The Creation THE world first broke in splendour like a rose Which drinks the morning sunlight. Mist and fire Lay on the hills, like music on a lyre, As the sun, in silent majesty, arose. Valley and hill, and every stream which flows Ran out to greet Him, while the joyful choir Of man and beast, forth-shadowing His desire, First shook the silence of God's long repose. The cup of life brimmed over as with wine, And laughter, like the lightning, joined blue sky, Green earth, and azure sea in ecstasy As day discovered life's displayed outline. When God said : ' Light/ the sun began to shine. Matter and dream were one reality. 1913 92 Songs of Exuberance Hilaire Belloc Prince of Journalists, Poet and Historian (A Panegyric) GREAT writer ! (whose clear head and classic art Make his taut English soar and sing, as though It were the bow-string of an English bow When some fond yeoman's fingers plucked its heart !) You sweep Truth's temple of the hucksters' mart. Your hard words and well-hammered knowledge glow Like burning horse-shoes in the smithy's low Fear-haunted dark, whereat the Press-gang start. Maker of history ! whose volumes walk Within our great tradition : As though Froude Had waked, in dream, in royal Holyrood And with the rival Queens exchanged talk, We read. And lo ! (as fancied in this scene), The Future grants us audience. We have seen. 19*5 Philip Webb 93 Philip Webb After seeing Trevor Hall, East Barnet BEFORE clean work like yours, Praise hides her head Ashamed to whisper with her silver tongue. Silence, receptive of this beauty, hung A curtain of repose on us, and shed The peace of pure proportion. Hushed, as dead, Like a young child to sweet sleep softly sung By the low cadence of her mother's song, We two were wrapt in peace, and rendered Our souls' awed thanks for such a hymn in stone Of praise to God, who taught you to direct The Gothic gable, and the Queen Anne white Window and pillared porch, with, of your own, Inspired harmonies of mass and light, Tradition's last, great, master-architect ! 19*5 94 Songs of Exuberance The Death of Swinburne r I ^HE slow continuous murmur of the sea A Recalls that voice it loosed upon the land Back to the billows, though the wrinkled sand Is graphic still of its insurgency. The voice of many waters, that was He Our last great singer, captain of the band Whose visions never falter, and who stand Bold trespassers about eternity. So, on life's shifting sands, his poems trace The stealthy limits of men's spirit-tide : Where many eager breakers shoreward ride For one which bursts beyond their plunging place. What though the sea withdraws his wave apace, His songs record the measure of his stride. 1909 Meredith 95 Meredith HE struck our language as a steel the flint. A trail of sparks, if sometimes a dull sound Told how his mind impacted the hard ground, Or dug obtusely, wrestling for the mint. Worship of Earth, rejoicing in the hint Of life's great cycle to and from the mound, Confirmed his courage, sighed not at death's sound And gave his prose no less the poet's imprint. Thus much for style : but ever his mind's core Was turned responsive to the cry of spring. Young love has never found a mouth to sing More palpitating notes, or wittier score Of phrases whose terse brevities restore To wisdom's dusty words their inner sting. 1912 96 Songs of Exuberance Samuel Butler SANEST of men, whose penetrating eye Laughed out of sadness at pretensions, mild In defeat, and like a terrible child Exposed the vested interests of the high. Your genius pricks all who would terrify The mass of men. O gentle Laodicean, Who would not suffer science to grow wan In keeping of professors, still supply A fountain of sly laughter far upflung ! Youth thus may know its friend, and if indeed We live, as you once fancied, most in those Who know us, rather than in conscious heed Of life, your death enlarges and out-grows Your life, and in us keeps you ever young. 1914 Samuel Butler 97 ii If life be memory, life shall learn from thee Not to go far in search of knowledge, nor To think those theories most worth fighting for Which need most art to hedge them : we shall flee The men who claim portentous gravity As the true breath of science, who obscure With hybrid phrases thoughts which else could score No victory in enslaving minds still free. You were the first to prove man's actions are Far wiser than his words, and that the Truth, Being young, must pay the penalty of youth For making long-shut doors first stand ajar ; That, if desires for some too distant star Scorch our weak wings, such stars should have no ruth. 1914 98 Songs of Exuberance In Parody of Edward Cracroft Lefroy The Bather WHERE are the nymphs who dragged young Hylas down Into the rich recesses of the pool ? A schoolboy now, as young and beautiful, Invites a stream which well might smile to drown. The sculptor catching him would win renown ! He stoops towards the water, then a flash : His body cleaves the sunlight, and the splash Of passage now the laughing bubbles crown. But see ! he rises twenty feet beyond, Spurning the deeps which fain would hold him still, With long, slow strokes which win him to the side. The water glistens on his sunlit hide ! O for a tonic tide of laughter ! to distil The mud in which schoolmasters' minds are drowned ! 1908 Bruges 99 Bruges QUIET has her colours, which light lingers on As if the tattered garments of old Time Made the pale sun in this flat northern clime More tender of his beams : for gray and dun Glow here like jewels about the ancient town. Here Shakespeare might have loitered in his prime, lago here Othello urged to crime, And many a mused poet strange fancies won. The little courts, whose balconies divide The course of each canal, ardours awake For passions worthy of the scene they make ; And teach us, as we pace the long quay's side, Why, like a flame, Dutch art has beautified Moments of life to common eyes opaque. 19*3 ioo Songs of Exuberance Oxford STRANGE relic ! stone sarcophagus of souls Who had clear visions of a world, and so Made haste to set its pinnacles arow, Planning quad, hall and chapel as three poles Of a life which one informing spirit controls, You greet us sadly. In your sunset-glow You ask us how your sons contrive to grow So unlike her, whose beauty each extols. Your stones cried : " Do not sigh to enter in, To own your staircase, and your seat in hall Like those great shades which this Year follows fast " ; But told, in answers echoing each footfall, How we, by visions of new worlds within, May build still greater glories on their past. 19*5 Meditation at Twilight 101 Meditation at Twilight I WATCHED the shadows creeping from the trees, Pointing their ghostly fingers on the ground, And in those twilight moments my heart found An inspiration travelling on the breeze. These whispering together answered these ; The climbing moon was leaning to their sound, Man only in the voice-stirred world around Was silent, with no message, ill at ease. O, wherefore have we then the gift of speech Which, though these have not, yet they understand ? No spoken word confides what hand-in-hand Can tell two lovers silent each to each : If words could frame the thoughts such moments teach Life's future were a joy which might be planned. 1907 io2 Songs of Exuberance On Bunyan's placing the Village of Morality hard by the City of Destruction WHEN I was young, through many bitter hours, I tired to live a moral, virtuous life. My instincts and my aims were thus at strife. I overstrained my natural, native powers. Now I am old, my spirit no more cowers Ashamed of its own children. I have made A code out of my instincts ; undismayed I follow where they blow, those happy flowers. Men love great sinners, for the sinner seems Too busy living " right " and " wrong " to con. His instincts and his actions are at one ; He knows no bar between his deeds and dreams. Men's love is wise, for with this truth it teems : Be not more good than you were born, Bion. 1913 Personality 103 Personality I BEAT against the dangerous gates of birth And sprang into the world with bitter pain, Struggling in soul and body, might and main, To plant a man's foot on the soil of earth. Thus fearfully was broken Nature's girth The seasons' cycle of the seed and grain And from old memories of wind, sun, and rain, Was formed my flesh, my little human worth. Now, all my crying is to sink once more Into the surge of the devouring sea ; To be dispersed as sand upon its shore, Be broken as its dancing bubbles be. Nostalgia for what death will restore : This is the ache of personality. 1909 104 Songs of Exuberance Resipiscence Arketon te Hemera ApKerov rtj HOW strange that if the shadow of death's wing Darkens a face we love we feel that we Shall soon regret the small untender thing We let slip past our lips so thoughtlessly ; Yet when that shadow passes, and the sun Of health once more in rosy hues doth glow The sick remembrance of this mood we shun, And new occasions all unbridled go. How keen regret in shadow of this fear ! How foolish, too, at the return of shine ! Can love, then, 'scape regret, yet be sincere In every thought, and look, and word, and line ? When we are born anew we cease to fret : In true repentance there is no regret. w The Hour of Awakening 105 The Hour of Awakening In Memoriam, C. S., obiit November 1 5th, 1912 HAT do they know of Death who have not seen Some gentle spirit turning at his call To pass the door which opes from Birth's demesne On to the smiling land where no tears fall ? Sweet is that passing ; for the body's health Seems to the dying tuned to mightier strings, A treacherous friend resisting our true wealth By the abundant beating of his wings. These only know, like Keats, death's easeful bliss, The well of joy upspringing at his sign, The eager flight, the gently- welcoming kiss Within the dreadful precincts of his shrine. For skull and bones not Death but birth betoken : Our fears are but the dust still unawoken. 19*3 io6 Songs of Exuberance On a Friend's Marriage- I. He AMBITION and a seasoning of wit, -LJL A fearlessness, and faith he will succeed : These are his qualities, in these indeed The fine half of his character is writ. Reverse the picture : impulse more than grit Governs his actions. Impulse is the seed From which spring selfishness and all her breed,- A bitter home with children watching it. A tempered will, a more intensive care ; Impulsiveness let reason underpin : These gifts would drag him from the gulf Despair, These fire the beacon God has laid within. He knows his weakness, wills he then to win ? Success must be the crown his wife must share, 1908 On a Friend's Marriage 107 II. She SHE wears a jewel above two laughing eyes : Loyalty to all who find love's pathway there. For those she loved she everything would dare, And youthful-like would count her suffering prize. Too confident in ignorance she spies No ill in all the world, friends everywhere. Marriage will school her hard. Let her beware She stakes not all her life on young surmise. Pleasure, youth's idle dream, still quickens her. To some supreme surrender she aspires. She should be wife and mother, tenderer Will grow that heart confided to its fires. If her life's garden bear not roseless briars A Child, not Love, must be its gardener. 1908 io8 Songs of Exuberance The Question SHE gives to him her heart's whole loyalty, An un thrift of her lovelihead ; I fear A reckless gambler, holding nought too dear, With no reserve to meet mischances. He Loves her indeed, but loves her feverishly, As if between their kisses he could hear A treacherous whisper : at this time next year Will you still laugh before futurity ? Most jealous of love's steadfastness he turns In questioning appeal to search her eyes : Faith says they hold his ultimate certainties. Means this he reads the love there, that she learns Her hero needs the strength for which she yearns ? Will wisdom beg of love, can love grow wise ? 1909 The Intellect 109 The Intellect THE tall trees leaned towards their shadows where The sun had pictured forests on the wave. She lay back dreaming, and her silence gave An open sign of unresistance there. Love, who is nature's paid upholsterer, Spread out this woman for his eyes ; the knave Scarce needs his art or nature's to enslave Wills which have no divine Competitor. A poet love's dream one morning did beguile, But ere the stretching shadows touched the east, The intellect awoke, and soon his smile Troubled love's waters, puckered them and creased. (The sun had fallen as the breeze increased.) Love's apple-leaves were dried to camomile. 1909 no Songs of Exuberance Love and Language MY lady asked me if I missed the sight Of her bright brow, which shone above the throng Of courtiers like a star, and did me wrong Where I sat lonely hugging my despite. The bitter thought that she was mine by right Though not by love now, made that love more strong And jealousy mock mildness did prolong To say, " Rejoin them, you are their delight/ 1 Thus love, who knows so well what he would say, Is swift with an apt word to lift the ear With music ere his cadence dies away, Making of words true symbols, does forswear The art he knows, and let his words belie The bitter pain which he is nourished by. 1911 Love in Loneliness in Love in Loneliness AH ! bitter-sweet it is to tell you how The flood of things that my full heart would say Was choked to silence, with you, yesterday, And flows its course full free, without you, now. As some lean wind may through the winter's bough, Unlet by the leaves' murmur, find its way, So my soul in your body's absence may Win closer access than our talks avow. For the body, like a language, may disguise Those thoughts which are the test of love's true height ; But shall my soul remember while my sight Takes wings along the waters of your eyes ? These mountain-barriers which love's fear descries Love's faith subdues to vantage-coigns for flight. 1910 ii2 Songs of Exuberance The Two Silences THE shell of her I have but not the soul, The smile, the kiss, the rubious moist lips ; The heart of her has suffered an eclipse. The spirit of my love has fled control. Solitude once was dear ; as a cracked bowl Silence now jars unresonant of song, And she, to whom all lovely things belong, Makes once sweet words like leaden bells to toll. On silence and on speech the soul takes wing, Alternate coursers of love's temperate air, And solitude is sweet, and words may bring One half of comfort to heart-wrung despair. But it is in the pauses joy or care May brim most near to overburdening. 1911 Easter Morning 113 Easter Morning UPON the happy break of Easter morn Cheerful I woke, and flung the pane to view Where myriad pearl-drops of light -stained dew Starred the grey grass like faery fields of corn. Christ's sun-forsaken hours I would not mourn, Nor amazed Mary's shuddering joy renew. It was in me His Easter-rising grew To its full flower this soul-ecstatic dawn. Eternal life pure hearts, here quickened, fills, An incalculable wind, like the earth breath. It is our one possession before death. And after death the same law it fulfils, And blows, can we say now how it listeth, What quarter of the sky upon the hills ? 1912 ii4 Songs of Exuberance The Unpursued ABOUT the faces which live round me still How many memories rise both sweet and clear ! But there are some I hardly hold less dear Cloud-shadows chased across time's wind-swept hill. These, quick to pass, time yet has failed to kill. One haunts me most, unmet since that far year At some lone inn . . . ah, what fate kind or drear Have Emily's days now brought her to fulfil ? A glass of milk she brought me, and she smiled And I passed on, but one among the throng Who came and went ; but one unreconciled To count her fated to lie waste among Those untracked friendships we may not prolong, To lose the promise of a face so mild. 1910 The King of Terrors 115 The King of Terrors In Memoriam, V. G., nascitur August 3oth, 1913 HERE snug and warm, enwrapt, content to feed, Sense unalloyed by all but will to grow, I Pe in bliss above the reach of woe My life with law at one, save for the need, One day, to obey the inscrutable fate decreed By what I know not, have no wish to know. Ah ! Could I but escape that doom to go Hence, where all need is bliss and bliss is need. My walls contract upon me : it begins, The dreadful change Fear prophesied would vie One day yet with my present equity In horror . . . Fate through all resistance wins Triumphant ; force-impelled the battle spins, And fear is drowned in Viola's first cry. 19*3 n6 Songs of Exuberance First Feeling Old TV /TY dreams were wonderful when I was young : IVJL Marvels, of my own right, would come to me, And all the adventures poets had ever sung, With no such shipwreck as elsewhere men see ! The ruck, poor slaves, whose hearts had never stirred, As mine did always, with triumphant faith, Might grope by the sick light of hope deferred To Failure's corner in the Porch of Death. Unique, as was my faith, my fate would be ! Nor did my early years belie this dream, Till, one day, a wide wave of destiny Convulsed my heart, and left a gaping seam Whose red and sagging lips the strange truth told ; Mine was the common fate. I first felt old. 1915 The Absolute Onion 117 The Absolute Onion To the Chelsea Sages WHAT is the subtlest epithet, And what the essential quality Of the onion root sub specie Mternatis : " strong to wet " The smarting lids," the child avers ; " To heal ear-ache/' the mother cries ; " To make brown gravies cheat the eyes Of meatless men/' the cook prefers ; " To sweet the hash/' say the poor ; "To offend Each tender sense/' the rich reply. But the artist knows efficiency Is the onion's characteristic trend. " To lurk within the salad bowl In a transcendent immanency, (Avoiding either heresy) Whose part is greater than its Whole " : Thus, to the saint, the onion seems, The archetype of Almighty God, Servant of servants, rods the rod, In its salad universe of dreams. 1 1 8 Songs of Exuberance Press not this parable, laughs the poet : Like reason's heresies, great and small, It pierces God's foot with a cobbler's awl. Only a mystic may, and not rue it. Is God a radish ? Is not He The aliquid ex nihilo fit ? The frost which burns, the lamp unlit, The wrath of the lamb, tragi-comedy ? The voiceless cry ? The Prince of Peace Who carries a sword ? The baseless bow ? The colour blazing in the snow ? The winter's warmth within the fleece ? Is God efficient ? Armed, forewarned, Prescient, equipped, the Fact of facts ? Or is He not, to men of acts, The unforeseen, the feared, the scorned ? Is God efficient ? Armed, forewarned, Policed, secure, the smell of smells ? Or is He not the hell of hells, To men of wealth, the feared, the scorned ? To mothers He deals scorching tears ; To masters rebels ; swords to slaves ; Detection to the merely knaves ; Exposure to the man of fears ; The Absolute Onion 1 1 g Joy to the strong ; to the sharp thorn The red rose summer's softest breath ; Recovery at the point of death ; And blindness to the newly born. He makes industrious men to starve. His lazy tramps lie down full fed. His tasteless water, tasteless bread Are sweeter than old wine by half. The new-mown heap of rain-soaked grass Burns red within, for He is there. Hot water vanishes to air, Hot air rains water on His glass. Fire fears His rain when gutters choke And gurgle, as with heat outpoured. His is the unresolved discord ; The woman's tongue ; the artist's joke ; The child's delight in obscure themes ; Youth's greedy curiosity ; The young girl's nights of melancholy ; The mother's day dynastic dreams ; Woman's contempt for man's ideas ; Masculine scorn for woman's art ; The jewel of sex within the heart Of each ; the old maid's bitter tears ; I2O Songs of Exuberance The boy's shyness, and heart-burnings ; The girl's flight (knowing to pursue Is far less deadly) ; the boy's true Revulsion from what capture brings ; The husband's rack at the birth-hour ; The mother's joy, which frightens him ; Their child's ingratitude to them When he calls home a prison-tower ; The young man's hatred of his youth ; The old man's knowledge that his years Have not brought wisdom ; both their fears Lest each should read the other's truth. ..." Then the onion's a devil escaped from hell ? No : now I have laid its last fold bare, Nose, under your burden of carking care, God's pungent wit, its Absolute smell ! Note. Onion from the French oignon, from the Latin unionem unio : a single large pearl, that is, poetically, the Pearl of great Price, that is, theologically, God : The One, hence the unique ; hence, among odoriferous underground roots, the one with the most pungent smell : the Absolute odour whose in- carnation is the one onion. That which has sublimated all odours into one, The Absolute. Hence Mr. Bradley and his followers have been looking everywhere for what lies all the time under their noses. In seeking for the Absolute they have missed the onion which is efficiency raised to the nth power, the power of the Nose. " How charming is divine philosophy " (Milton). Songs of the Sunshine Love Song 123 Love Song Sunshine and Song-books SUNSHINE and song-books Were given to me. The trout have the brooks, The sea-gulls the sea. But sunshine and song-books Were given to me. How else could I tell you The love that I bear ? No prose could compel you, But song-books declare, (How else could I tell you ?) The love that I bear. How could I discover The love in your eyes, Were the sun not your lover, The sunlight your prize ? How could I discover The love in your eyes ? Therefore the Giver Has granted to me, No running river, No spaces of sea, Only sunshine and song-books To shew you to me. 1907 124 Songs of Exuberance Star Song I HIT my head, and saw a star, My eyes darkened, near and far Dancing up and dancing down Above the pavements of the town. Of this star I made a friend. With my eyes it seemed to blend; Giving them an opal hue Like a rainbow in their blue. Deep it sank in my blue eyes, Sinking, falling ; ecstasies, Like beaded bubbles in a well, Ran up from it as it fell. Up they floated to my lips Like dew on a rose's petal-tips ; Jewels of speech from humour's jar Winked in the torch-light of that star. Gay with wit I left the street Where the road and pavement meet, Wishing for no other friend Than the star, till life should end. A Lover Waiting 125 The chain of bubbles which a stone Unwinds as it hurries down A well, is broken at the source Of the spring whence flows its force. So, at last, my star-chain ended When my soul with it was blended. My eyes darkened as before, But I saw a star no more. I was lonely, and I wept For the star of me bereft. " Come back/' I cried. " Would you/' it said, " See a star, then hit your head." 1915 A Lover Waiting FOR me the sun is weary in the west, The crescent moon is late upon the sky, While earth is still the voice of my unrest Breaks in the troubled music of a sigh. But you were made for sunlight and for laughter To sleep in the close arms of my embrace, That I might wake, and see the moment after Love chase the flying dreamland from your face. 1907 126 Songs of Exuberance Song Where shall Love find a House ? WHERE shall Love find a house For us to dwell ? Under what tall tree's boughs, By fields where cattle browse, Or windy hill ? Breezes now stir that place : Others are there ; Folk who like dreams may chase ? Graceless or with what grace ? Feckless or fair ? When shall we find it, sweet, Or late or soon ? After long days or fleet, With fresh or weary feet, By sun or moon ? Will Time have scored it o'er With years grown grey, Worn away stair and floor ? Or raised one house the more For love to fray ? 1910 Bed Song 127 Bed Song SMILES trip across her cheek As shadows across the sea ; Ah ! would she wake and speak In smiles to me ! Sleep is a robber, who does take My love from me until she wake. I stand as though a spell Had changed me to a stone, For thus does love compel, Save to her alone, Me to appear to all the rest When I by love am so distressed. What vintage is so sweet, Does so intoxicate, Makes hearts so wildly beat Which never drank nor ate ? That, watching her, I seem more dead Standing upright than she in bed. 1909 128 Songs of Exuberance Spring Song WHEN I hear the heath wind call, When the river whispers low, When the birds their madrigal Breathe upon the bough : These are loves which never plead I to others must not heed. When the Spring begins to wake Colour-hunger in my veins, When the glad, bud-bursting brake Thrills me with its pains, Summer is not jealous, nor Will Autumn turn me from her door. Learn, then, love, to leave me free As the wind across the hills, Wading, where the spring-tides be, Knee-deep in the daffodils. So, like Spring, I'll faithful be Returning every year to thee. 19*3 A Don of Fifty Communes 129 A Don of Fifty Communes with Himself TOO late alas ! even to say goodbye ; The film has clouded once again the glass And we were parted, though the sun rides high : Too late alas ! Too late alas ! no parting words were spoken, No foolish promises or frightened sigh ; Time's river ran between us for a token My love and I. Too late alas ! but still I keep the vision, The joy of love, unbroken by farewell. Unasked the dream began, its sudden fission Left two lives parallel. What words could say we said, and never travailled To find a yet unuttered word of love, Never were spendthrifts of our passion, cavilled At the lack thereof. One heart we were one moment, and if after Time was a signpost where love's paths divide, Who can decide for either love or laughter So they go side by side ? 130 Songs of Exuberance Too late alas ! we wandered from the pasture, Stept on the highway leaving the soft grass, Hoped of the future, lived not in the last year. Too late alas ! Too late alas ! a dream she was and only Are happy dreams that always dreams remain. Life is a compromise, and love less lonely In dreams again. Too soon alas ! we leave our reverie To place on life a load it cannot bear. Why must we slip 'twixt hope and memory Giving life a share ? 1908 Growth Growth DOES your present seem to you More vivid than your past ? Or is it stale, a sucked-up dew, Bloomless and overcast ? Has your laugh the silver ring It had ten years ago ? Have your words the adventurous sting Of wisdom in them now ? Do you envy others free Of the open sun ? Does your sense of what might be To your past make moan ? ... If the gods are glad of you Your now you will not grieve. Then, though glad the morning dew, Exquisite the eve ! 1913 132 Songs of Exuberance A Message from the Muse to the Bushey Repertory Theatre Thaleia : When laughter grew looked on askance In temples made with hands, The Churches' loss was the Drama's chance ; My Church of Laughter stands. Melpomene : " He spake the Word, and they were made." Sky, stars, and flowers of the sod ; No grander tribute could be paid To poetry or to God. Thaleia : Joy is the proper child of strength, We therefore bid you choose Between the lyric of sad length And the laughter-loving Muse. Melpomene : Tragedy is the loftier lyre, Where, beyond laugh or tears, Man's fragile children of desire Are pit against the spheres. A Message from the Muse 133 Thaleia : Comedy, subtlest of the arts, And rapier quick in thrust, Twitches the mask off, whence there darts The soul from human dust. My laughter wakes the melting mood, The mood in which you keep, Tense, intellectually gay, Touched not beguiled to weep. Melpomene : Because the Word thus moves all men, And becomes Flesh on my Stage, Drama and Theatre have again, As once, Church privilege. The Comic shows you from within, Within too, but from above, Tragedy holds the glass wherein Pity and Terror move. " Where two or three are gathered," then (The great phrase still recurs !) Souls are re-made, the Word calls men In theatres (for who hears). 134 Songs of Exuberance Thaleia : I come upon you unaware : I startle you with sly delight ; Laughter is God-like, I declare, For " He comes like a thief in the night." Thaleia and Melpomene : We two join hands then, lift the mask A moment ere the curtains rise, Before the laugh or tears, to ask Your minds to guide your eyes. November 29, 1913 NOTE. These lines appeared on the programme of the first pro- duction of the Bushey Repertory Theatre, which took place on the above date. The story of that production, and of the local movement of which it was the first public expression, has been told by me in the postscript to The Silent Heavens, to which the curious reader is referred. The programme, I am glad to say, was pretentious, and the deliberate attempt to give it a cachet is shown by the cover-design, which was the joint work of those two accomplished artists, John Copley and Ethel Gabain. Higgledy-Piggledy The Choice 137 The Choice GAY working hours, whose laughter Has weaned my soul from sorrow, Which shall I follow after, George Moore or George Borrow ? The life in the Temple, the lonely, The bookish, the bachelor hours, Or the wisdom of walking, where only Men gladden like flowers : To walk through green lanes or gold corn-fields, The steaming, hot sex in the earth, Where rank is life's sweetness, and morn yields True scents of man's birth ; Where the day, like a child on awaking, Warm, drowsy, and damp at its pores With the sweat of sweet sleep and dream-making Is flushed out of doors ! (The young birds cry in the dew, Smoke rises, where under the hill A traveller's tent stops you To dream at will). 138 Songs of Exuberance Two lives there are : a rafter, Book-writing, or the roadway to-morrow. Which shall I follow after, George Moore or George Borrow ? 1913 A Week Later THE hours have passed by, oh, so slowly ! Since the day when your promise you gave, And every hour you've rejoiced in it wholly, Say that you have ! O, my dear, to declare your hid feeling So freely, did love make you brave ? You have told all the tied lips were sealing, Say that you have ? I was weak in the wind of his coming, Through my arms raced the tide of his wave, Your body his harbour becoming, To the spent sea the cave. So dumbly you waited his asking, And then like a reed in the wind You swayed, in a moment unmasking What floods lay behind. 1911 Fallow Time 139 Fallow Time IN spring I thought always to lie Like sun-dazed flowers, to lie and dream, To thrill always to the poet's cry : " Nature will not betray thee," I Thought always to enjoy the sky, And love the sword-play of the stream. But yesterday a devil came Into the heart of one I love, Who made my bed a bed of shame, My house his hell, my joy a graeme, Like burning ice my brain became. Nature I then sought comfort of. On the road I walked there was none to see (Summer's fires sank in the autumn sheaves) How the red and the gold of the sere-scorched tree Were ashy-cold as my love to me. Blind were my eyes, and forsaken of thee, O Earth, forsaken of all thy leaves. Grief is one long slow moment. Know, (For flour not for husks do the mill-wheels wind) Suspense will crush the spirit-ears so That the stones might be stopped, and the water-flow Grind no more, though the gristless mill-wheels go As fast as when there was corn to grind. 140 Songs of Exuberance Am I changed then ? or is she whom I love Changed ? Since her body, in earth's dear way, In the seven years gone will have shed enough To be no more hers than she will prove, In seven years more, to be mistress of That shape which fills me with pain to-day. 19*3 The Young Wife HOW sweet and dewy was her face. Like stones' paths down a well her eyes. Her laughter rippled to a kiss. Her health wore all the rose's dyes. To-day a weariness has passed Its hands in shadows o'er her skin. The muscles stare, and overcast Her roses, losing blood, wear thin. Those eyes, which harboured morning dew, Flicker uncertain fires to-day. Too many children make her rue The fickle charms of yesterday. 19*3 The Little House 141 The Little House WITH days of hated toil I won A little house in Bethnal Green, Dreaming of wealth, and nothing done For all the dreary days' routine. A meaner man was never seen. And yet I had exchanged a flat Of two rooms, kitchen, and no hall, Servantless, for a villa that Two storeys had, a bath and all That comfort makes reciprocal On steady earnings. I had now A garden, drawing-room, and one spare Wherein a friend might lodge, nor vow Aught to complain of ; what was there To make life hateful or bring care ? Before I had these things I sighed For comforts, now I found that they Create strange needs and magnified The nameless voice which irks to stay By soft arm-chair and coat of gray. 142 Songs of Exuberance I said : I will regard these things As weeds which choke the spring of life. I'll burn the books, jump reckonings, Nor be ashamed to beat my wife. The next day I awoke in jail And sang like any nightingale ! 1912 The Way of the Will TO draw strength from the ground like Antaeus, To wake music from Nature like Pan, Leave the town, where the rich men decree us To drudge, machine-minders not man, Seek where life first began ! The Earth not the world for adventure, The soil not the plot for thy peace, The hill not the house as indenture Of freedom, from comfort's disease Embrace thy release ! Be a part of the landscape as horses, Which stale as they pause at the plough. Not a man at the coulter divorces His life from their life, and shalt thou Shun the sweat of thy brow ? 19*3 Love's Philosophy 14.3 Love's Philosophy (New Version) MY love and I do fight One day in seven, And thus we know from Hell The joys of Heaven. Some married lovers say No angry word Disturbs their harmony, Or sweet accord. But is that love, say we, That never knows Its opposite, or a true flower A thornless rose ? For who would care to hold God's greatest treasure, If by the devils left Without a measure Whereby he might test well The worth God set On what Satan so fumed And raged to get ? 144 Songs of Exuberance So may next year, as this, Give blows and jeers, And nights of bitterness And woman's tears. Then shall my man and I, In love still pent, Know ours to be indeed God's sacrament. 1912 The Meeting A~" last I saw her. Hunger for her face Had peopled the long interval, which now One quick touch of two hands, one- stupid bow, Narrowing the long days to a second's space, Briefly avow. And all the stored-up thoughts, the plans to tell, Which filled each day with dream-fed hours indeed, Had in this slip of time to say their meed, To make this moment linger by a spell, Of time to plead. 1911 Jaques's Letters 145 Jaques's Letters A BUNDLE of old letters in my hand ! My eyes still glisten o'er the faded page. There's few could write like him. To understand You must have met him at that early age I saw him first : his black hair spread like wings Above the ivory forehead, calm and pale ; Have seen his eyes laugh as some new thought springs To flash his wit on things you'd fancied stale. How beautiful the script, clear-formed yet flowing, As unself -conscious as his life was brave. A gay humility, fresh growth bestowing, In every look, in every word he gave. Men thought him strange, disturbing. When he met The world's half-dozen masters, (as I knew Before he met them !) they were first to set Himself beside them, hardly yet his due ! I grew into his shadow, then admired The way he laughed my praise off. Live your life, Your life, not mine, he said. So it transpired. I went my own way through the press of life. 146 Songs of Exuberance This friendship was a flame ; and, since true love Is but to see the beauty piercing things, My friend was like the comrade God above Sends novices in mystic communings. 1914 Citywards THE tides of sleep crept backwards, I On the cold shore of Day did lie, Bare to the busy swarm of schemes That Day sent to destroy my dreams. These brought no ransom for my soul, For all lay under Day's control. My dreams were routed till sweet Night Hid me once more in Day's despite. When Night's tide hid the land again Sleep washed my eyes with poppy stain, For on the noisy shore of Day My dreams decay, my dreams decay. 1909 The Anniversary The Anniversary Time's Revenges HHHE wind raced from the west that night, JL The cottage creaked and groaned. Though each told each that our delight For many a year began that night, We feared more than we owned. Yet what could hurt us ? she and I Two lovers that day wed. Earth's kindred musics in the sky Throbbed as a viol through her, and I, I had no past to dread. We lived a dream of life, we two, Like that Dutch painter sees. Daily more dear our cottage grew, Frequent with laughter, for us two A waking dream to please. I think she was a holy thing That year, too brief for tears. Flower-like she grew, and as flowers bring Beautiful joys, a holy thing, Peace, vanquished all my fears. But ah ! too lordly love became, A proud king asking all ; Too keen for bliss, his hard clear flame Burnt up her sweetness, she became Weak at the autumn fall. 148 Songs of Exuberance That night it was : a piteous rain, A steadfast dripping sky. Quite like a pall the counterpane Lay upon her, as soon the rain Upon her grave would lie. A beggar knocking at our door We took in long ago. Love was his name, and, O before We knew him for a king, our door Opened how should we know ? Beggar and king, and baby now, A traitor from the first ! Love's three disguises : first the vow ; The crown, the royal robes ; and now The mocking, and the thirst. I move about the cottage door, A nurse walks to and fro. Our baby at her breast, the more To darken still the shadowed door My love once lighted so. And in its staring eyes each year Like beacon lights will shine The warn of rocks we sailed too near Unheeding the red lights last year In my love's eyes and mine. 1911 Listlessness 14.9 Listlessness MY will is like a swallow, who has built A nest with mud beneath the tall house-eaves, And reared two nestlings till, because they spilt Off-scourings on the panes, the house-wife heaves Off from the wall to expiate their guilt. Whereat the mother, with quick, eddying flight, Up to the wall and off again doth fly, As if no touch, nor witness of her sight, Sufficed to prove her brood condemned to die ; And her without two mouths to feed to-night. No beating of her wings upon the air, No clinging now upon the vacant wall Can kill the knowledge of what should be there, Or that her building was too strong to fall, Or that all other nests are as they were. Even so, my will to-day, as if a loss, Like hers, had made all effort seem in vain Stands idly witness, quick to turn and toss, With a numb loathing to begin again. Nor may it raise the spell, nor lift the cross. 150 Songs of Exuberance Who, thus, has seen Time stare him in the face While the sweet hours with steady pulse go by, But envied them the absorption of their pace, As their calm steersman with wind-blinking eye Is lost in the mid rapture of the race. Yet so I watch myself ; my hands fall down, And I stare on my life as a bad dream, In whose green sea of vacant thoughts I drown The while my will, with one last flickering gleam, Drifts to the fall which death's last bubbles crown. 1914 The Seed in the Heart 1 5 1 The Seed in the Heart AS the heart which burns with love JL\. Fears for the beloved's head Everything beneath, above Gay but half afraid : Just because she is so sweet, So April's sun and tears soon meet Because the spring is fair but fleet, Spring the fated maid. Earth's blue skies are clear and bright, The furrowed fields grow tall and trim, There is nothing to affright In the hazy, dim Dawn, till the sun averts his face And buries his head in the cloud's embrace, As his gold and her dark hair interlace, Straining her to him. These fears of joy do I not know, These tender, unexplained alarms ? Has my love's voice not whispered low And broken, while her arms 152 Songs of Exuberance Enwound me fast till the storm passed by Into silence, which rocked her happily Till she sighed in her sleep, and her tears grown dry Smiled in morning's calms. What is this seed in the heart of love, This mingling of mist, this shadowy wing Which brushes the soul on the surface above, Which stirs in the sap of spring ? Is it the Lover bursting through The veil of the face, that fire in the dew Which God has set as the sign of his true Innermost blossoming ? We only know that the radiant face Suffuses with a light so rare That joy and pain here interlace Changing the names they bear. That this moment trembles with sudden light, Like the ghost of the dawn in a summer night When the grey grows gold, and the promise bright Of a day surpassingly fair. On the other side of despair and hope There is a mood of which no name, No art, no dream has divined the scope ; And no poet can claim To have fashioned for those who know it not, To revive it for those who have it forgot, Though of art, love, dream, the impregnate spot And quintessential flame. The Seed in the Heart 153 For love is as the waters wide, And the soul like a dry sea-weed Awaits their ever-rising tide Its stiffened arms to knead. On this supporting sea expand The soul's leaves, floated by God's hand Each frond unfolds and is gently fanned, Rocked on His waves and freed. Who shall measure the thoughts to flow Along the current of that tide ; The fears which shudder, the joys that grow, The vessels opened wide ; The penetrating sense which cleaves The soul-anemone's trembling leaves, At one with the bosom on which it heaves Rhythmical, satisfied ? Presages of strange new birth, All alarms our hearts know of, Every mood of sky or earth : Each, like Noah's dove, Retrieves us on home-pinioned wings A straw, for all heart-breaking things Here, point the tide or wind which brings The goal of Life and love. 1915 154 Songs of Exuberance Lines for a Friend's Volume GO, little book, and sail the seas Of many men's propensities ; But, (since who wrote you will not dare) Take this of your god-father's care : A little ark of Fancy made Will face men's buffets unafraid, For Fancy has a way with her To catch the incurious listener, A certain strangeness to compel Attention, if from Fancy's well The bucket of its words is drawn, Unpollute and naively done. So I will not send before you A bell-ringer to O Yes for you. No : you'll be bought but by few friends, And, if among them any lends, A few estranged eyes shall see The wit which first amused me. A few will buy you (from the prints), A fewer more from personal hints. Then for a many years you'll lie Buried, in some drab library, Lines for a Friend's Volume 155 Until, for Fancy takes good care Of every true-born child of her Someone shall stumble, by research, Upon the shelf on which you perch. He'll turn from back to title-page All unexpecting to engage More than a moment ere he throws You back, and on your shelf bestows A running finger. Yet hell stop To give one glance more, ere he drop You, with the mental inner laugh Which is of wit the better half. So, shall he pass an hour with you, Bouquin ; then join your retinue. Thus will your spirit glow again, And men shall ask : who was the man Who wrote so gaily. Then live I, A Prophet, in my prophecy ! 1914 156 Songs of Exuberance The Print Room at the British Museum TAKE that small woodcut that you liked to-day, Where some late traveller rounds a bend of hill And sees his hut, a dark mass by the road, Returning homeward. How the road's curve here Carries our eyes in quickened sympathy To where his home lies crouching, and we share His dream of fireside and the peace of night. That little moment as he rounds the bend Awakes in us home-sickness for the hearth. It is here fixed, and dwelt on, and preserved, Till what was brief, forgotten ere perceived, Becomes eternal. So we joy because The artist has redeemed one point of Time From Earth's pre-emptive bond, and pencilled there All the home-comings since the world began. This makes us sigh : " Ah ! might all life be thus ; " As this tired traveller's homeward steps become A march of beauty, " all our days like this." For Beauty is the summer rose of Time Whose petals strew its sun-dial : Its dew tears Are those of Time's young children at his tomb, Where art commits him to eternal flames, The little, laughing flames God warms His hands at, Until His thoughts take planetary shape Print Room at British Museum 157 Starting as worlds, flowers, sparrows, shadowy dooms, Atlantic storms, white crystals, or sad tales, Or Bacchic dancing, or resolve in sand, Or feed the flicker of a tap-room fire. By gipsy waggons, at some Michael's fair, As His thoughts breathe upon the jostling crowd, The strident music quickens, the loud girls Flush, and laugh invitations to the men, In each of whom Endymion awakes, Till one, the young one ogling the dark girl, More ready than the rest to catch in flight The crimson, falling petals of the Rose, Laughs like a Pan now, and to-morrow paints The very picture of Madonna there. For mind is but the rind, sex the pure core, And God has made the senses roads to Him. So one man's dream now breeds in other souls The hope to draw such passing moments out Into a life of beauty, as wherein That image of God's thought men call a picture. Wonder not, then, that beauty should be sad. For beauty is the running highway through The little parishes of Space and Time Which we pass by into God's land of dream, And know ourselves in exile, till we pass. 1914 158 Songs of Exuberance The Everlasting Voices THE everlasting voices are heard upon the air ; Murmurous with their music are silence and the sea. Where is the heart so overwhelmed with care As to be dull to their searching melody ? The trees are ever swaying to the wind's sad tune, The grasses ever dance beside the whispering stream Tides and travelling clouds must run before the moon, Month follows month in never-changing dream. Out of the heart of memory and tears Earth feeds the lamp of beauty with fresh flame. The everlasting voices assailing human ears Are the immemorial memories whence we came. 19*3 Receptivity 159 Receptivity AS shadows on the white wall of my room JL \ Thrown by blue curtains in the sun-sought way, The images of God run o'er and stray, Gray blossoms, on the blankness they illume. For the sweet flesh, opaque, delights to loom, Between God's arrows slanting to my heart, A screen to image, ere His sun depart, Fancies else never broken into bloom. For who has watched the precious sunlight spend Ungarnered beams on a white road in May, But wished slow clouds, or shadow-sprinkling spray Might to that wasted light a form extend ? So let the curtains of thy mind attend What shadows of strange dreams their folds waylay. 1 60 Songs of Exuberance Bibliographical Note NONE of these poems has appeared before in print with the exception of "The Eternal Symbol" in the now defunct Tramp ; the song " Where shall Love Find a House ? " and the two sonnets " Love in Lone- liness " (partly rewritten), and " On the Common " in the extinguished Onlooker, and " Sunshine and Song- books," my muse's firstling, which appeared in a college magazine wittily called The Second Book of Kings, which was revived, whether to beget a Basileon Gamma or not I do not know, in my last summer term at Cam- bridge. A truncated version of the "Spirit of Rain" appeared in Poetry and Drama. To the editors, all of whom seem to have survived their periodicals as I write, I am indebted for permission to reprint them. YB 73281 861250 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY