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 A.KROCH&Cy
 
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 "in 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 IN MEMORY OF 
 EDWIN CORLE 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 JEAN CORLE
 
 v^.
 
 THE WORKS OF 
 
 FRANCIS THOMPSON 
 
 POEMS: VOLUME I
 
 Twelfth Thousand
 
 ^tunmplcrTz) 
 
 at the a<je of nineteen .
 
 THE WORKS OF 
 FRANCIS THOMPSON 
 
 POEMS : VOLUME I 
 
 New York : 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 597-599 l''ifth Avenue
 
 THE ANCnOa PllESS, LTD., TIFTREE, ESSEX, ENGLAND.
 
 ii0a7fj7'1 
 
 btack 
 Annex 
 
 5157) 
 
 A NOTE by Francis Thompson's 
 Literary Executor 
 
 IN making this Collection I have been governed f^ I 
 
 by Francis Thompson's express instructions, or » "i ^ 
 
 guided by a knowledge of his feelings and pre- f '^ «^ 
 
 ferences acquired during an unbroken intimacy of 
 nineteen years. His own list of new inclusions and 
 his own suggested reconsiderations of his formerly 
 published text have been followed in this definitive 
 edition of his Poetical ^^'orks. 
 ?slay 191 3. W.M. 
 
 V I
 
 THE CONTENTS 
 
 Dedication of ' Poems ' page xv 
 
 Poems on Children : 
 
 Daisy 3 
 
 The Poppy 6 
 
 To Monica thought Dying 10 
 
 The Making of Viola 13 
 
 To my Godchild 17 
 
 To Olivia 20 
 
 Little Jesu3 21 
 
 Sister Songs : 
 
 The Proem 25 
 
 Part the First 27 
 
 Part the Second 40 
 
 Inscription 61 
 
 Love in Dian's Lap : 
 
 Procmion 71 
 
 Before her Portrait in Youth 77 
 
 To a Poet Breaking Silence 79 
 
 * Manus Animam Pinxit ' 82 
 
 A Carrier Song 85 
 
 Scala Jacobi Portaquc Eburnea 89 
 
 Gilded Gold 90 
 
 Her Portrait 92 
 
 Epilogue to the Poet's Sitter 98 
 
 Domus Tua 100 
 
 In her Paths loi 
 
 After her Going 102 
 
 Beneath a Photograph 104
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 The Hound of Heaven 107 
 
 Ode to the Setting Sun : 
 
 Prelude 117 
 
 Ode 118 
 
 After-Strain 126 
 
 To the Dead Cardinal of Westminster 131 
 
 A Corymbus for Autumn 141 
 
 Ecclesiastical Ballads : 
 
 The Veteran of Heaven 149 
 
 Lilium Regis 151 
 
 Translations : 
 
 A Sunset 155 
 
 Heard on the Mountain 158 
 
 An Echo of Viftor Hugo 163 
 
 Miscellaneous Poems : 
 
 Dream -Tryst 167 
 
 Arab Love- Song 168 
 
 Buona Notte 169 
 
 The Passion of Mary 171 
 
 Messages 173 
 
 At Lord's 174 
 
 Love and the Child 175 
 
 Daphne 176 
 
 Absence 1 78 
 
 To W. M. 180 
 
 A Fallen Yew 181 
 
 A Judgement in Heaven 185 
 
 Epilogue 190
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 The Sere of the Leaf 102 
 
 To Stars ic)8 
 For a Drawing of Our Lady of the Night 200 
 
 Orison-Tryst 201 
 
 ' Whereto art Thou Come ? ' 203 
 
 Song of the Hours 204 
 
 Pastoral 211 
 
 Past Thiijking of Solomon 213 
 
 A Dead Astronomer 215 
 
 Cheated Elsie 216 
 
 The Fair Inconstant 220 
 
 Threatened Tears 221 
 
 The House of Sorrows 222 
 
 Insentience 225 
 
 Envoy 226
 
 DEDICATION OF "POSSMS 
 
 (1893) 
 
 7o Wilfrid and Alice Meynell 
 
 IF the rose in meek duty 
 May dedicate humbly 
 To her grower the beauty 
 
 Wherewith she is comely ; 
 If the mine to the miner 
 
 The jewels that pined in it, 
 Earth to diviner 
 
 The springs he divined in it ; 
 To the grapes the wine-pitcher 
 
 Their juice that was crushed in it, 
 \'iol to its witcher 
 
 The music lay hushed in it ; 
 If the hps may pay Gladness 
 
 In laughters she wakened. 
 And the heart to its sadness 
 
 Weeping unslakened, 
 If the liid and sealed coffer, 
 
 Whose having not his is. 
 To the looscrs may proffer 
 
 Their finding — here this is ; 
 Their lives if all livers 
 
 To the Life of all living, — 
 To you, O dear givers ! 
 
 I give your own giving.
 
 poems ON CHILDRS^
 
 w 
 
 DAISY 
 
 HERE the thistle lifts a purple crovvn 
 Six foot out of the turf, 
 And the harebell shakes on the windy hill- 
 O the breath of the distant surf ! — 
 
 The hills look over on the South, 
 And southward dreams the sea ; 
 
 And with the sea-breeze hand in hand 
 Came innocence and she. 
 
 Where 'mid the gorse the raspberry 
 Red for the gatherer springs. 
 
 Two children did we stray and talk 
 Wise, idle, childish things. 
 
 She listened with big-lipped surprise. 
 Breast-deep mid flower and spine : 
 
 Her skin was like a grape whose veins 
 Run snow instead of wine. 
 
 She knew not those sweet words she spake, 
 Nor knew her own sweet way ; 
 
 But there's never a bird, so sweet a song 
 Thronged in whose throat that day. 
 
 Oh, there were flowers in Storrington 
 On the turf and on the spray ; 
 
 But the sweetest flower on Sussex hills 
 Was the Daisy-flower that day ! 
 
 L2
 
 POEMS ON CHILDREN 
 
 Her beauty smoothed earth's furrowed face. 
 
 She gave me tokens three : — 
 A look, a word of her winsome mouth, 
 
 And a wild raspberry. 
 
 A berry red, a guileless look, 
 
 A still word, — strings of sand ! 
 And yet they made my wild, wild heart 
 
 Fly down to her little hand. 
 
 For standing artless as the air, 
 
 And candid as the skies, 
 She took the berries with her hand. 
 
 And the love with her sweet eyes. 
 
 The fairest things have fleetest end. 
 Their scent survives their close : 
 
 But the rose's scent is bitterness 
 To him that loved the rose. 
 
 She looked a little wistfully. 
 
 Then went her sunshine way : — 
 
 The sea's eye had a mist on it. 
 And the leaves fell from the day. 
 
 She went her unremembering way. 
 
 She went and left in me 
 The pang of all the partings gone, 
 
 And partings yet to be. 
 
 She left me marvelling why my soul 
 
 Was sad that she was glad ; 
 At all the sadness in the sweet. 
 
 The sweetness in the sad.
 
 DAISY 
 
 Still, still I seemed to see her, still 
 Look up with soft replies, 
 
 And take the berries with her hand. 
 And the love with her lovely eyes. 
 
 Nothing begins, and nothing ends, 
 That is not paid with moan ; 
 
 For we are born in other's pain, 
 And perish in our own.
 
 THE POPPY 
 
 To Monica 
 
 UMMER set lip to earth's bosom bare, 
 And left the flushed print in a poppy there : 
 Like a yawn of fire from the grass it came, 
 And the fanning wind puffed it to flapping flame. 
 
 With burnt mouth, red like a lion's, it drank 
 The blood of the sun as he slaughtered sank. 
 And dipped its cup in the purpurate shine 
 When the Eastern conduits ran with wine. 
 
 Till it grew lethargied with fierce bliss, 
 And hot as a swinked gipsy is. 
 And drowsed in sleepy savageries, 
 W^ith mouth wide a-pout for a sultry kiss. 
 
 A child and man paced side by side, 
 Treading the skirts of eventide ; 
 But between the clasp of his hand and hers 
 Lay, felt not, twenty withered years. 
 
 She turned, with the rout of her dusk South hair. 
 And saw the sleeping gipsy there ; 
 And snatched and snapped it in swift child's whim, 
 With — " Keep it, long as you live ! " — to him.
 
 THE POPPY 
 
 And his ?milc, as nymphs from their laving meres, 
 Trembled up from a bath of tears ; 
 And joy, like a mew sea-rocked apart, 
 Tossed on the waves of his troubled heart. 
 
 For he saw what she did not see, 
 That — as kindled by its own fervency — 
 The verge shrivelled inward smoulderingly : 
 And suddenly 'twixt his hand and hers 
 He knew the twenty withered years — 
 No flower, but twenty shrivelled years. 
 
 " Was never such thing until this hour," 
 Low to his heart he said ; " the flower 
 Of sleep brings wakening to me. 
 And of oblivion, memory." 
 
 " Was never this thing to me," he said, 
 
 " Though with bruised poppies my feet are red ! " 
 
 And again to his own heart very low : 
 
 " O child ! I love, for I love and know ; 
 
 " But you, who love nor know at all 
 
 The diverse chambers in Love's guest-hall, 
 
 Where some rise early, few sit long : 
 
 In how differing accents hear the throng 
 
 His great Pentecostal tongue ; 
 
 " Who know not love from amity, 
 
 Nor my reported self from me ; 
 
 A fair fit gift is this, mcseems. 
 
 You give — this withering flower of dreams.
 
 POEMS ON CHILDREN 
 
 *' O frankly fickle, and fickly true, 
 Do you know what the days wiU do to you ? 
 To your love and you what the days will do 
 O frankly fickle, and fickly true ? 
 
 " i^ou have loved me. Fair, three Uves-or days : 
 1 will pass with the passing of my face. 
 But where / go, your face goes too, 
 To watch lest I play false to you. 
 
 "I am but, my sweet, your foster-lover. 
 Knowing weU when certain years are over 
 You vanish from me to another ; 
 Yet I know, and love, like the foster-mother. 
 
 " So, frankly fickle, and fickly true ! 
 For my brief life- while I take from you 
 This token, fair and fit, meseems. 
 For me— this withering flower of dreams." 
 
 The sleep-flower sways in the wheat its head. 
 Heavy with dreams, as that with bread : 
 The goodly grain and the sun-flushed sleeper 
 1 he reaper reaps, and Time the reaper. 
 
 I hang 'mid men my needless head, 
 
 And my fruit is dreams, as theirs is bread ; 
 
 The goodly men and the sun-hazed sleeper 
 
 Time shall reap, but after the reaper 
 
 The world shall glean of me, me the sleeper. 
 
 8
 
 THE POPPY 
 
 Love, love ! your flower of withered dream 
 In leaved rhyme lies safe, I deem, 
 Sheltered and shut in a nook of rhyme. 
 From the reaper man, and his reaper Time. 
 
 Love ! / fall into the claws of Time ; 
 
 But lasts within a leaved rhyme 
 
 All that the world of me esteems — 
 
 My withered dreams, my withered dreams.
 
 TO MONICA THOUGHT 
 DYING 
 
 You, O the piteous you ! 
 Who all the long night through 
 Anticipatedly 
 
 Disclose yourself to me 
 
 Already in the ways 
 Beyond our human comfortable days ; 
 
 How can you deem what Death 
 
 Impitiably saith 
 
 To me, who listening wake 
 
 For your poor sake ? 
 
 When a grown woman dies 
 You know we think unceasingly 
 What things she said, how sweet, how wise ; 
 And these do make our misery. 
 
 But you were (you to me 
 The dead anticipatedly !) 
 You — eleven years, was't not, or so ? — 
 
 Were just a child, you know ; 
 
 And so you never said 
 Things sweet immeditatably and wise 
 To interdict from closure my wet eyes : 
 
 But foolish things, my dead, my dead ! 
 
 Little and laughable, 
 
 Your age that fitted well. 
 And was it such things all unmemorable, 
 
 Was it such things could make 
 Me sob all night for your implacable sake ? 
 
 10
 
 TO MONICA THOUGHT DYING 
 
 Yet, as you said to me, 
 In pretty make-believe of revelry, 
 
 So the night long said Death 
 
 With his magniloquent breath ; 
 (And that remembered laughter, 
 W'hicli in our daily uses followed after, 
 Was all untuned to pity and to awe :) 
 " A cup of chocolate. 
 One farthing is the rate, 
 Tou drink it through a straw." 
 
 How could I know, how know 
 Those laughing words when drenched with sobbing so ? 
 Another voice than yours, than yours, he hath. 
 
 My dear, was't worth his breath, 
 His mighty utterance ? — yet he saith, and saith ! 
 This dreadful Death to his own dreadfulness 
 
 Doth dreadful wrong. 
 This dreadful childish babble on his tongue. 
 That iron tongue made to speak sentences, 
 And wisdom insupportably complete. 
 Why should it only say the long night through, 
 
 In mimicry of you, — 
 
 " A cup of chocolate. 
 
 One farthing is the rate, 
 Tou drink it through a straw, a straw, a straw ! '* 
 
 Oh, of all sentences, 
 Piercingly incomplete ! 
 Why did you teach that fatal mouth to draw, 
 Child, impermissible awe. 
 
 II
 
 POEMS ON CHILDREN 
 
 From your old trivialness ? 
 Why have you done me this 
 Most unsustainable wrong, 
 And into Death's control 
 Betrayed the secret places of my soul ? — 
 
 Teaching him that his lips, 
 Uttering their native earthquake and eclipse, 
 
 Could never so avail 
 To rend from hem to hem the ultimate veil 
 Of this most desolate 
 Spirit, and leave it stripped and desecrate, — 
 
 Nay, never so have wrung 
 From eyes and speech weakness unmanned, unmeet. 
 As when his terrible dotage to repeat 
 Its little lesson learneth at your feet ; 
 As when he sits among 
 His sepulchres, to play 
 With broken toys your hand has cast away. 
 With derelict trinkets of the darling young. 
 Why have you taught — that he might so complete 
 His awful panoply 
 From your cast playthings — why, 
 This dreadful childish babble to his tongue, 
 Dreadful and sweet i 
 
 12
 
 THE MAKING OF VIOLA 
 
 I 
 
 The Father of H raven. 
 
 PIN, daughter Mary, spin, 
 Twirl your wheel with silver din ; 
 Spin, daughter Mary, spin. 
 Spin a tress for Viola. 
 
 0] nt 
 
 S; 
 
 Angels. 
 
 Spin, Queen Mary, a 
 Brown tress for Viola ! 
 
 II 
 
 The Father of Heaven. 
 
 Weave, hands angelical, 
 Weave a woof of flesh to pall- 
 Weave, hands angelical — 
 Flesh to pall our Viola. 
 
 Angels. 
 
 Weave, singing brothers, a 
 Velvet flesh for Viola ! 
 
 Ill 
 
 The Father of Heaven. 
 
 Scoop, young Jesus, for her eye?, 
 Wood-browned pools of Paradise- 
 Young Jesus, for the eyes. 
 For the eyes of Viola. 
 
 13
 
 Angels. 
 
 POEMS ON CHILDREN 
 
 Tint, Prince Jesus, a 
 Dusked eye for Viola ! 
 
 IV 
 
 The Father of Heaven. 
 
 Cast a star therein to drown, 
 Like a torch in cavern brown, 
 Sink a burning star to drown 
 Whelmed in eyes of Viola. 
 
 Angels. 
 
 Lave, Prince Jesus, a 
 Star in eyes of Viola ! 
 
 V 
 
 The Father of Heaven. 
 
 Breathe, Lord Paraclete, 
 To a bubbled crystal meet — 
 Breathe, Lord Paraclete — 
 Crystal soul for Viola. 
 
 Angels. 
 
 Breathe, Regal Spirit, a 
 Flashing soul for Viola ! 
 
 VI 
 
 The Father of Heaven. 
 
 Child-angels, from your wings 
 Fall the roseal hoverings. 
 Child-angels, from your wings. 
 On the cheeks of Viola. 
 
 H
 
 Angels. 
 
 THE MAKING OF VIOLA 
 
 Linger, rosy reflc:?, a 
 Quenchless stain, on Viola ! 
 
 VII 
 
 All things being accomplished^ saith the Father of Heaven 
 Bear her down, and bearing, sing, 
 Bear her down on spyless wing. 
 Bear her down, and bearing, sing. 
 With a sound of viola. 
 
 Angels. 
 
 Angels. 
 
 Music as her name is, a 
 Sweet sound of \'iola ! 
 
 VIII 
 
 Wheehng angels, past espial, 
 Danced her down with sound of viol ; 
 Wheehng angels, past espial, 
 Descanting on " Viola." 
 
 Sing, in our footing, a 
 Lovely hit of " Viola ! " 
 
 IX 
 
 Baby smiled, mother wailed. 
 Earthward while the sweetling sailed ; 
 Mother smiled, baby wailed, 
 When to earth came Viola. 
 And her elders shall say : 
 
 So soon have we taught you a 
 Way to weep, poor Viola ! 
 
 If
 
 POEMS ON CHILDREN 
 
 X 
 
 Smile, sweet baby, smile, 
 For you will have weeping-while ; 
 Native in your Heaven is smile, — 
 But your weeping, Viola ? 
 
 Whence your smiles we know, but ah ! 
 Whence your weeping, Viola f — 
 Our first gift to you is a 
 Gift of tears, my Viola !
 
 TO MY GODCHILD 
 
 Fraficis M. W. M. 
 
 THIS labouring, vast, Tellurian galleon, 
 Riding at anchor off the orient sun, 
 Had broken its cable, and stood out to space 
 Down some frore Arctic of the aerial ways : 
 And now, back warping from the inclement main. 
 Its vaporous shroudage drenched with icy rain, 
 It swung into its azure roads again ; 
 When, floated on the prosperous sun-gale, you 
 Lit, a white halcyon auspice, 'mid our frozen crew. 
 
 To the Sun, stranger, surely you belong, 
 
 Giver of golden days and golden song ; 
 
 Nor is it by an all-unhappy plan 
 
 You bear the name of me, his constant Magian. 
 
 Yet ah ! from any other that it came. 
 
 Lest fated to my fate you be, as to my name. 
 
 When at the first those tidings did they bring. 
 
 My heart turned troubled at the ominous thing : 
 
 Though well may such a title him endower. 
 
 For whom a poet's prayer implores a poet's power. 
 
 The Assisian, who kept phghted faith to three, 
 
 To Song, to San6litude, and Poverty, 
 
 (In two alone of whom most singers prove 
 
 A fatal faithfulness of during love !) ; 
 
 He the sweet Sales, of whom we scarcely ken 
 
 How God he could love more, he so loved men ; 
 
 The crown and crowned of Laura and Italy ; 
 
 And Fletcher's fellow — from these, and not from mc, 
 
 Take you your name, and take your legacy ! 
 
 »7
 
 POEMS ON CHILDREN 
 
 Or, if a right successive you declare 
 
 When worms, for ivies, intertwine my hair, 
 
 Take but this Poesy that now followeth 
 
 My clayey hest with sullen servile breath. 
 
 Made then your happy f reedman by testating death. 
 
 My song I do but hold for you in trust, 
 
 I ask you but to blossom from my dust. 
 
 When you have compassed all weak I began, 
 
 Diviner poet, and ah ! diviner man ; 
 
 The man at feud with the perduring child 
 
 In you before Song's altar nobly reconciled ; 
 
 From the wise heavens I half shall smile to see 
 
 How little a world, which owned you, needed me. 
 
 If, while you keep the vigils of the night, 
 
 For your wild tears make darkness all too bright, 
 
 Some lone orb through your lonely window peeps, 
 
 As it played lover over your sweet sleeps ; 
 
 Think it a golden crevice in the sky, 
 
 Which I have pierced but to behold you by ! 
 
 And when, immortal mortal, droops your head, 
 And you, the child of deathless song, are dead ; 
 Then, as you search with unaccustomed glance 
 The ranks of Paradise for my countenance. 
 Turn not your tread along the Uranian sod 
 Among the bearded counsellors of God ; 
 For if in Eden as on earth are we, 
 I sure shall keep a younger company : 
 Pass where beneath their ranged gonfalons 
 The starry cohorts shake their shielded suns, 
 The dreadful mass of their enridged spears ; 
 
 x8
 
 TO MY GODCHILD 
 
 Pass where majestical the eternal peers, 
 
 The stately choice of the great Saintdom, meet — 
 
 A silvern segregation, globed complete 
 
 In sandalled shadow of the Triune feet ; 
 
 Pass by where wait, young poet-wayfarer, 
 
 Your cousincd clusters, emulous to share 
 
 With you the roseal lightnings burning 'mid their hair 
 
 Pass the crystalline sea, the Lampads ;^evcn : — • 
 
 Look for me in the nurseries of Heaven. 
 
 19 C2
 
 TO OLIVIA 
 
 1FEAR to love thee, Sweet, because 
 Love's the ambassador of loss ; 
 White flake of childhood, clinging so 
 To my soiled raiment, thy shy snow 
 At tenderest touch will shrink and go. 
 Love me not, delightful child. 
 My heart, by many snares beguiled, 
 Has grown timorous and wild. 
 It would fear thee not at all, 
 Wert thou not so harmless-small. 
 Because thy arrows, not yet dire, 
 Are still unbarbed with destined fire, 
 I fear thee more than hadst thou stood 
 Full-panoplied in womanhood. 
 
 20
 
 LITTLE JESUS 
 
 ^.r ore infantium, DeuSy ct lactenfium 
 perfecisti laud em 
 
 LITTLE Jesus, wast Thou shy 
 Once, and just so small as I ? 
 -^And what did it feel hke to be 
 Out of Heaven, and just like me ? 
 Didst Thou sometimes think of there. 
 And ask where all the angels were ? 
 I should think that I would cry 
 For my house all made of sky ; 
 I would look about the air, 
 And wonder where my angels were ; 
 And at waking 'twould distress me — 
 Not an angel there to dress me ! 
 Hadst Thou ever any toys. 
 Like us little girls and boys ? 
 And didst Thou play in Heaven with all 
 The angels that were not too tall, 
 With stars for marbles ? Did the things 
 Play Can you see me F through their wings ? 
 And did Thy Mother let Thee spoil 
 Thy robes, with playing on our soil i 
 How nice to have them always new 
 In Heaven, because 'twas quite clean blue ' 
 
 Didst Thou kneel at night to pray, 
 And didit Thou join Thy hands, this way ? 
 And did they tire sometimes, being young, 
 And make the prayer seem very long ? 
 
 ai
 
 POEMS ON CHILDREN 
 
 And dost Thou like it best, that we 
 Should join our hands to pray to Thee ? 
 I used to think, before I knew. 
 The prayer not said unless we do. 
 And did Thy Mother at the night 
 Kiss Thee, and fold the clothes in right ? 
 And didst Thou feel quite good in bed, 
 Kissed, and sweet, and Thy prayers said r 
 
 Thou canst not have forgotten all 
 
 That it feels like to be small : 
 
 And Thou know'st I cannot pray 
 
 To Thee in my father's way — 
 
 When Thou wast so little, say, 
 
 Couldst Thou talk Thy Father's way ? — 
 
 So, a little Child, come down 
 
 And hear a child's tongue like Thy own ; 
 
 Take me by the hand and walk, 
 
 And listen to my baby-talk. 
 
 To Thy Father show my prayer 
 
 (He will look. Thou art so fair). 
 
 And say : " O Father, I, Thy Son, 
 
 Bring the prayer of a little one." 
 
 And He will smile, that children's tongue 
 Has not changed since Thou wast young ! 
 
 22
 
 SIST6R SONGS 
 
 AN OFFERING TO TIVO SISTERS 
 MONICA cif MADELINE {STLVIA)
 
 SISTER SOxVGS 
 
 AN OFFERING TO TWO SISTERS 
 
 THE PROEM 
 
 SHREWD winds and shrill — were these the 
 speech of May ? 
 A ragged, slag-grey sky — invested so, 
 Mary's spoilt nursling ! wert thou wont to go ? 
 Or thou, Sun-god and song-god, say 
 Could singer pipe one tiniest linnet-lay, 
 
 While Song did turn away his face from song ? 
 
 Or who could be 
 In spirit or in body hale for long, — 
 
 Old .^sculap's best Master ! — lacking thee ? 
 At length, then, thou art here ! 
 On the earth's lethed ear 
 Thy voice of light rings out exultant, strong ; 
 Through dreams she stirs and murmurs at that 
 summons dear : 
 From its red leash my heart strains tamelessly, 
 For Spring leaps in the womb of the young year ! 
 Nay, was it not brought forth before. 
 And we waited, to behold it. 
 Till the sun's hand should unfold it, 
 What the year's young bosom bore ? 
 Even so ; it came, nor knew we that it came, 
 In the sun's eclipse. 
 Yet the birds have plighted vows. 
 And from the branches pipe each other's name ; 
 
 H
 
 SISTER SONGS 
 
 Yet the season all the boughs 
 Has kindled to the finger-tips, — 
 Mark yonder, how the long laburnum drips 
 Its jocund spilth of fire, its honey of wild flame ! 
 Yea, and myself put on swift quickening. 
 And answer to the presence of a sudden Spring. 
 
 From cloud-zoned pinnacles of the secret spirit 
 
 Song falls precipitant in dizzying streams ; 
 And, like a mountain-hold when war-shouts stir it, 
 The mind's recessed fastness casts to light 
 Its gleaming multitudes, that from every height 
 
 Unfurl the flaming of a thousand dreams. 
 Now therefore, thou who bring'st the year to birth, 
 
 Who guid'st the bare and dabbled feet of May ; 
 Sweet stem to that rose Christ, who from the earth 
 Suck'st our poor prayers, conveying them to Him ; 
 Be aidant, tender Lady, to my lay ! 
 Of thy two maidens somewhat must I say. 
 Ere shadowy twihght lashes, drooping, dim 
 Day's dreamy eyes from us ; 
 Ere eve has struck and furled 
 The beamy-textured tent transpicuous. 
 
 Of webbed coerule wrought and woven calms, 
 Whence has paced forth the lambent-footed sun. 
 And thou disclose my flower of song upcurled, 
 Who from thy fair irradiant palms 
 Scatterest all love and loveliness as alms ; 
 Yea, holy one. 
 Who coin'st thyself to beauty for the world ! 
 
 26
 
 SISTER SONGS 
 
 7hen, Springes little children, your lauds do ye upraise 
 To Sylvia, O Sylvia, her szoeet,jeat ways ! 
 Your lovesome labours lay uzcay. 
 And trick you out in holiday. 
 For syllabling to Sylvia ; 
 And all you birds on branches, lave your mouths tvith May, 
 To bear tvith me this burthen. 
 For singing to Sylvia. 
 
 PART THE FIRST 
 
 THE leaves dance, the leaves sing, 
 The leaves dance in the breath of the Spring. 
 I bid them dance, 
 I bid them sing, 
 For the limpid glance 
 Of my ladyling ; 
 For the gift to the Spring of a dewier spring, 
 For God's good grace of this ladyling ! 
 I know in the lane, by the hedgerow track. 
 
 The long, broad grasses underneath 
 Are warted with rain like a toad's knobbed back ; 
 
 But here May wearcth a rainless wreath. 
 In the new-sucked milk of the sun's bosom 
 Is dabbled the mouth of the daisy-blossom ; 
 
 The smouldering rosebud chars through its sheath ; 
 The lily stirs her snowy limbs. 
 
 Ere she swims 
 Naked up through her cloven green. 
 Like the wave-born Lady of Love Hellene ; 
 
 27
 
 SISTER SONGS 
 
 And the scattered snowdrop exquisite 
 Twinkles and gleams, 
 As if the showers of the sunny beams 
 Were splashed from the earth in drops of light. 
 Everything 
 That is child of Spring 
 Casts its bud or blossoming 
 Upon the stream of my delight. 
 
 Their voices, that scents are, now let them upraise 
 1o Sylvia, O Sylvia, her sweet, feat ways ; 
 Their lovely mother them array. 
 And frank them out in holiday. 
 For syllabling to Sylvia ; 
 And all the birds on branches lave their mouths with May 
 To bear with me this burthen. 
 For singing to Sylvia. 
 
 While thus I stood in mazes bound 
 
 Of vernal sorcery, 
 I heard a dainty dubious sound. 
 
 As of goodly melody ; 
 Which first was faint as if in swound, 
 
 Then burst so suddenly 
 In warring concord all around, 
 That, whence this thing might be, 
 
 To see 
 The very marrow longed in me ! 
 
 It seemed of air, it seemed of ground, 
 And never any witchery 
 
 Drawn from pipe, or reed, or string, 
 
 Made such dulcet ravishing. 
 
 28
 
 SISTER SONGS 
 
 'Twas like no tarthly instrument, 
 
 Yet had something of them all 
 
 In its rise, and in its fall ; 
 As if in one sweet consort there were blent 
 
 Those archetj'pes celestial 
 Which our endeavouring instruments recall. 
 So heavenly flutes made murmurous plain 
 To heavenly viols, that again 
 — Aching with music — wailed back pain ; 
 Regals release their notes, which rise 
 Welling, like tears from heart to eyes ; 
 And the harp thrills with thronging sighs. 
 Horns in mellow flattering 
 Parley with the cithern-string : — 
 Hark ! — the floating, long-drawn note 
 Woos the throbbing cithern-string ! 
 
 Their pretty, pretty prating those citherns sure upraise 
 For homage unto Sylvia, her sweet, jeat ways : 
 Those flutes do flute their vowelled lay. 
 Their lovely languid language say. 
 For lis pin ;^ to Sylvia ; 
 Those vioW lissom bowings break the heart oj May, 
 And harps harp their burthen. 
 For singing to Sylvia. 
 
 Now at that music and that mirth 
 Rose, as 'twere, veils from earth ; 
 
 And I spied 
 
 How beside 
 Bud, bell, bloom, an elf 
 
 29
 
 SISTER SONGS 
 
 Stood, or was the flower itself ; 
 
 'Mid radiant air 
 
 All the fair 
 Frequence swayed in irised wavers. 
 Some against the gleaming rims 
 
 Their bosoms prest 
 Of the kingcups, to the brims 
 Filled with sun, and their white limbs 
 Bathed in those golden lavers ; 
 Some on the brown, glowing breast 
 Of that Indian maid, the pansy 
 (Through its tenuous veils conf est 
 Of swathing light), in a quaint fancy 
 Tied her knot of yellow favours ; 
 Others dared open draw 
 Snapdragon's dreadful jaw : 
 Some, just sprung from out the soil, 
 Sleeked and shook their rumpled fans 
 
 Dropt with sheen 
 
 Of moony green ; 
 Others, not yet extricate, 
 On their hands leaned their weight, 
 And writhed them free with mickle toil, 
 Still folded in their veiny vans : 
 And all with an unsought accord 
 Sang together from the sward ; 
 Whence had come, and from sprites 
 Yet unseen, those delights. 
 As of tempered musics blent. 
 Which had given me such content. 
 For haply our best instrument, 
 
 30 
 
 i
 
 SISTER SONGS 
 
 Pipe or cithern, stopped or strung, 
 Mimics but some spirit tongue. 
 
 Their amiable voices, I bid them upraise 
 To Sylvia, Sylvia, her sweet, feat zvays ; 
 Their lovesome labours laid away. 
 To linger out this holiday 
 In syllabling to Sylvia ; 
 WhiU all the birds on branches lave their mouths with May, 
 To bear with me this burthen. 
 For singing to Sylvia. 
 
 Neit I saw, wonder-whist. 
 
 How from the atmosphere a mist. 
 
 So it seemed, slow uprist ; 
 
 And, looking from those elfin swarms, 
 
 I was 'ware 
 
 How the air 
 Was all populous with forms 
 Of the Hours, floating down. 
 Like Nereids through a watery town. 
 Some, with languors of waved arms, 
 Fluctuous oared their flexile way ; 
 Some were borne half resupine 
 On the aerial hyaline, 
 Their fluid limbs and rare array 
 Flickering on the wind, as quivers 
 Traihng weed in running rivers ; 
 And others, in far prospect seen, 
 Newly loosed on this terrene, 
 Shot in piercing swiftness came. 
 
 31
 
 SISTER SONGS 
 
 With hair a-stream like pale and goblin flame. 
 
 As crystalline ice in water, 
 
 Lay in air each faint daughter ; 
 
 Inseparate (or but separate dim) 
 
 Circumfused wind from wind-hke vest, 
 
 Wind-like vest from wind-like limb. 
 
 But outward from each lucid breast, 
 
 When some passion left its haunt. 
 
 Radiate surge of colour came, 
 
 Diffusing blush-wise, palpitant. 
 
 Dying all the filmy frame. 
 
 With some sweet tenderness they would 
 Turn to an amber-clear and glossy gold ; 
 Or a fine sorrow, lovely to behold, 
 Would sweep them as the sun and wind's joined flood 
 
 Sweeps a greening-sapphire sea ; 
 
 Or they would glow enamouredly 
 Illustrious sanguine, like a grape of blood ; 
 
 Or with mantling poetry 
 Curd to the tincture which the opal hath. 
 Like rainbows thawing in a moonbeam bath. 
 So paled they, flushed they, swam they, sang melodiously, 
 
 Their chanting, soon fading, let them, too, upraise 
 For homage unto Sylvia, her sweet, feat ways ; 
 Weave with suave float their waved way. 
 And colours take of holiday. 
 For syllabling to Sylvia ; 
 And all the birds on branches lave their mouths with May, 
 To hear with me this burthen. 
 For singing to Sylvia. 
 
 32
 
 SISTER SONGS 
 
 Then, through those translucencics, 
 As grew my senses clearer clear, 
 Did I see, and did I hear, 
 How under an elm's canopy 
 Wheeled a flight of Dryades 
 Murmuring measured melody. 
 Gyre in gyre their treading was, 
 Wheeling with an adverse flight, 
 In twi-circle o'er the grass, 
 These to left, and those to right ; 
 
 All the band 
 Linked by each other's hand ; 
 Decked in raiment stained as 
 The blue-helmed aconite. 
 And they advance with flutter, with grace, 
 
 To the dance, 
 Moving on with a dainty pace. 
 As blossoms mince it on river swells. 
 Over their heads their cymbals shine. 
 Round each ankle gleams a twine 
 
 Of twinkhng bells — 
 Tune twirled golden from their cells. 
 Every step was a tinkling sound, 
 As they glanced in their dancing-ground. 
 Clouds in cluster with such a sailing 
 Float o'er the light of the wasting moon, 
 As the cloud of their gliding veiling 
 Swung in the sway of the dancing-tune. 
 There was the clash of their cymbals clanging, 
 Ringing of swinging bells clinging their feet ; 
 And the clang on wing it seemed a-hanging, 
 
 33
 
 SISTER SONGS 
 
 Hovering round their dancing so fleet. — 
 I stirred, I rustled more than meet ; 
 Whereat they broke to the left and right, 
 With eddying robes like aconite 
 
 Blue of helm ; 
 And I beheld to the foot o' the elm. 
 
 They have not tripped those dances, betrayed to my gaze, 
 To glad the heart of Sylvia, beholding of their maze ; 
 Through barky walls have slid away. 
 And tricked them in their holiday. 
 For other than for Sylvia ; 
 While all the birds on branches lave their mouths with May, 
 And bear with me this burthen. 
 For singing to Sylvia. 
 
 Where its umbrage was enrooted, 
 
 Sat, white-suited, 
 Sat, green-amiced and bare-footed, 
 Spring, amid her minstrelsy ; 
 There she sat amid her ladies. 
 
 Where the shade is 
 Sheen as Enna mead ere Hades' 
 
 Gloom fell 'thwart Persephone. 
 Dewy buds were interstrown 
 Through her tresses hanging down, 
 And her feet 
 Were most sweet. 
 Tinged like sea-stars, rosied brown. 
 A throng of children like to flowers were sown 
 About the grass beside, or clomb her knee : 
 I looked who were that favoured company. 
 
 34
 
 SISTER SONGS 
 
 And one there stood 
 Against the beamy flood 
 Of sinking day, which, pouring its abundance, 
 Subhmed the illuminous and volute redundance 
 Of locks that, half dissolving, floated round her face ; 
 As see I might 
 Far off a lily-cluster poised in sun 
 Dispread its gracile curls of light. 
 I knew what chosen child was there in place ! 
 I knew there might no brows be, save of one. 
 With such Hesperian fulgencc compassed. 
 Which in her moving seemed to wheel about her head. 
 
 O Springes little children, more loud your lauds upraise ^ 
 For this is even Sylvia, with her sweet, feat ways ! 
 Your lovesome labours lay away. 
 And frank you out in holiday. 
 For syllabling to Sylvia ; 
 And all you birds on branches, lave your mouths with May, 
 To bear with me this burthen. 
 For singing to Sylvia ! 
 
 Spring, goddess, is it thou, desired long ? 
 
 And art thou girded round with this young train ? — 
 
 If ever I did do thee ease in song. 
 
 Now of thy grace let me one meed obtain, 
 
 And list thou to one plain. 
 
 Oh, keep still in thy train, 
 After the years when others therefrom fade, 
 
 This tiny, wcll-belovcd maid ! 
 To whom the gate of my heart's fortalice, 
 
 35 r>2
 
 SISTER SONGS 
 
 With all which in it is. 
 
 ^j 
 
 And the shy self who doth therein immew him 
 'Gainst what loud leaguerers battailously woo him, 
 
 I, bribed traitor to him, 
 
 Set open for one kiss. 
 
 Then suffer, Spring,thy children,that lauds they should upraise 
 To Sylvia, this Sylvia, her sweet, je at ways ; 
 Their lovely labours lay away. 
 And trick them out in holiday. 
 For syllabling to Sylvia ; 
 And that all birds on branches lave their mouths with May, 
 To bear with me this burthen, 
 For singing to Sylvia. 
 
 A kiss ? for a child's kiss ? 
 Aye, goddess, even for this. 
 Once, bright Sylviola, in days not far, 
 Once — in that nightmare-time which still doth haunt 
 My dreams, a grim, unbidden visitant — 
 
 Forlorn, and faint, and stark, 
 I had endured through watches of the dark 
 
 The abashless inquisition of each star, 
 Yea, was the outcast mark 
 
 Of all those heavenly passers' scrutiny ; 
 Stood bound and helplessly 
 For Time to shoot his barbed minutes at me ; 
 Suffered the trampling hoof of every hour 
 In night's slow-wheeled car ; 
 Until the tardy dawn dragged me at length 
 From under those dread wheels ; and, bled of strength. 
 
 36
 
 SISTER SONGS 
 
 I waited the inevitable last. 
 
 Then there came past 
 A child ; Hke thee, a spring-flower ; but a flower 
 Fallen from the budded coronal of Spring, 
 And through the city-streets blown withering. 
 She passed, — O brave, sad, lovingest, tender thing ! 
 And of her own scant pittance did she give, 
 
 That I might cat and live : 
 Then fled, a swift and trackless fugitive. 
 
 Therefore I kissed in thee 
 The heart of Childhood, so divine for me ; 
 
 And her, through what sore ways, 
 
 And what unchildish days, 
 Borne from me now, as then, a trackless fugitive. 
 
 Therefore I kissed in thee 
 
 Her, child ! and innocency, 
 And spring, and all things that have gone from me, 
 
 And that shall never be ; 
 All vanished hopes, and all most hopeless bliss, 
 
 Came with thee to my kiss. 
 And ah ! so long myself had strayed afar 
 From child, and woman, and the boon earth's green, 
 And all wherewith life's face is fair bcseen ; 
 
 Journeying its journey bare 
 Five suns, except of the all-kissing sun 
 Unkissed of one ; 
 Almost I had forgot 
 The healing harms, 
 And whitest witchery, a-lurk in that 
 Authentic cestus of two girdling arms : 
 
 And I remembered not 
 
 37
 
 SISTER SONGS 
 
 The subtle sanctities which dart 
 From childish lips' unvalued precious brush, 
 Nor how it makes the sudden lilies push 
 
 Between the loosening fibres of the heart. 
 Then, that thy little kiss 
 Should be to me all this, 
 Let workaday wisdom blink sage lids thereat ; 
 Which towers a flight three hedgerows high, poor bat ! 
 
 And straightway charts me out the empyreal air. 
 Its chart I wing not by, its canon of worth 
 Scorn not, nor reck though mine should breed it mirth : 
 And howso thou and I may be disjoint, 
 Yet still my falcon spirit makes her point 
 
 Over the covert where 
 Thou, sweetest quarry, hast put in from her ! 
 
 {Soul, hush these sad numbers, too sad to upraise 
 In hymning bright Sylvia, unlearn' d in such ways ! 
 Our mourjiful moods lay we away, 
 And prank our thoughts in holiday. 
 For syllabling to Sylvia ; 
 When all the birds on branches lave their mouths with May, 
 To hear with us this burthen, 
 For singing to Sylvia /) 
 
 Then thus Spring, bounteous lady, made reply : 
 ' O lover of me and all my progeny, 
 
 For grace to you 
 I take her ever to my retinue. 
 Over thy form, dear child, alas ! my art 
 Cannot prevail j but mine immortalizing 
 
 38
 
 SISTER SONGS 
 
 Touch I lay upon thy heart. 
 
 Thy soul's fair shape 
 In my unfading mantle's green I drape, 
 And thy white mind shall rest by my devising 
 
 A Gideon-fleece amid life's dusty drouth. 
 If Even burst yon globed yellow grape 
 (Which is the sun to mortals' sealed sight) 
 
 Against her stained mouth ; 
 
 Or if white-handed Hght 
 Draw thee yet dripping from the quiet pools, 
 
 Still lucencies and cools, 
 Of sleep, which all night mirror constellate dreams ; 
 Like to the sign which led the Israelite, 
 
 Thy soul, through day or dark, 
 A visible brightness on the chosen ark 
 
 Of thy sweet body and pure. 
 Shall it assure. 
 With auspice large and tutelary gleams. 
 Appointed solemn courts, and covenanted streams.* 
 
 Ce/jse, Springes little children, now cense your lauds to raise ; 
 That dream is past, and Sylvia, zvith her szvcct, feat ways. 
 Our lovtd labour, laid away, 
 Is smoothly ended ; said our say^ 
 Our syllabling to Sylvia. 
 Make sweet, you birds on branches ! make sweet your mouths 
 with May ! 
 
 But borne is this burthen^ 
 Sung unto Sylvia. 
 
 39
 
 SISTER SONGS 
 
 PART THE SECOND 
 
 And now, thou elder nursling of the nest ; 
 Ere all the intertangled west 
 Be one magnificence 
 Of multitudinous blossoms that o'errun 
 The flaming brazen bowl o' the burnished sun 
 
 Which they do flower from, 
 How shall I 'stablish thy memorial ? 
 Nay, how or with what countenance shall I come 
 To plead in my defence 
 For loving thee at all ? 
 I who can scarcely speak my fellows' speech, 
 Love their love, or mine own love to them teach ; 
 A bastard barred from their inheritance. 
 
 Who seem, in this dim shape's uneasy nook. 
 Some sun-flower's spirit which by luckless chance 
 
 Has mournfully its tenement mistook ; 
 When it were better in its right abode. 
 Heartless and happy lackeying its god. 
 How com'st thou, little tender thing of white. 
 Whose very touch full scantly me beseems. 
 How com'st thou resting on my vaporous dreams. 
 Kindling a wraith there of earth's vernal green ? 
 
 Even so as I have seen. 
 In night's aerial sea with no wind blust'rous, 
 A ribbed tract of cloudy malachite 
 
 Curve a shored crescent wide ; 
 And on its slope marge shelving to the night 
 The stranded moon lay quivering like a lustrous 
 Medusa newly washed up from the tide, 
 Lay in an oozy pool of its own dehquious light. 
 
 40
 
 SISTER SONGS 
 
 Yet hear how my excuses may prevail, 
 
 Nor, tender white orb, be thou opposite ! 
 Life and life's beauty only hold their revels 
 In the abysmal ocean's luminous levels. 
 There, like the phantasms of a poet pale, 
 
 The exquisite marvels sail : 
 Clarified silver ; greens and azures frail 
 As if the colours sighed themselves away, 
 And blent in supersubtile interplay 
 
 As if they swooned into each other's arms ; 
 
 Repurcd vermilion. 
 
 Like ear-tips 'gainst the sun ; 
 And beings that, under night's swart pinion, 
 Make every wave upon the harbour-bars 
 
 A beaten yolk of stars. 
 But where day's glance turns baffled from the deeps. 
 
 Die out those lovely swarms ; 
 Andin the immenseprofound no creature glides or creeps. 
 
 Love and love's beauty only hold their revels 
 In hfe's familiar, penetrable levels : 
 
 What of its ocean-floor ? 
 
 I dwell there evermore. 
 
 From almost earliest youth 
 
 I raised the lids o' the truth, 
 And forced her bend on me her shrinking sight ; 
 Ever I knew me Beauty's eremite. 
 In autre of this lowly body set. 
 
 Girt with a thirstv solitude of soul. 
 
 Natheless I not forget 
 Mow I have, even as the anchorite, 
 
 41
 
 SISTER SONGS 
 
 I too, imperishing essences that console. 
 Under my ruined passions, fallen and sere, 
 
 The wild dreams stir, like little radiant girls 
 Whom in the moulted plumage of the year 
 
 Their comrades sweet have buried to the curls. 
 Yet, though their dedicated amorist, 
 How often do I bid my visions hist. 
 
 Deaf to them, pleading all their piteous fills ; 
 Who weep, as weep the maidens of the mist 
 Clinging the necks of the unheeding hills : 
 And their tears wash them lovelier than before, 
 That from grief's self our sad delight grows more. 
 Fair are the soul's uncrisped calms, indeed, 
 Endiapered with many a spiritual form 
 Of blosmy-tindlured weed ; 
 But scarce itself is conscious of the store 
 
 Suckled by it, and only after storm 
 Casts up its loosened thoughts upon the shore. 
 To this end my deeps are stirred ; 
 And I deem well why life unshared 
 Was ordained me of yore. 
 In pairing- time, we know, the bird 
 Kindles to its deepmost splendour, 
 And the tender 
 Voice is tenderest in its throat : 
 Were its love, for ever nigh it, 
 Never by it. 
 It might keep a vernal note, 
 The crocean and amethystine 
 In their pristine 
 Lustre linger on its coat. 
 
 42
 
 SISTER SONGS 
 
 Therefore must my song-bower lone be, 
 That my tone be 
 Fresh with dewy pain alway ; 
 She, who scorns my dearest care ta'en, 
 An uncertain 
 Shadow of the sprite of May. 
 And is my song sweet, as they say ? 
 'Tis sweet for one whose voice has no reply, 
 
 Save silence's sad cry : 
 And are its plumes a burning bright array ? 
 They burn for an unincarnated eye. 
 A bubble, charioteered by the inward breath 
 Which, ardorous for its own invisible lure, 
 Urges me glittering to aerial death, 
 
 I am rapt towards that bodiless paramour ; 
 Blindly the uncomprehended tyranny 
 Obeying of my heart's impetuous might. 
 The earth and all its planetary kin, 
 Starry buds tangled in the whirling hair 
 That flames round the Phoebean wassailer, 
 
 Speed no more ignorant, more predestined flight, 
 Than I, her viewless tresses netted in. 
 As some most beautiful one, with lovely taunting, 
 Her eyes of guileless guile o'ercanopies. 
 
 Does her hid visage bow. 
 And miserly your covetous gaze allow, 
 By inchmeal, coy degrees, 
 Saying — * Can you see me now ? ' 
 Yet from the mouth's reflex you guess the wanting 
 
 Smile of the coming eyes 
 In aU their upturned grievous witcheries, 
 
 43
 
 SISTER SONGS 
 
 Before that sunbreak rise ; 
 And each still hidden feature view within 
 Your mind, as eager scrutinies detail 
 The moon's young rondure through the shamcfast veil 
 Drawn to her gleaming chin : 
 After this wise, 
 From the enticing smile of earth and skies 
 I dream my unknown Fair's refused gaze ; 
 And guessingly her love's close traits devise, 
 
 Which she with subtile coquetries 
 Through little human glimpses slow displays, 
 Cozening my mateiess days 
 By sick, intolerable delays. 
 And so I keep mine uncompanioned ways ; 
 And so my touch, to golden poesies 
 Turning love's bread, is bought at hunger's price. 
 So, — in the inextinguishable wars 
 Which roll song's Orient on the sullen night 
 Whose ragged banners in their own despite 
 Take on the tinges of the hated light, — 
 So Sultan Phoebus has his Janizars. 
 But if mine unappeased cicatrices 
 
 Might get them lawful ease ; 
 Were any gentle passion hallowed me. 
 
 Who must none other breath of passion feel 
 Save such as winnows to the fledged heel 
 The tremulous Paradisal plumages ; 
 The conscious sacramental trees 
 Which ever be 
 Shaken celestially. 
 Consentient with enamoured wings, might know my 
 love for thee. 
 
 44
 
 SISTER SONGS 
 
 Yet is there more, whereat none guesseth, love ! 
 
 Upon the ending of my deadly night 
 (Whereof thou hast not the surmise, and slight 
 Is all that any mortal knows thereof), 
 
 Thou wert to me that earnest of day's light, 
 When, like the back of a gold-mailed saurian 
 
 Heaving its slow length from Nilotic slime, 
 The first long gleaming fissure runs Aurorian 
 Athwart the yet dun firmament of prime. 
 Stretched on the margin of the cruel sea 
 Whence they had rescued me. 
 With faint and painful pulses was I lying ; 
 Not yet discerning well 
 If I had 'scaped, or were an icicle, 
 
 \^'hosc thawing is its dying. 
 Like one who sweats before a despot's gate, 
 Summoned by some presaging scroll of fate. 
 And knows not whether kiss or dagger wait ; 
 And all so sickened is his countenance. 
 The courtiers buzz, ' Lo, doomed ! ' and look at 
 him askance : — 
 
 At Fate's dread portal then 
 Even so stood I, I ken. 
 Even so stood I, between a joy and fear. 
 And said to mine own heart, ' Now if the end 
 be here ! ' 
 
 They say. Earth's beauty seems completcst 
 To them that on their death-beds rest ; 
 
 Gentle lady ! she smiles sweetest 
 Just ere she clasps us to her breast. 
 
 45
 
 SISTER SONGS 
 
 And I, — now my Earth's countenance grev/ bright, 
 Did she but smile me towards that nuptial-night ? 
 But, whileas on such dubious bed I lay, 
 One unforgotten day, 
 As a sick child waking sees 
 
 Wide-eyed daisies 
 Gazing on it from its hand. 
 Slipped there for its dear amazes ; 
 So between thy father's knees 
 I saw thee stand, 
 And through my hazes 
 Of pain and fear thine eyes' young wonder shone. 
 Then, as flies scatter from a carrion, 
 
 Or rooks in spreading gyres like broken smoke 
 Wheel, when some sound their quietude has broke, 
 Fled, at thy countenance, all that doubting spawn : 
 
 The heart which I had questioned spoke, 
 A cry impetuous from its depth was drawn, — 
 ' I take the omen of this face of dawn ! ' 
 And with the omen to my heart cam'st thou. 
 
 Even with a spray of tears 
 That one light draft was fixed there for the years. 
 
 And now ? — 
 The hours I tread ooze memories of thee. Sweet, 
 Beneath my casual feet. 
 With rainfall as the lea. 
 The day is drenched with thee ; 
 In little exquisite surprises 
 Bubbling deliciousness of thee arises 
 From sudden places. 
 
 46
 
 SISTER SONGS 
 
 Under the common traces 
 Of my most Icthargied and customed paces. 
 
 As an Arab journeyeth 
 
 Through a sand of Ayaman, 
 
 Lean Thirst, lolhng its cracked tongue, 
 
 Lagging by his side along ; 
 
 And a rusty-winged Death 
 
 Grating its low flight before. 
 
 Casting ribbed shadows o'er 
 
 The blank desert, blank and tan : 
 He hfts by hap toward where the morning's roots are 
 His weary stare, — 
 Sees, although they plashless mutes are, 
 
 Set in a silver air 
 Fountains of gehd shoots are, 
 
 Making the daylight fairest fair ; 
 Sees the palm and tamarind 
 Tangle the tresses of a phantom wind ; — 
 A sight like innocence when one has sinned ! 
 A green and maiden freshness smiling there, 
 
 \\'hile with unblinking glare 
 The tawny-hided desert crouches watching her. 
 
 'Tis a vision : 
 Yet the greeneries Elysian 
 He has known in tra(5fs afar ; 
 Thus the enamouring fountains flow, 
 Those the very palms that grow, 
 By rare-gummed Sava, or Herbalimar. — 
 Such a watered dream has tarried 
 
 47
 
 SISTER SONGS 
 
 Trembling on my desert arid ; 
 Even so 
 Its lovely gleamings 
 
 Seemings show 
 Of things not seemings ; 
 And I gaze, 
 Knowing that, beyond my ways. 
 
 Verily 
 All these are^ for these are She. 
 
 Eve no gentlier lays her cooling cheek 
 On the burning brow of the sick earth. 
 Sick with death, and sick with birth, 
 Aeon to aeon, in secular fever twirled, 
 Than thy shadow soothes this weak 
 And distempered being of mine. 
 In all I work, my hand includeth thine ; 
 Thou rushest down in every stream 
 Whose passion frets my spirit's deepening gorge ; 
 Unhood'st mine eyas-heart, and fliest my dream ; 
 
 Thou swing'st the hammers of my forge ; 
 As the innocent moon, that nothing does but shine. 
 Moves all the labouring surges of the world. 
 
 Pierce where thou wilt the springing thought in me, 
 And there thy piftured countenance lies enfurled. 
 As in the cut fern lies the imaged tree. 
 
 This poor song that sings of thee, 
 This fragile song, is but a curled 
 
 Shell outgathered from thy sea. 
 And murmurous still of its nativity. 
 Princess of Smiles, 
 
 48
 
 SISTER SONGS 
 
 Sorceress of most unlawful-lawful wiles, 
 Cunning pit for gazers' senses, 
 Overstrcwn with innocences ! 
 Purities gleam white like statues 
 In the fair lakes of thine eyes, 
 And I watch the sparkles that use 
 
 There to rise, 
 
 Knowing these 
 Are bubbles from the calyces 
 Of the lovely thoughts that breathe 
 Paving, like water-flowers, thy spirit's floor beneath. 
 
 O thou most dear ! 
 Who art thy sex's complex harmony 
 
 God-set more facilely ; 
 
 To thee may love draw near 
 
 Without one blame or fear, 
 Unchidden save by his humility : 
 Thou Perseus' Shield wherein I view secure 
 The mirrored Wcmian's fateful-fair allure ! 
 Whom Heaven still leaves a twofold dignity. 
 As girlhood gentle, and as boyhood free ; 
 With whom no most diaphanous webs envvind 
 The bared limbs of the rebukcless mind. 
 Wild Dryad, all unconscious of thy tree. 
 
 With which indissolubly 
 The tyrannous time shall one day make thee whole ; 
 Whose frank arms pass unfretted through its bole ; 
 
 Who wear'st thy femineity 
 Light as entrailcd blossoms, that shalt find 
 It erelong silver shackles unto thee : 
 
 49
 
 SISTER SONGS 
 
 Thou whose young sex is yet but in thy goul ; — 
 
 As hoarded in the vine 
 Hang the gold skins of undelirious wine, 
 As air sleeps, till it toss its limbs in breeze ; — 
 In whom the mystery which lures and sunders, 
 Grapples and thrusts apart, endears, estranges, 
 — The dragon to its own Hesperides — 
 
 Is gated under slow-revolving changes. 
 Manifold doors of heavy-hinged years : — 
 
 So once, ere Heaven's eyes were filled with wonders 
 To see Laughter rise from Tears, 
 Lay in beauty not yet mighty, 
 Couched in translucencies. 
 The antenatal Aphrodite, 
 Caved magically under magic seas ; 
 Caved dreamlessly beneath the dreamful seas. 
 
 ' Whose sex is in thy soul ! ' 
 What think we of thy soul ? 
 Which has no parts, and cannot grow, 
 Unfurled not from an embryo ; 
 Born of full stature, lineal to control ; 
 
 And yet a pigmy's yoke must undergo : 
 Yet must keep pace and tarry, patient, kind. 
 With its unwilHng scholar, the dull, tardy mind ; 
 Must be obsequious to the body's powers. 
 Whose low hands mete its paths, set ope and close its 
 ways ; 
 
 Must do obeisance to the days. 
 And wait the little pleasure of the hours ; 
 Yea, ripe for kingship, yet must be 
 
 50
 
 SISTER SONGS 
 
 Captive in statutcd minority ! 
 
 So is all power fulfilled, as soul in thee. 
 
 So still the ruler by the ruled takes rule, 
 
 And wisdom weaves itself i' the loom o' the fool. 
 
 The splendent sun no splendour can display 
 
 Till on gross things he dash his broken ray, 
 
 From cloud and tree and flower re-tossed in prismy 
 
 spray. 
 Did not obstru6lion's vessel hem it in. 
 Force were not force, would spill itself in vain ; 
 We know the Titan by his champed chain. 
 Stay is heat's cradle, it is rocked therein. 
 And by check's hand is burnished into light ; 
 If hate were none, would love burn lowlier bright ? 
 God's Fair were guessed scarce but for opposite sin ; 
 Yea, and His Mercy, I do think it well, 
 Is flashed back from the brazen gates of Hell. 
 
 The heavens decree 
 All power fulfil itself as soul in thee. 
 For supreme Spirit subjeft was to clay. 
 
 And Law from its own servants learned a law, 
 And Light besought a lamp unto its way, 
 
 And Awe was reined in awe, 
 At one small house of Nazareth ; 
 And Golgotha 
 Saw Breath to breathlcssness resign its breath, 
 And Life do homage for its crown to death. 
 
 So is all power, as soul in thee, increased ! 
 But, knowing this, in knowledge's despite 
 I fret against the law severe that stains 
 
 51 £2
 
 SISTER SONGS 
 
 Thy spirit with eclipse ; 
 When — as a nymph's carven head sweet water drips, 
 For others oozing so the cool delight 
 Which cannot steep her stiffened mouth of stone — 
 Thy nescient lips repeat maternal strains. 
 
 Memnonian lips ! 
 Smitten with singing from thy mother's East, 
 And murmurous with music not their own : 
 Nay, the lips flexile, while the mind alone 
 A passionless statue stands. 
 Oh, pardon, innocent one ! 
 Pardon at thine unconscious hands ! 
 Murmurous with music not their own,' I say ? 
 And in that saying how do I missay. 
 
 When from the common sands 
 Of poorest common speech of common day 
 Thine accents sift the golden musics out ! 
 And ah, we poets, I misdoubt, 
 Are little more than thou ! 
 We speak a lesson taught we know not how. 
 
 And what it is that from us flows 
 The hearer better than the utterer knows. 
 
 Thou canst foreshape thy word ; 
 
 The poet is not lord 
 Of the next syllable may come 
 With the returning pendulum ; 
 And what he plans to-day in song, 
 To-morrow sino-s it in another tongue. 
 
 Where the last leaf fell from his bough, 
 He knows not if a leaf shall grow ; 
 
 52
 
 SISTER SONGS 
 
 Where he sows he doth not reap, 
 He reapcth where he did not sow ; 
 He sleeps, and dreams forsake his sleep 
 To meet him on his waking way. 
 Vision will mate him not by law and vow : 
 Disguised in Ufe's most hodden-grey, 
 By the most beaten road of everyday 
 She waits him, unsuspe6led and unknown. 
 
 The hardest pang whereon 
 He lays his mutinous head may be a Jacob's stone. 
 In the most iron crag his foot can tread 
 A Dream may strew her bed. 
 And suddenly his limbs entwine, 
 And draw him down through rock as sea-nymphs might 
 
 through brine. 
 But, unhke those feigned temptress-ladies who 
 In guerdon of a niglit the lover slew, 
 When the embrace has failed, the rapture fled, 
 Not he, not he, the wild sweet witch is dead ! 
 
 And though he cherisheth 
 The babe most strangely born from out her death, 
 Some tender trick of her it hath, maybe, — 
 It is not she ! 
 
 Yet, even as the air is rumorous of fray 
 
 Before the first shafts of the sun's onslaught 
 From gloom's black harness splinter. 
 And Summer move on Winter 
 With the trumpet of the March, and tlie pennon of the 
 May; 
 As gesture outstrips thought ; 
 
 53
 
 SISTER SONGS 
 
 So haply, toyer with ethereal strings, 
 
 Are thy blind repetitions of high things 
 
 The murmurous gnats whose aimless hoverings 
 
 Reveal song's summer in the air ; 
 The outstretched hand, which cannot thought declare, 
 
 Yet is thought's harbinger. 
 These strains the way for thine own strains prepare ; 
 We feel the music moist upon this breeze, 
 And hope the congregating poesies. 
 
 Sundered yet by thee from us 
 
 Wait, with wild eyes luminous, 
 All thy winged things that are to be ; 
 They flit against thee. Gate of Ivory ! 
 They clamour on the portress Destiny, — 
 ' Set her wide, so we may issue through. 
 Our vans are quick for that they have to do ! ' 
 
 Suffer still your young desire ; 
 Your plumes but bicker at the tips with fire ; 
 Tarry their kindling — they will beat the higher. 
 And thou, bright girl, not long shalt thou repeat 
 Idly the music from thy mother caught ; 
 
 Not vainly has she wrought. 
 Not vainly from the cloudward-jetting turret 
 Of her aerial mind for thy weak feet 
 Let down the silken ladder of her thought. 
 She bare thee with a double pain, 
 
 Of the body and the spirit ; 
 Thou thy fleshly weeds hast ta'en. 
 
 Thy diviner weeds inherit ! 
 The precious streams which through thy young lips roll 
 Shall leave their lovely delta in thy soul : 
 
 54
 
 SISTER SONGS 
 
 Where sprites of so essential kind 
 
 Set their paces, 
 Surely they shall leave behind 
 
 The green traces 
 Of their sportance in the mind ; 
 And thou shalt, ere we well may know it, 
 Turn that daintiness, a poet, — 
 
 Elfin -ring 
 Where sweet fancies foot and sing. 
 So it may be, so it shall be, — 
 Oh, take the prophecy from me ! 
 What if the old fastidious sculptor. Time, 
 This crescent marvel of his hands 
 Carveth all too painfully. 
 And I who prophesy shall never see ? 
 What if the niche of its predestined rhyme. 
 Its aching niche, too long expcdant stands f 
 Yet shall he after sore delays 
 On some exultant day of days 
 The white enshrouding childhood raise 
 From thy fair spirit, finished for our gaze ; 
 While we (but 'mongst that happy ' we' 
 The prophet cannot be !) — 
 While we behold with no astonishments. 
 With that serene fulfilment of delight 
 Wherewith we view the sight 
 When the stars pitch the golden tents 
 Of their high campment on the plains of night. 
 \\ hy should amazement be our satellite ? 
 
 What wonder in such things ? 
 If angels have hereditary wings, 
 
 55
 
 SISTER SONGS 
 
 If not by Salic law is handed down 
 
 The poet's crown, 
 To thee, born in the purple of the throne, 
 The laurel must belong : 
 Thou, in thy mother's right 
 Descendant of Castalian-chrismed kings — 
 
 Prince&s of the Blood of Song ! 
 
 Peace ! Too impetuously have I been winging 
 
 Toward vaporous heights which beckon and beguile. 
 
 1 sink back, saddened to my inmost mind ; 
 Even as I list a-dream that mother singing 
 
 The poesy of sweet tone, and sadden while 
 Her voice is cast in troubled wake behind 
 The keel of her keen spirit. Thou art enshrined 
 In a too primal innocence for this eye — 
 Intent on such untempered radiancy — 
 Not to be pained ; my clay can scarce endure 
 Ungrieved the effiuence near of essences so pure. 
 Therefore, little tender maiden, 
 Never be thou overshaden 
 With a mind whose canopy 
 Would shut out the sky from thee ; 
 Whose tangled branches intercept Heaven's light : 
 I will not feed my unpastured heart 
 On thee, green pleasaunce as thou art, 
 To lessen by one flower thy happy daisies white. 
 The water-rat is earth-hued like the runlet 
 
 Whereon he swims ; and how in me should lurk 
 Thoughts apt to neighbour thine, thou creature sunlit ? 
 If through long fret and irk 
 
 56
 
 SISTER SONGS 
 
 Thine eves within their browed recesses were 
 
 \\ orn caves where thought lay couchant in its lair ; 
 
 \\ ert thou a spark among dank leaves, ah ruth ! 
 
 W ith age in all thy veins, while all thy heart was youth 
 
 Our conta6l might run smooth. 
 But life's Eoan dews still moist thy ringed hair ; 
 
 Dian's chill finger-tips 
 Thaw if at night they happen on thy lips ; 
 The flying fringes of the sun's cloak frush 
 The fragile leaves w hich on those warm lips blush ; 
 
 And joy only lurks retired 
 
 In the dim gloaming of thine irid. 
 Then since my love drags this poor shadow, me, 
 And one without the other may not be. 
 From both I guard thee free. 
 
 It still is much, yes, it is much. 
 Only — my dream ! — to love my love of thee ; 
 
 And it is much, yes, it is much, 
 In hands which thou hast touched to feel thy touch, 
 In voices which have mingled with thine own 
 
 To hear a double tone. 
 As anguish, for supreme expression prest, 
 
 Borrows its saddest tongue from jest, 
 
 Thou hast of absence so create 
 
 A presence more importunate ; 
 
 And thy voice pleads its sweetest suit 
 When it is mute. 
 
 I thank the once accursed star 
 W hich did me teach 
 To make of Silence my familiar, 
 Who hath the rich reversion of thy speech, 
 
 57
 
 SISTER SONGS 
 
 Since the most charming sounds thy thought can wear, 
 Cast off, fall to that pale attendant's share ; 
 
 And thank the gift which made my mind 
 A shadow-world, wherethrough the shadows wind 
 Of all the loved and lovely of my kind. 
 
 Like a maiden Saxon, folden, 
 
 As she flits, in moon-drenched mist ; 
 Whose curls streaming flaxen-golden, 
 
 By the misted moonbeams kist, 
 Dispread their filmy floating silk 
 
 Like honey steeped in milk : 
 So, vague goldenness remote, 
 Through my thoughts I watch thee float. 
 When the snake summer casts her blazoned skin 
 We find it at the turn of autumn's path. 
 And think it summer that rewinded hath, 
 
 Joying therein ; 
 And this enamouring slough of thee, mine elf, 
 
 I take it for thyself ; 
 Content. Content ? Yea, title it content. 
 The very loves that belt thee must prevent 
 My love, I know, with their legitimacy : 
 As the metallic vapours, that are swept 
 Athwart the sun, in his light intercept 
 
 The very hues 
 Which their conflagrant elements effuse. 
 But, my love, my heart, my fair, 
 That only I should see thee rare, 
 Or tent to the hid core thy rarity, — 
 
 This were a mournfulness more piercing far 
 
 58
 
 SISTER SONGS 
 
 Than that those other loves my own must bar, 
 Or thine for others leave thee none for mc. 
 
 But on a day whereof I think, 
 One shall dip his hand to drink 
 In that still water of thy soul, 
 And its imaged tremors race 
 Over thy joy-troubled face, 
 As the intervolved reflexions roll 
 From a shaken fountain's brink, 
 With swift light wrinkling its alcove. 
 From the hovering wing of Love 
 The warm stain shall flit roseal on thy cheek. 
 
 Then, sweet blushet ! whenas he, 
 The destined paramount of thy universe. 
 
 Who has no worlds to sigh for, ruling thee. 
 Ascends his vermeil throne of empery. 
 One grace alone I seek. 
 Oh ! may this treasure-galleon of my verse, 
 Fraught with its golden passion, oared with cadent 
 
 rhyme. 
 Set with a towering press of fantasies, 
 Drop safely down the time, 
 Leaving mine isled self behind it far 
 Soon to be sunken in the abysm of seas 
 (As down the years the splendour voyages 
 
 From some long ruined and night-submerged star). 
 And in thy subjcd sovereign's havening heart 
 Anchor the freightage of its virgin ore ; 
 
 Adding its wasteful more 
 To his own overflowing treasury. 
 
 59
 
 SISTER SONGS 
 
 So through his river mine shall reach thy sea, 
 
 Bearing its confluent part ; 
 
 In his pulse mine shall thrill ; 
 And the quick heart shall quicken from the heart that's 
 still. 
 
 Ah, help, my Dzemon that hast served me well ! 
 Not at this last, oh, do not me disgrace ! 
 I faint, I sicken, darkens all my sight, 
 As, poised upon this unprevisioned height, 
 I lift into its place 
 The utmost aery traceried pinnacle. 
 So ; it is builded, the high tenement, 
 
 — God grant ! — to mine intent : 
 Most hke a palace of the Occident, 
 
 Up-thrusting, toppling maze on maze, 
 Its mounded blaze, 
 And washed by the sunset's rosy waves. 
 Whose sea drinks rarer hue from those rare walls it 
 laves. 
 
 Yet wail, my spirits, wail ! 
 So few therein to enter shall prevail. 
 Scarce fewer could win way, if their desire 
 A dragon baulked, with involuted spire. 
 And writhen snout spattered with yeasty fire. 
 For at the elfin portal hangs a horn 
 
 Which none can wind aright 
 Save the appointed knight 
 Whose lids the fay-wings brushed when he was born. 
 
 All others stray forlorn. 
 Or glimpsing, through the blazoned windows scrolled, 
 
 60
 
 SISTER SONGS 
 
 Receding labyrinths lessening tortuously 
 
 In half obscurity ; 
 With mystic images, inhuman, cold, 
 That flamelcss torches hold. 
 But who can wind that horn of might 
 (The horn of dead Heliades) aright, — 
 
 Straight 
 Open for him shall roll the conscious gate ; 
 And hght leap up from all the torches there, 
 And life leap up in every torchbearcr, 
 And the stone faces kindle in the glow, 
 And into the blank eyes the irids grow. 
 And through the dawning irids ambushed meanings 
 show. 
 
 Illumined this wise on, 
 He threads securely the far intricacies. 
 
 With brede from Heaven's wrought vesture 
 overstrewn ; 
 Swift Tellus' purflcd tunic, girt upon 
 With the blown chlamys of her fluttering seas ; 
 
 And the freaked kirtle of the pearled moon : 
 Until ho gain the structure's core, where stands — 
 
 A toil of ma"ic hands — 
 The unbodied spirit of the sorcerer, 
 Most strangely rare. 
 As is a vision remembered in the noon ; 
 Unbodied, yet to mortal seeing clear, 
 Like sighs exhaled in eager atmosphere. 
 From human haps and mutabilities 
 It rests exempt, beneath the edifice 
 To which itself gave rise ; 
 
 6i
 
 SISTER SONGS 
 
 Sustaining centre to the bubble of stone 
 Which, breathed from it, exists by it alone. 
 Yea, ere Saturnian earth her child consumes, 
 And I lie down with outworn ossuaries. 
 Ere death's grim tongue anticipates the tomb's 
 Siste viator, in this storied urn 
 My living heart is laid to throb and burn, 
 Till end be ended, and till ceasing cease. 
 
 And thou by whom this strain hath parentage ; 
 
 Wantoner between the yet untreacherous claws 
 Of newly-whelped existence ! ere he pause, 
 What gift to thee can yield the archimage ? 
 For coming seasons' frets 
 What aids, what amulets, 
 What softenings, or what brightenings ? 
 As Thunder writhes the lash of his long lightnings 
 About the growling heads of the brute main 
 Foaming at mouth, until it wallow again 
 In the scooped oozes of its bed of pain ; 
 So all the gnashing jaws, the leaping heads 
 Of hungry menaces, and of ravening dreads, 
 
 Of pangs 
 Twitch-lipped, with quivering nostrils and immitigate 
 
 fangs, 
 I scourge beneath the torment of my charms 
 That their repentless nature fear to work thee harms. 
 And as yon Apollonian harp-player. 
 
 Yon wandering psalterist of the sky. 
 With flickering strings which scatter melody, 
 The silver-stoled damsels of the sea, 
 
 61
 
 SISTER SONGS 
 
 Or lake, or fount, or stream, 
 Enchants from their ancestral heaven of waters 
 To Naiad it through the unfrothing air ; 
 
 IVIy song enchants so out of undulous dream 
 The glimmering shapes of its dim-tressed 
 daughters, 
 And missions each to be thy minister, 
 
 Saying : * O ye, 
 The organ-stops of being's harmony ; 
 The blushes on existence's pale face, 
 
 Lending it sudden grace ; 
 Without whom wc should but guess Heaven's worth 
 By blank negations of this sordid earth 
 (So haply to the blind may light 
 Be but gloom's undetermined opposite) ; 
 Ye who are thus as the rcfrafting air 
 Whereby we see Heaven's stin before it rise 
 Above the dull line of our mortal skies ; 
 As breathing on the strained ear that sighs 
 From comrades viewless unto strained eyes, 
 Soothing our terrors in the lamplcss night ; 
 Ye who can make this world, where all is deeming, 
 What world ye list, being arbiters of seeming ; 
 Attend upon her ways, benignant powers ! 
 Unroll ye life a carpet for her feet, 
 And cast ye down before them blossomy hours, 
 Until her going shall be clogged with sweet ! 
 All dear emotions whose new-bathed hair. 
 Still streaming from the soul, in love's warm air 
 Smokes with a mist of tender fantasies ; 
 All these, 
 
 63
 
 SISTER SONGS 
 
 And all the heart's wild growths which, swiftly bright, 
 Spring up the crimson agarics of a night, 
 No pain in withering, yet a joy arisen ; 
 And all thin shapes more exquisitely rare, 
 
 More subtly fair, 
 Than these weak ministering words have spell to prison 
 Within the magic circle of this rhyme ; 
 And all the fays who in our creedless clime 
 
 Have sadly ceased, 
 Bearing to other children childhood's proper feast ; 
 Whose robes are fluent crystal, crocus-hued, 
 Whose wings are wind a-fire, whose mantles 
 
 wrought 
 From spray that falling rainbows shake to air ; 
 These, ye familiars to my wdzard thought, 
 Make things of journal custom unto her ; 
 
 With lucent feet imbrued, 
 If young Day tread, a glorious vintager, 
 The wine-press of the purple-foamed east ; 
 Or round the nodding sun, flush-faced and sunken, 
 
 His wild Bacchantes drunken 
 Reel, with rent woofs a-flaunt, their westering rout.' 
 
 — But lo ! at length the day is lingered out, 
 At length my xA-riel lays his viol by ; 
 We sing no more to thee, child, he and I ; 
 The day is lingered out : 
 
 In slow wreaths folden f 
 
 Around yon censer, sphered, golden. 
 Vague Vesper's fumes aspire ; 
 And, glimmering to eclipse. 
 
 64
 
 SISTER SONGS 
 
 The long laburnum drips 
 Its honey of wild flame, its jocund spilth of fire. 
 
 Now pass your ways, fair bird, and pass your ways, 
 If you will ; 
 I have you through the days ! 
 And flit or hold you still. 
 And perch you where you list 
 On what wrist, — 
 Tou are mine through the times ! 
 I have caught you fast for ever in a tangle of sweet rhymes. 
 And in your young maiden morn 
 Tou may scorn. 
 But you must be 
 Bound and sociate to me ; 
 With this thread from out the tomb my dead hand shall 
 tether thee ! 
 
 Go, Sister-songs, to that sweet Sister-pair 
 For whom I have your frail limbs fashioned, 
 
 And framed feateously ; — 
 For whom I have your frail limbs fashioned 
 With how great shamefastncss and how great dread, 
 Knowing you frail, but not if you be fair, 
 
 Though framed feateously ; 
 
 Go unto them from me. 
 Go from my shadow to their sunshine sight, 
 
 Made for all sights' delight ; 
 Go like twin swans that oar the surgy storms 
 To bate with pcnnoncd snows in candent air : 
 
 65
 
 §ISTEk SONGS 
 
 Nigh with abased head, 
 Yourselves linked sisterly, that Sister-pair, 
 
 And go in presence there ; 
 Saying — ' Your young eyes cannot see our forms, 
 Nor read the yearning of our looks aright ; 
 But Time shall trail the veilings from our hair, 
 And cleanse your seeing with his euphrasy 
 (Yea, even your bright seeing make more bright, 
 
 Which is all sights' delight), 
 And ye shall know us for what things we be. 
 
 * Whilom, within a poet's calyxed heart, 
 A dewy love we trembled all apart ; 
 
 Whence it took rise 
 
 Beneath your radiant eyes, 
 Which misted it to music. We must long, 
 A floating haze of silver subtile song, 
 
 Await love-laden 
 
 Above each maiden 
 The appointed hour that o'er the hearts of you — 
 
 As vapours into dew 
 
 Unweave, whence they were wove, — 
 Shall turn our loosening musics back to love.' 
 
 66
 
 SISTER SONGS 
 
 iNSCRirrioN 
 
 WHEN thelast stir of bubbling melodies 
 Broke, as my chants sank underneath the wave 
 Of dulcitude, but sank again to rise 
 Where man's embaying mind those waters lave 
 (For music hath its Oceanides 
 Fleiuously floating through their parent seas. 
 
 And such arc these), 
 I saw a vision — or may it be 
 The effluence of a dear desired reality ? 
 
 I saw two spirits high, — 
 Two spirits, dim within the silver smoke 
 
 Which is for ever woke 
 By snowing lights of fountaincd Poesy. 
 Two shapes they were, familiar as love ; 
 
 They w ere those souls, whereof 
 One twines from finest gracious daily things, 
 Strong, constant, noticclcss, as are heart-strings, 
 The golden cage wherein this song-bird sings ; 
 And the other's sun gives hue to all my flowers, 
 \\'hich else pale flowers of Tartarus would grow, 
 Where ghosts w atch ghosts of blooms in ghostly bowers ; — 
 
 For we do know 
 The hidden player by his harmonies, 
 And by my thoughts I know what still hands thrill the keys. 
 
 And to these twain — as from the mind's abysses 
 
 All thoughts draw toward the awakening heart's sweet 
 
 kisses, 
 With proffer of their wreathen fantasies, — 
 Even so to these 
 
 67 FS
 
 SISTER SONGS 
 
 I saw how many brought their garlands fair, 
 Whether of song, or simple love, they were, — 
 Of simple love, that makes best garlands fair. 
 But one I marked who lingered still behind, 
 As for such souls no seemly gift had he : 
 
 He was not of their strain. 
 Nor worthy of so bright beings to entertain. 
 Nor fit compeer for such high company. 
 Yet was he, surely, born to them in mind, 
 Their youngest nursling of the spirit's kind. 
 
 Last stole this one. 
 With timid glance, of watching eyes adread. 
 And dropped his frightened flower when all were gone ; 
 And where the frail flower fell, it withered. 
 But yet methought those high souls smiled thereon ; 
 As when a child, upstraining at your knees 
 Some fond and fancied nothings, says, * I give yon 
 these ! ' 
 
 68 
 
 1
 
 LOVS IN DUN'S LA^P
 
 !
 
 PROEMION i 
 
 HEAR, my Muses, I demand 
 J little labour at your hand. 
 Ere quite is loosed our amity : 
 A little husband out the sand 
 That times the gasps of Poesy / 
 
 beloved, O ye Two, 
 
 When the Years last met, to you 
 
 I sent a gift exultingly. 
 My song's sands, like the Year's, are few ; 
 
 But take this last weak gift from me. 
 
 One year ago (one year, one year !) 
 
 1 had no prescience, no, nor fear ; 
 
 I said to Oblivion : * Dread thou me ! ' 
 What cared I for the mortal year f 
 I was not of its company. 
 
 Before mine own Eled stood I, 
 
 And said to Death :* Not these shall die ! ' 
 
 I issued mandate royally. 
 I bade Decay : ' Avoid and fly. 
 
 For I am fatal unto thee,' 
 
 7*
 
 LOVE IN DIAN'S LAP 
 
 I sprinkled a few drops of verse. 
 And said to Ruin : ' Quit thy hearse ; ' 
 
 To my Loved : ' Pale not, come with me ; 
 I will escort thee down the years, 
 
 With me thou walk'st immortally.' 
 
 -> 
 
 Rhyme did I as a charmed cup give, 
 That who I would might drink and live. 
 
 * Enter,' I cried, ' Song's ark with me ! ' 
 And knew not that a witch's sieve 
 
 Were built somewhat more seamanly. 
 
 I said unto my heart : * Be light ! 
 Thy grain will soon for long delight 
 
 Oppress the future's granary : ' 
 Poor fool ! and did not hear — ' This night 
 
 They shall demand thy song of thee.' 
 
 Of God and you I pardon crave ; 
 Who would save others, nor can save 
 
 My own self from mortality : 
 I throw my whole songs in the grave — 
 
 They will not fill that pit for me. 
 
 But thou, to whom I sing this last — 
 The bitterest bitterness I taste 
 
 Is that thy children have from me 
 The best I had where all is waste. 
 
 And but the crumbs were cast to thee. 
 
 72
 
 PROEMION 
 
 It may be I did little wronc^ ; 
 Since no notes of thy lyre bclonj:^ 
 
 To them ; thou leftest them for me ; 
 And what didst thou want of my song, — 
 
 Thou, thine own immortality ? 
 
 Ah, I would that I had yet 
 Given thy head one coronet 
 
 With thine ivies to agree ! 
 Ere thou restest where are set 
 
 Wreaths but on the breast of thee. 
 
 Though what avails ? — The ivies twined 
 By thine own hand thou must unbind, 
 
 When there thy temples laid shall be : 
 'Tis haply Death's prevision kind 
 
 That ungirt brows lie easily. 
 
 * Of all thy trees thou lovest so. 
 None tvith thee to grave shall go. 
 
 Save the abhorred cypress tree.^* 
 The abhorred ? — Ah, I know, I know, 
 Thy dearest follower it would be ! 
 
 Thou would'st sweetly he in death 
 The dark southerner beneath : 
 
 We should interpret, knowing thee, — 
 
 * Here I rest ' (her symbol saith), 
 
 ' And above me, Italy.' 
 
 • The wordi of Horace^ 
 
 73
 
 LOVE IN DIAN'S LAP 
 
 But above thy English grave 
 Who knows if a tree shall wave ? 
 
 Save — when the far certainty 
 Of thy fame fulfilled is — save 
 
 The laurel that shall spring from thee. 
 
 Very little carest thou 
 
 If the world no laurel-bough 
 
 Set in thy dead hand, ah me ! 
 But my heart to grieve allow 
 
 For the fame thou shalt not see ! 
 
 Yet my heart to grieve allow, 
 With the grief that grieves it now, 
 
 Looking to futurity. 
 With too sure presaging how 
 
 Fools will blind blind eyes from thee : — 
 
 Bitterly presaging how 
 Sightless death must them endow 
 
 With sight, who gladder blind would be. 
 * Though our eyes be blind enow, 
 
 Let us hide them, lest we see ! ' 
 
 I would their hearts but hardened were 
 In the way that I aver 
 
 All men shall find this heart of me : 
 Which is so hard, thy name cut there 
 
 Never worn or blurred can be. 
 
 74
 
 b 
 
 PROEMION 
 
 If my song as much might say ! 
 But in all too late a day 
 
 I use thy name for melody ; 
 And with the sweet theme assay 
 
 To hide my descant's poverty. 
 
 When that last song gave I you, 
 Ye and I, beloved Two, 
 
 \\'ere each to each half mystery ! 
 Now the tender veil is through ; 
 
 Unafraid the whole we see. 
 
 Small for you the danger was ! 
 Statucd deity but thaws 
 
 In you to warm divinity ; 
 Some fair defect completion flaws 
 
 With a completing grace to me. 
 
 But when I my veiling raised — 
 The Milonian less were crazed 
 
 To talk with men incarnately : 
 The poor goddess but appraised 
 
 By her lacking arms would be. 
 
 Though Pan may have delicious throat, 
 'Tis hard to tolerate the goat. 
 
 What if Pan were suddenly 
 To lore his sinking, every note ? — 
 
 Then pity have of i'an, and me ! 
 
 75
 
 LOVE IN DIAN'S LAP 
 
 Love and Song together sing ; 
 Song is weak and fain to cling 
 
 About Love's shoulder wearily. 
 Let her voice, poor fainting thing, 
 
 In his strong voice drowned be ! 
 
 In my soul's Temple seems a sound 
 Of unfolding wings around 
 
 The vacant shrine of poesy : 
 Voices of parting songs resound : — 
 
 ' Let us go hence ! ' A space let be ! 
 
 A space, my Muses, — 1 demand 
 This last of labours at your handy 
 
 Ere quite is loosed our amity : 
 A little stay the cruel sand 
 
 That times the gasps of Poesy / 
 
 76 
 
 1
 
 BEFORE HER PORTRAIT IN 
 YOUTH 
 
 As lovers, banished from their lady's face, 
 And hopeless of her grace, 
 . Fasliion a ghostly sweetness in its place, 
 Fondly adore 
 Some stealth-won cast attire she wore, 
 A kerchief, or a glove : 
 And at the lover's beck 
 Into the glove there fleets the hand. 
 Or at impetuous command 
 Up from the kerchief floats the virgin neck : 
 So I, in very lowlihead of love, — 
 Too shyly reverencing 
 To let one thought's light footfall smooth 
 Tread near the living, consecrated thing, — 
 
 Treasure me thy cast youth. 
 This outworn vesture, tenantless of thee, 
 Hath yet my knee, 
 For that, with show and semblance fair 
 Of the past Her 
 Who once the beautiful, discarded raiment bare, 
 It cheatcth me. 
 As gale to gale drifts breath 
 Of blossoms' death, 
 So, dropping down the years from hour to hour, 
 
 This dead youth's scent is wafted me to-day ; 
 I sit, and from the fragrance dream the flower. 
 
 11
 
 LOVE IN DIAN'S LAP 
 
 So, then, she looked (I say) ; 
 
 And so her front sank down 
 Heavy beneath the poet's iron crown : 
 
 On her mouth museful sweet 
 
 (Even as the twin hps meet) 
 
 Did thought and sadness greet : 
 Sighs 
 
 In those mournful eyes 
 So put on visibilities ; 
 As viewless ether turns, in deep on deep, to dyes. 
 
 Thus, long ago, 
 She kept her meditative paces slow 
 Through maiden meads, with waved shadow and gleam 
 Of locks half-lifted on the winds of dream. 
 Till Love up-caught her to his chariot's glow. 
 Yet, voluntary, happier Proserpine ! 
 
 This drooping flower of youth thou lettest fall 
 I, faring in the cockshut-light, astray, 
 
 Find on my 'lated way, 
 And stoop, and gather for memorial. 
 And lay it on my bosom, and make it mine. 
 To this, the all of love the stars allow me, 
 
 I dedicate and vow me. 
 
 I reach back through the days 
 A trothed hand to the dead the last trump shall not raise. 
 
 The water-wraith that cries 
 From those eternal sorrows of thy pi6lured eyes 
 Entwines and draws me down their soundless intricacies. 
 
 78
 
 TO A POET BREAKING 
 SILENCE 
 
 Too wearily had \vc and song 
 Been left to look and left to lon^;;. 
 Yea, song and \vc to lon^j and look, 
 Since thine acquainted feet forsook 
 The mountain where the Muses hymn 
 For Sinai and the Seraphim. 
 Now in both the mountains' shine 
 Dress thy countenance, twice divine ! 
 From Moses and the Muses draw 
 The Tables of thy double Law ! 
 His rod-born fount and Castaly 
 Let the one rock brinsj forth for thee, 
 Renewing so from either spring 
 The songs which both thy countries sing : 
 Or we shall fear lest, heavened thus long, 
 Thou should'st forget thy native song, 
 And mar thy mortal melodies 
 W'itli broken stammer of the skies. 
 
 Ah ! let the sweet birds of the Lord 
 With earth's waters make accord ; 
 Teach how the crucifix may be 
 Carvcn from tlic laurel.-trce, 
 Fruit of the Ilcspcrides 
 Burnish take on I-'dcn -trees, 
 The Muses' sacred grove be wet 
 With the red dew of Olivet, 
 
 79
 
 LOVE IN DIAN'S LAP 
 
 And Sappho lay her burning brows 
 In white CeciHa's lap of snows ! 
 
 Thy childhood must have felt the stings 
 Of too divine o'ershadowings ; 
 Its odorous heart have been a blossom 
 That in darkness did unbosom, 
 Those fire-flies of God to invite, 
 Burning spirits, which by night 
 Bear upon their laden wing 
 To such hearts impregnating. 
 For flowers that night-wings fertilize 
 Mock down the stars' unsteady eyes, 
 And with a happy, sleepless glance 
 Gaze the moon out of countenance. 
 I think thy girlhood's watchers must 
 Have took thy folded songs on trust, 
 And felt them, as one feels the stir 
 Of still lightnings in the hair. 
 When conscious hush expects the cloud 
 To speak the golden secret loud 
 Which tacit air is privy to ; 
 Flasked in the grape the wine they knew. 
 Ere thy poet-mouth was able 
 For its first young starry babble. 
 Keep'st thou not yet that subtle grace ? 
 Yea, in this silent interspace, 
 God sets His poems in thy face ! 
 
 The loom which mortal verse affords, 
 Out of weak and mortal words, 
 
 80
 
 TO A POET BREAKING SILENCE 
 
 Wovest thou thy singing-weed in, 
 
 To a rune of thy far Eden. 
 
 Vain arc all disguises ! Ah, 
 
 Heavenly incognita ! 
 
 Thy mien bewrayeth through that wrong 
 
 The great Uranian House of Song ! 
 
 As the vintages of earth 
 
 Taste of the sun that ripcd their birth, 
 
 We know what nevcr-cadent Sun 
 
 Thy lamped clusters throbbed upon, 
 
 What plumed feet the winepress trod ; 
 
 Thy wine is flavorous of God. 
 
 Whatever singing-robe thou wear 
 
 Has the Paradisal air ; 
 
 And some gold feather it has kept 
 
 Shows what Floor it lately swept ! 
 
 8i
 
 (( 
 
 III 
 
 MANUS ANIMAM PINXIT" 
 
 LADY who hold'st on me dominion ! 
 Within your spirit's arms I stay me fast 
 J Against the fell 
 
 Immitigate ravening of the gates of hell ; 
 And claim my right in you, most hardly won, 
 Of chaste fidelity upon the chaste : 
 Hold me and hold by me, lest both should fall 
 (O in high escalade high companion !) 
 Even in the breach of Heaven's assaulted wall, 
 liike to a wind-sown sapling grow I from 
 The cHft, Sweet, of your skyward-jetting soul, — 
 Shook by all gusts that sweep it, overcome 
 By all its clouds incumbent : O be true 
 To your soul, dearest, as my life to you ! 
 For if that soil grow sterile, then the whole 
 Of me must shrivel, from the topmost shoot 
 Of climbing poesy, and my life, killed through, 
 Dry down and perish to the foodless root. 
 
 Sweet Summer ! unto you this swallow drew, 
 By secret instincts inappeasable, 
 
 That did direct him well. 
 Lured from his gehd North which wrought him 
 wrong. 
 
 Wintered of sunning song ; — 
 By happy instinfts inappeasable. 
 
 Ah yes ! that led him well. 
 Lured to the untried regions and the ncv/ 
 
 82
 
 " MANUS ANIMAM PINXIT » 
 
 Climes of auspicious you ; 
 To twitter there, and in his singing dwell. 
 
 But ah ! if you, my Summer, should grow waste, 
 
 With grieving skies o'ercast, 
 For luch migration my poor wing was strong 
 But once ; it has no power to fare again 
 
 Forth o'er the heads of men, 
 Nor other Summers for its Sanftuary : 
 
 But from your mind's chilled sky 
 It needs must drop, and lie with stiffened wings 
 
 Among jour soul's forlornest things ; 
 A speck upon your memory, alack ! 
 A dead fly in a dusty window-crack. 
 
 O therefore you who are 
 What words, being to such mysteries 
 As raiment to the body is, 
 
 Should rather hide than tell ; 
 Chaste and intelligential love : 
 W hose form is as a grove 
 Hushed with the cooing of an unseen dove ; 
 Whose spirit to my touch thrills purer far 
 Than is the tingling of a silver bell ; 
 Whose body other ladies well might bear 
 As soul, — yea, which it profanation were 
 For all but you to take as fleshly woof, 
 
 Being spirit truest proof ; 
 Whose spirit sure is lineal to that 
 Wliich sang Magnificat : 
 
 Chastest, since such you are. 
 Take this curbed spirit of mine, 
 
 83 C2
 
 LOVE IN DIAN'S LAP 
 
 Which your own eyes invest with light divine, 
 For lofty love and high auxiliar 
 
 In daily exalt emprise 
 
 Which outsoars mortal eyes ; 
 This soul which on your soul is laid, 
 As maid's breast against breast of maid ; 
 Beholding how your own I have engraved 
 On it, and with what purging thoughts have laved 
 This love of mine from all mortality. 
 Indeed the copy is a painful one. 
 
 And with long labour done ! 
 O if you doubt the thing you are, lady, 
 
 Come then, and look in me ; 
 Your beauty, Dian, dress and contemplate 
 Within a pool to Dian consecrate ! 
 Unveil this spirit, lady, when you will, 
 For unto all but you 'tis veiled still : 
 Unveil, and fearless gaze there, you alone. 
 And if you love the image — 'tis your own ! 
 
 »4
 
 A CARRIER SONG 
 
 I 
 
 SINCE you have waned from us, 
 Fairest of women ! 
 I am a darkened cage 
 Song cannot hymn in. 
 My songs have followed you, 
 
 Like birds the summer ; 
 Ah ! bring them back to me, 
 Swiftly, dear comer ! 
 Seraphim, 
 Her to hymn, 
 
 flight leave their portals : 
 And at my feet 'earn 
 The harping of mortals ! 
 
 II 
 
 Where wings to rustle use, 
 
 But this poor tarrier — 
 Searching my spirit's eaves — 
 
 Find I for carrier. 
 Ah ! bring them back to me 
 
 Swiftly, sweet comer — 
 Swrift, swift, and bring w ith you 
 Song's Indian summer ! 
 Seraphim, 
 Her to hymn. 
 
 Might leave their portals ; 
 And at my feet learn 
 The harping of mortals ! 
 
 85
 
 Love in dian's lap 
 III 
 
 Whereso your angel is, 
 
 My angel goeth ; 
 I am left guardianless, 
 Paradise knoweth ! 
 I have no Heaven left 
 
 To vpcep my wrongs to ; 
 Heaven, when you went from us, 
 Went with my songs too. 
 Seraphim y 
 Her to hymn. 
 
 Might leave their portals ; 
 And at my feet learn 
 The harping oj mortals ! 
 
 IV 
 
 I have no angels left 
 
 Now, Sweet, to pray to : 
 Where you have made your shrine 
 
 They are away to. 
 They have struck Heaven's tent, 
 
 And gone to cover you : 
 Whereso you keep your state 
 Heaven is pitched over you 1 
 Seraphim^ 
 Her to hymn. 
 
 Might leave their portals ; 
 And at my feet learn 
 *Ihe harping of mortals ! 
 
 86
 
 A CARRIER SONG 
 
 She that is Heaven's Queen 
 
 Her title borrows, 
 For that she, pitiful, 
 
 Bearcth our sorrows. 
 So thou, Rfgina mt, 
 Spes infirmoTum ; 
 With all our grieving crowned 
 Mater dolorum ! 
 Srrapkim, 
 Hfr to hymn. 
 
 Might leave their portals ; 
 And at my feet learn 
 The harping of mortals ! 
 
 VI 
 
 Yet, envious coveter 
 
 Of others' grieving ! 
 This lonely longing yet 
 
 'Scapcth your reaving. 
 Cruel, to take from a 
 Sinner his Heaven ! 
 Think you with contrite smiles 
 To be forgiven ? 
 Seraphim, 
 Her to hymn. 
 
 Might leave their portals ; 
 And at my feet learn 
 The harping of mortals ! 
 
 87
 
 LOVE IN DIAN'S LAP 
 
 VII 
 
 Penitent ! give me back 
 
 Angels, and Heaven ; 
 
 Render your stolen self, 
 
 And be forgiven ! 
 How frontier Heaven from you ? 
 
 For my soul prays, Sweet, 
 Still to your face in Heaven, 
 Heaven in your face, Sweet ! 
 Seraphim, 
 Her to hymn, 
 Might leave their portals ; 
 And at my feet learn 
 The harp ing of mortals ! 
 
 88
 
 SCALA JACOBI PORTAQUE 
 EBURNEA 
 
 H 
 
 ER soul from earth to Heaven lies, 
 Like the ladder of the vision, 
 Whereon go 
 To and fro, 
 
 In ascension and demission. 
 Star-flecked feet of Paradise. 
 
 Now she is drawn up from me, 
 All my angels, wet-eyed, tristful, 
 
 Gaze from great 
 
 Heaven's gate 
 Like pent children, very wistful. 
 That below a playmate see. 
 
 Dream-dispensing face of hers ! 
 Ivory port which loosed upon me 
 
 Wings, I wist, 
 
 Whose amethyst 
 Trepidations have forgone me, — 
 Hesper's filmy traffickers ! 
 
 8g
 
 VI 
 
 GILDED GOLD 
 
 THOU dost to rich attire a grace, 
 To let it deck itself with thee, 
 And teachest pomp strange cunning ways 
 To be thought simpHcity. 
 But lilies, stolen from grassy mold, 
 No more curled state unfold 
 Translated to a vase of gold ; 
 In burning throne though they keep still 
 Serenities unthawed and chill. 
 Therefore, albeit thou'rt stately so, 
 In statcHer state thou us'dst to go. 
 
 Though jewels should phosphoric burn 
 
 Through those night-waters of thine hair, 
 
 A flower from its translucid urn 
 
 Poured silver flame more lunar-fair. 
 
 These futile trappings but recall 
 
 Degenerate worshippers who fall 
 
 In purfled kirtle and brocade 
 
 To 'parel the white Mother-Maid. 
 
 For, as her image stood arrayed 
 
 In vests of its self -substance wrought 
 
 To measure of the sculptor's thought — 
 
 Slurred by those added braveries ; 
 
 So for thy spirit did devise 
 
 Its Maker seemly garniture. 
 
 Of its own essence parcel pure, — 
 
 From grave simplicities a dress, 
 
 90
 
 GILDED GOLD 
 
 And reticent demurenesses, 
 And love encincturcd with reserve ; 
 Which the woven vesture should subserve. 
 For outward robes in their ostents 
 Should show the souTs habiliments. 
 Therefore I say, — Thou'rt fair even so, 
 But better Fair I use to know. 
 
 The violet would thy dusk hair deck 
 
 With graces like thine own unsought. 
 
 Ah ! but such place would daze and wreck 
 
 Its simple, lowly, rustic thought ; 
 
 For so advanced, dear, to thee, 
 
 It would unlearn humility ! 
 
 Yet do not, with an altered look. 
 
 In these weak numbers read rebuke ; 
 
 Which are but jealous lest too much 
 
 God's master-piece thou shouldst retouch. 
 
 Where a sweetness is complete. 
 
 Add not iweets unto the sweet ! 
 
 Or, as thou wilt, for others jo 
 
 In unfamiliar richness go ; 
 
 But keep for mine acquainted eyes 
 
 The fashions of thy Paradise. 
 
 9'
 
 vii 
 HER PORTRAIT 
 
 OH, but the heavenly grammar did I hold 
 Of that high speech which angels'tongues turn gold ! 
 So should her deathless beauty take no wrong, 
 Praised in her own great kindred's fit and cognate tongue : 
 Or if that language yet with us abode 
 Which Adam in the garden talked with God ! 
 But our untempered speech descends — poor heirs ! 
 Grimy and rough-cast still from Babel's bricklayers : 
 Curse on the brutish jargon we inherit. 
 Strong but to damn, not memorize, a spirit ! 
 A cheek, a lip, a limb, a bosom, they 
 Move with light ease in speech of working-day ; 
 And women we do use to praise even so. 
 But here the gates we burst, and to the temple go. 
 Their praise were her dispraise : who dare, who dare, 
 Adulate the seraphim for their burning hair ? 
 How, if with them I dared, here should I dare it ? 
 How praise the woman, who but know the spirit ? 
 How praise the colour of her eyes, uncaught 
 While they were coloured with her varying thought ? 
 How her mouth's shape, who only use to know 
 What tender shape her speech will fit it to ? 
 Or her lips' redness, when their joined veil 
 Song's fervid hand has parted till it wore them pale ? 
 
 If I would praise her soul (temerarious if !), 
 All must be mystery and hieroglyph. 
 
 92
 
 HER PORTRAIT 
 
 Heaven, wliich not oft is prodigal of its more 
 
 To singcr>, in their song too groat before 
 
 (By which the hierarch of large poesy is 
 
 Restrained to his one sacred benefice), 
 
 Only for her the salutary awe 
 
 Relaxes and stern canon of its law ; 
 
 To her alone concedes pluralities, 
 
 In her alone to reconcile agrees 
 
 The Muse, the Graces, and the Charities ; 
 
 To her, who can the trust so well conduct, 
 
 To her it gives the use, to us the usufruct. 
 
 What of the dear administress then may 
 I utter, though I spoke her own carved perfedl way ? 
 What of her daily gracious converse known, 
 Whose heavenly despotism must needs dethrone 
 And subjugate all sweetness but its own ? 
 Deep in my heart subsides the infrequent word, 
 And tliere dies slowly throbbing like a wounded bird. 
 \\ hat of her silence, that outsweetens speech ? 
 What of her thoughts, high marks for mine own 
 
 thoughts to reach ? 
 Yet, (Chaucer's antique sentence so to turn) 
 Most gladly will she teach, and gladly learn ; 
 And teaching her, by her enchanting art, 
 The master threefold learns for all he can impart. 
 Now all is said, and all being said, — aye me ! 
 There yet remains unsaid the very She. 
 Nay, to conclude (so to conclude I dare), 
 If of her virtues you evade the snare. 
 Then for her faults you'll fall in love; with her. 
 
 91
 
 LOVE IN DIAN'S LAP 
 
 Alas, and I have spoken of her Muse — 
 
 Her Muse, that died with her auroral dews ! 
 
 Learn, the wise cherubim from harps of gold 
 
 Seduce a trcpidating music manifold ; 
 
 But the superior seraphim do know 
 
 None other music but to flame and glow. 
 
 So she first hghted on our frosty earth, 
 
 A sad musician, of cherubic birth. 
 
 Playing to alien ears — which did not prize 
 
 The uncomprehended music of the skies — 
 
 The exiled airs of her far Paradise. 
 
 But soon, from her own harpings taking fire, 
 
 In love and light her melodies expire. 
 
 Now Heaven affords her, for her silenced hymn, 
 
 A double portion of the seraphim. 
 
 At the rich odours from her heart that rise, 
 
 My soul remembers its lost Paradise, 
 
 And antenatal gales blow from Heaven's shores of spice ; 
 
 I grow essential all, uncloaking me 
 
 From this encumbering virility. 
 
 And feel the primal sex of heaven and poetry : 
 
 And, parting from her, in me linger on 
 
 Vague snatches of Uranian antiphon. 
 
 How to the petty prison could she shrink 
 
 Of femineity ? — Nay, but I think 
 
 In a dear courtesy her spirit would 
 
 Woman assume, for grace to womanhood. 
 
 Or, votaress to the virgin Sandlitude 
 
 Of reticent withdrawal's sweet, courted pale. 
 
 94
 
 HER PORTRAIT 
 
 She took the cloistral flesh, the sexual veil, 
 
 Of her sad, aboriginal sisterhood ; 
 
 The habit of cloistral flesh which founding Eve indued. 
 
 Thus do I know her. But for what men call 
 
 Beauty — the loveliness corporeal, 
 
 Its most just praise a thing unproper were 
 
 To singer or to listener, me or her. 
 
 She wears that body but as one indues 
 
 A robe, half careless, for it is the use ; 
 
 Although her soul and it so fair agree. 
 
 We sure may, unattaint of heresy, 
 
 Conceit it might the soul's begetter be. 
 
 The immortal could we cease to contemplate. 
 
 The mortal part suggests its every trait. 
 
 God laid His fingers on the ivories 
 
 Of her pure members as on smoothed keys, 
 
 And there out-breathed her spirit's harmonics. 
 
 I'll speak a little proudly : — I disdain 
 
 To count the beauty worth my wish or gain, 
 
 Which the dull daily fool can covet or obtain. 
 
 I do confess the fairness of the spoil, 
 
 But from such rivalry it takes a soil. 
 
 For her I'll proudlicr speak : — how could it be 
 
 That I should praise the gilding on the psaltery ? 
 
 *Tis not for her to hold that prize a prize. 
 
 Or praise much praise, tliough proudest in its wise, 
 
 To which even hopes of merely women rise. 
 
 Such strife would to the vanquished laurels yield, 
 
 Against her suffered to have lost a field. 
 
 Herself must with herself be sole compeer, 
 
 95
 
 LOVE IN DIAN'S LAP 
 
 Unless the people of her distant sphere 
 
 Some gold migration send to melodize the year. 
 
 But first our hearts must burn in larger guise, 
 
 To reformate the uncharitable skies, 
 
 And so the deathless plumage to acclimatize : 
 
 Since this, their sole congener in our cHme, 
 
 Droops her sad, ruffled thoughts for half the shivering time. 
 
 Yet I have felt what terrors may consort 
 
 In women's cheeks, the Graces' soft resort ; 
 
 My hand hath shook at gentle hands' access, 
 
 And trembled at the waving of a tress ; 
 
 My blood known panic fear, and fled dismayed, 
 
 Where ladies' eyes have set their ambuscade ; 
 
 The rustle of a robe hath been to me 
 
 The very rattle of love's musketry ; 
 
 Although my heart hath beat the loud advance, 
 
 I have recoiled before a challenging glance, 
 
 Proved gay alarms where warlike ribbons dance. 
 
 And from it all, this knowledge have I got, — 
 
 The whole that others have, is less than they have not ; 
 
 All which makes other women noted fair, 
 
 Unnoted would remain and overshone in her. 
 
 How should I gauge what beauty is her dole. 
 Who cannot see her countenance for her soul, 
 As birds see not the casement for the sky ? 
 And, as 'tis check they prove its presence by, 
 I know not of her body till I find 
 My flight debarred the heaven of her mind. 
 Hers is the face whence all should copied be. 
 
 96
 
 HER PORTR^AIT 
 
 Did God make replicas of such as she ; 
 
 Its presence felt by what it does abate, 
 
 Because the soul shines through tempered and mitigate : 
 
 Where — as a figure labouring at night 
 
 Beside the body of a splendid light — 
 
 Dark Time works hidden by its luminousness ; 
 
 And every line he labours to impress 
 
 Turns added beauty, like the veins that run 
 
 Athwart a leaf which hangs against the sun. 
 
 There regent Melancholy wide controls ; 
 
 There Earth- and Heaven-Love play for aureoles ; 
 
 There Sweetness out of Sadness breaks at fits, 
 
 Like bubbles on dark water, or as flits 
 
 A sudden silver fin through its deep infinites ; 
 
 There amorous Thought has sucked pale Fancy's breath, 
 
 And Tenderness sits looking toward the lands of Death : 
 
 There Feeling stills her breathing with her hand. 
 
 And Dream from Melancholy part wrests the wand ; 
 
 And on this lady's heart, looked you so deep, 
 
 Poor Poetr)' has rocked himself to sleep : 
 
 Upon the heavy blossom of her lips 
 
 Hangs the bee Musing ; nigh her lids eclipse 
 
 Each half-occulted star beneath that lies ; 
 
 And, in the contemplation of those eyes, 
 
 Passionless passion, wild tranquillities. 
 
 97
 
 EPILOGUE TO THE POET^S SITTEk 
 
 Wherein he excuseth himself for the manner of the Portrait. 
 
 ALAS ! now wilt thou chide, and say (I deem) 
 My figured descant hides the simple theme : 
 i^Or, in another wise reproving, say 
 I ill observe thine own high reticent way. 
 Oh, pardon, that I testify of thee 
 What thou couldst never speak, nor others be ! 
 
 Yet (for the book is not more innocent 
 Of what the gazer's eyes makes so intent), 
 She will but smile, perhaps, that I find my fair 
 Sufficing scope in such strait theme as her. 
 ' Bird of the sun ! the stars' wild honey-bee ! 
 Is your gold browsing done so thoroughly ? 
 Or sinks a singed wing to narrow nest in me ? * 
 (Thus she might say : for not this lowly vein 
 Out-deprecates her deprecating strain.) 
 Oh, you mistake, dear lady, quite ; nor know 
 Ether was strict as you, its loftiness as low ! 
 
 The heavens do not advance their majesty 
 Over their marge ; beyond his empery 
 The ensigns of the wind are not unfurled. 
 His reign is hooped in by the pale o' the world. 
 'Tis not the continent, but the contained. 
 That pleasaunce makes or prison, loose or chained. 
 Too much alike or little captives me, 
 For all oppression is captivity. 
 
 98
 
 EPILOGUE TO THE POET'S SITTER 
 
 \Miat groweth to its height demands no higher ; 
 
 The limit limits not, but the desire. 
 
 Our minds make their own Termini, nor call 
 
 The issuing circumscriptions great or small ; 
 
 So high constructing Nature lessons to us all : 
 
 Who optics gives accommodate to see 
 
 Your countenance large as looks the sun to be, 
 
 And distant greatness less than near humanity. 
 
 We, therefore, with a sure instinctive mind, 
 
 An equal spaciousness of bondage find 
 
 In confines far or near, of air or our own kind. 
 
 Our looks and longings, which affront the stars, 
 
 Most richly bruised against their golden bars, 
 
 Delighted captives of their flaming spears. 
 
 Find a restraint restrainless which appears 
 
 As that is, and so simply natural, 
 
 In you ; — the fair detention freedom call, 
 
 And overscroll with fancies the loved prison-wall. 
 
 Such sweet captivity, and only such, 
 
 In you, as in those golden bars, we touch 1 
 
 Our gazes for sufficing limits know 
 
 The firmament above, your face below ; 
 
 Our longings are contented with the skies, 
 
 Contented with the heaven, and your eyes. 
 
 My restless wings, that beat the whole world through, 
 
 Flag on the confines of the sun and you ; 
 
 And find the human pale remoter of the two. 
 
 99 H2
 
 VIII 
 
 DOMUS TUA 
 
 A PERFECT woman— Thine be laud ! 
 Her body is a Temple of God. 
 At Doom-bar dare I make avows : 
 I have loved the beauty of Thy house. 
 
 100
 
 IX 
 
 IN HER PATHS 
 
 Ax D she has trod before me in these ways ! 
 I think that she lias left here hcavenlicr days ; 
 L And I do cuess her passage, as the skies 
 Of hol\- Paradise 
 Turn deeply holier, 
 And, looking up with sudden new delight. 
 One knows a seraph-wing has passed in flight. 
 
 The air is purer for her breathing, sure 1 
 
 And all the fields do wear 
 
 The beauty fallen from her ; 
 The winds do brush me with her robe's allure. 
 'Tis she has taught the heavens to look sweet, 
 
 And they do but repeat 
 The heaven, heaven, heaven of her face ! 
 The clouds have studied going from her grace ! 
 The pools whose marges had forgot the tread 
 Of Naiad, disenchanted, fled, 
 
 A second time must mourn, 
 
 Bereavcn and forlorn. 
 
 Ah, foolish pools and meads ! You did not see 
 
 Essence of old, essential pure as she. 
 
 For this was even that Lady, and none other, 
 
 The man in me calls * Love,' the child calls ' Mother.' 
 
 lOI
 
 X 
 
 AFTER HER GOING 
 
 THE after-even ! Ah, did I walk. 
 Indeed, in her or even ? 
 For nothing of me or around 
 But absent She did leaven, 
 Felt in my body as its soul. 
 And in my soul its heaven. 
 
 ' Ah me ! my very flesh turns soul, 
 Essenced,' I sighed, ' with bliss ! ' 
 
 And the blackbird held his lutany, 
 All fragrant-through with bhss ; 
 
 And all things stilled were as a maid 
 Sweet with a single kiss. 
 
 For grief of perfect fairness, eve 
 Could nothing do but smile ; 
 
 The time was far too perfed fair, 
 Being but for a while ; 
 
 And ah, in me, too happy grief 
 BHnded herself with smile ! 
 
 The sunset at its radiant heart 
 Had somewhat unconfest : 
 
 The bird was loath of speech, its song 
 Half -refluent on its breast, 
 
 And made melodious toyings with 
 A note or two at best. 
 
 102
 
 AFTER HER GOING 
 
 And she was gone, my sole, my Fair, 
 
 Ah, sole ray Fair, was gone ! 
 Methinks, throughout the world 'twere right 
 
 I had been sad alone ; 
 And yet, such sweet in all things' heart, 
 
 And such sweet in my own ! 
 
 103
 
 XI 
 
 BENEATH A PHOTOGRAPH 
 
 PHCEBUS, who taught me art divine. 
 Here tried his hand where I did mine ; 
 And his white fingers in this face 
 Set my Fair's sigh-suggesting grace. 
 O sweetness past profaning guess, 
 Grievous with its own exquisiteness ! 
 Vesper-Hke face, its shadows bright 
 With meanings of sequestered Hght ; 
 Drooped with shamefast sanftities 
 She purely fears eyes cannot miss, 
 Yet would blush to know she is. 
 Ah, who can view with passionless glance 
 This tear-compelling countenance ? 
 He has cozened it to tell 
 Almost its own miracle. 
 Yet I, all-viewing though he be, 
 Methinks saw further here than he ; 
 And, Master gay, I swear I drew 
 Something the better of the two ! 
 
 104
 
 rue HOUND OF HSAVSN
 
 /
 
 THE MOUND OF HEAVEN 
 
 1FLED Him, down the nights and down the days ; 
 I fled I lim, down the arches of the years ; 
 I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways 
 Of my own mind ; and in the mist of tears 
 I hid from Him, and under running laughter. 
 Up vistacd hopes I sped ; 
 And shot, precipitated, 
 Adown Titanic glooms of chasmed fears, 
 
 From those strong Feet that followed, followed after. 
 But with unhurrying chase, 
 And unperturbed pace. 
 Deliberate speed, majestic instancy, 
 They beat — and a Voice beat 
 IMore instant than the Feet — 
 * All things betray thcc, w ho bctrayest Me.' 
 
 I pleaded, outlaw-wise. 
 By many a hearted casement, curtained red, 
 
 Trellised with intertwining charities ; 
 (For, thou^jh I knew Hi? love Who followed. 
 
 Yet was I sore adread 
 Lest, having Him, I must have naught beside.) 
 But, if one little casement parted wide. 
 
 The gust of His approach would clash it to : 
 Fear wist not to evade, as Love wiat to purrue. 
 Across the margcnt of the world I fled. 
 
 And troubled the gold gatev^'ays of the stais, 
 Smiting for shelter on their clanged bars ; 
 
 107
 
 THE HOUND OF HEAVEN 
 
 Fretted to dulcet jars 
 And silvern chatter the pale ports o' the moon. 
 I said to Dawn : Be sudden — to Eve : Be soon ; 
 With thy young skiey blossoms heap me over 
 From this tremendous Lover — 
 Float thy vague veil about me, lest He see ! 
 
 I tempted all His servitors, but to find 
 My own betrayal in their constancy, 
 In faith to Him their fickleness to me, 
 
 Their traitorous trueness, and their loyal deceit. 
 To all swift things for swiftness did I sue ; 
 Clung to the whisthng mane of every wind. 
 But whether they swept, smoothly fleet, 
 The long savannahs of the blue ; 
 Or whether. Thunder-driven, 
 They clanged his chariot 'thwart a heaven, 
 Flashy with flying lightnings round the spurn o' their 
 feet : — 
 Fear wist not to evade as Love wist to pursue. 
 Still with unhurrying chase, 
 And unperturbed pace. 
 Deliberate speed, majestic instancy, 
 Came on the following Feet, 
 And a Voice above their beat — 
 * Naught shelters thee, who wilt not shelter Me.' 
 
 I sought no more that after which I strayed 
 
 In face of man or maid ; 
 But still within the little children's eyes 
 
 Seems something, something that replies, 
 Ihcy at least are for me, surely for me ! 
 
 108
 
 THE HOUND OF HEAVEN 
 
 I turned me to them very wistfully ; 
 
 But just as their young eyes grew sudden fair 
 
 With dawning answers there, 
 Their angel plucked them from me by the hair. 
 * Come then, ye other children, Nature's — share 
 With me ' (said I) ' your delicate fellowship ; 
 
 Let mc greet you lip to lip, 
 
 Let me twine with you caresses, 
 Wantoning 
 
 With our Lady-Mother's vagrant tresses, 
 Banqueting 
 
 With her in her wind-wallcd palace, 
 
 Underneath her azured dais. 
 
 Quaffing, as your taintless way is, 
 From a chalice 
 Lucent-weeping out of the dayspring.' 
 
 So it was done : 
 I in their delicate fellowship was one — 
 Drew the bolt of Nature's secrecies. 
 
 / knew all the swift importings 
 
 On the wilful face of skies ; 
 
 I knew how the clouds arise 
 
 Spumed of the wild sea-snorting? ; 
 All that's born or dies 
 
 Rose and drooped with ; made them shapcra 
 Of mine own moods, or wailful or divine ; 
 
 With them joyed and was bercaven. 
 
 I was heavy with the even. 
 
 When she lit her glimmering tapers 
 
 Round the day's dead san6litics. 
 
 I laughed in the morning's eyes. 
 
 109
 
 THE HOUND OF HEAVEN 
 
 I triumphed and I saddened with all weather, 
 
 Heaven and I wept together, 
 And its sweet tears were salt with mortal mine ; 
 Against the red throb of its sunset-heart 
 I laid my own to beat, 
 And share commingling heat ; 
 But not by that, by that, was eased my human smart. 
 In vain my tears were wet on Heaven's grey cheek. 
 For ah ! we know not what each other says. 
 
 These things and I ; in sound / speak — 
 Their sound is but their stir, they speak by silences. 
 Nature, poor stepdame, cannot slake my drouth ; 
 
 Let her, if she would owe me, 
 Drop yon blue bosom-veil of sky, and show me 
 
 The breasts o' her tenderness : 
 Never did any milk of hers once bless 
 My thirsting mouth. 
 Nigh and nigh draws the chase, 
 With unperturbed pace. 
 Deliberate speed, majestic instancy ; 
 And past those noised Feet 
 A voice comes yet more fleet — 
 ' Lo ! naught contents thee, who content'st 
 not Me.' 
 
 Naked I wait Thy love's uplifted stroke ! 
 My harness piece by piece Thou hast hewn from me, 
 And smitten me to my knee ; 
 
 I am defenceless utterly. 
 
 I slept, methinks, and woke. 
 And, slowly gazing, find me stripped in sleep. 
 
 no
 
 THE HOUND OF HEAVEN 
 
 In the rash lustihead of my young powers, 
 
 I shook the pillaring hours 
 And pulled my life upon me ; grimed with smears, 
 I stand amid the dust o' the mounded years — 
 My mangled youth lies dead beneath the heap. 
 My days have crackled and gone up in smoke, 
 Have puffed and burst as sun-starts on a stream. 
 
 Yea, faileth now even dream 
 The dreamer, and the lute the lutanist ; 
 Even the linked fantasies, in whose blossomy twist 
 I swung the earth a trinket at my wrist. 
 Are yielding ; cords of all too weak account 
 For earth with heavy griefs so overplussed. 
 
 Ah ! is Thy love indeed 
 A weed, albeit an amaranthine weed, 
 Suffering no flowers except its own to mount ? 
 
 Ah ! must — 
 
 Designer infinite ! — 
 Ah ! must Thou char the wood ere Thou canst limn 
 
 with it ? 
 My freshness spent its wavering shower i' the dust ; 
 And now my heart is as a broken fount. 
 Wherein tear-drippings stagnate, spilt down ever 
 
 From the dank thoughts that shiver 
 Upon the sighful branches of my mind. 
 
 Such is ; what is to be ? 
 The pulp so bitter, how shall taste the rind ? 
 I dimly guess what Time in mists confounds ; 
 Yet ever and anon a trumpet sounds 
 From the hid battlements of Eternity ; 
 Those shaken mists a space unsettle, then 
 
 III
 
 THE HOUND OF HEAVEN 
 
 Round the half-glimpsed turrets slowly wash again. 
 
 But not ere him who summoneth 
 
 I first have seen, enwound 
 With glooming robes purpureal, cypress-crowned ; 
 His name I know, and what his trumpet saith. 
 Whether man's heart or life it be which yields 
 
 Thee harvest, must Thy harvest-fields 
 
 Be dunged with rotten death ? 
 
 Now of that long pursuit 
 Comes on at hand the bruit ; 
 
 That Voice is round me like a bursting sea : 
 ' And is thy earth so marred, 
 Shattered in shard on shard ? 
 
 Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest Me ! 
 
 Strange, piteous, futile thing ! 
 Wherefore should any set thee love apart ? 
 Seeing none but I makes much of naught ' (He said), 
 ' And human love needs human meriting : 
 
 How hast thou merited — 
 Of all man's clotted clay the dingiest clot ? 
 
 Alack, thou knowest not 
 How little worthy of any love thou art ! 
 Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee, 
 
 Save Me, save only Me ? 
 All which I took from thee I did but take, 
 
 Not for thy harms. 
 But just that thou might'st seek it in My arms. 
 
 All which thy child's mistake 
 Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home : 
 
 Rise, clasp My hand, and come ! ' 
 
 112
 
 THE HOUND OF HEAVEN 
 
 Halts by me that footfall : 
 
 Is my gloom, after all, 
 Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly ? 
 
 ' Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest, 
 
 I am He Whom thou seekest ! 
 Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me.' 
 
 1 r
 
 ODE ro THS SSTTING SUN
 
 ODE TO THE SETTING SUN 
 
 PRELUDE 
 
 T 
 
 HE wailful sweetness of the violin 
 Floats down the hushed waters of the wind, 
 The heart-strings of the throbbing harp begin 
 To long in aching music. Spirit-pined, 
 
 In wafts that poignant sweetness drifts, until 
 The wounded soul ooze sadness. The red sun, 
 
 A bubble of fire, drops slowly toward the hill, 
 While one bird prattles that the day is done. 
 
 O setting Sun, that as in reverent days 
 Sinkest in music to thy smoothed sleep. 
 
 Discrowned of homage, though yet crowned with rays, 
 Hymned not at harvest more, though reapers reap : 
 
 For thee this music wakes not. O deceived. 
 If thou hear in these thoughtless harmonies 
 
 A pious phantom of adorings reaved, 
 And echo of fair ancient flatteries ! 
 
 Yet, in tliis field where the Cross planted reigns, 
 I know not what strange passion bows my head 
 
 To thee, whose great command upon my veins 
 Proves thcc a god for mc not dead, not dead ! 
 
 117
 
 ODE TO THE SETTING SUN 
 
 For worship it is too incredulous, 
 
 For doubt — oh, too beheving-passionate ! 
 
 What wild divinity makes my heart thus 
 
 A fount of most baptismal tears ? — Thy straight 
 
 Long beam lies steady on the Cross, Ah me ! 
 
 What secret would thy radiant finger show ? 
 Of thy bright mastership is this the key ? 
 
 Is this thy secret, then ? And is it woe ? 
 
 Fling from thine ear the burning curls, and hark 
 A song thou hast not heard in Northern day ; 
 
 For Rome too daring, and for Greece too dark. 
 Sweet with wild wings that pass, that pass away ! 
 
 ODE 
 
 A LPHA and Omega, sadness and mirth, 
 / \ The springing music, and its wasting breath — - 
 -L *.The fairest things in life are Death and Birth, 
 
 And of these two the fairer thing is Death. 
 Mystical twins of Time inseparable. 
 
 The younger hath the holier array. 
 And hath the awfuller sway : 
 
 It is the falling star that trails the light. 
 
 It is the breaking wave that hath the might. 
 The passing shower that rainbows maniple. 
 
 Is it not so, O thou down-stricken Day, 
 That draw'st thy splendours round thee in thy fall ? 
 High was thine Eastern pomp inaugural ; 
 
 ii8
 
 ODE TO THE SETTING SUN 
 
 But thou dost set in statelier pageantry, 
 
 Lauded with tumults of a firmament : 
 Thy visible music-blasts make deaf the sky, 
 
 Thy cymbals clang to fire the Occident, 
 Thou dost thy d\ing so triumphally : 
 I see the crimson blaring of thy shawms ! 
 
 Why do those lucent palms 
 Strew thy feet's failing thicklier than their might, 
 Who dost but haod thy glorious eyes with night. 
 And vex the heels of all the yesterday's ? 
 
 Lo ! this loud, lackeying praise 
 Will stay behind to greet the usurping moon. 
 
 When they have cloud-barred over thee the West. 
 Oh, shake the bright dust from thy parting shoon ! 
 
 The earth not pxans thcc, nor serves thy hest ; 
 Be godded not by Heaven ! avert thy face. 
 
 And leave to blank disgrace 
 The oblivious world ! unsceptre thee of state and place ! 
 
 Ha ! but bethink thee what thou gazedst on. 
 
 Ere yet the snake Decay had venomed tooth ; 
 The name thou bar'st in those vast seasons gone — 
 Candid Hyperion, 
 Clad in the light of thine immortal youth ! 
 Ere Dionysus bled thy vines, 
 Or Artemis drave her clamours through the wood, 
 
 Thou saw'st how once against Olympus' height 
 The brawny Titans stood, 
 And shook the gods' world 'bout their ears, and how 
 Enceladus (whom Etna cumbers now) 
 
 Shouldt;rcd me Pclion with its swinging pines, 
 
 119
 
 ODE TO THE SETTING SUN 
 
 The river unrecked, that did its broken flood 
 Spurt on his back : before the mountainous shock 
 
 The ranked gods dislock, 
 Scared to their skies ; wide o'er rout-trampled night 
 Flew spurned the pebbled stars : those splendours then 
 Had tempested on earth, star upon star 
 Mounded in ruin, if a longer war 
 Had quaked Olympus and cold-fearing men. 
 Then did the ample marge 
 And circuit of thy targe 
 Sullenly redden all the vaward fight, 
 Above the blusterous clash 
 Wheeled thy swung falchion's flash, 
 And hewed their forces into splintered flight. 
 
 Yet ere Olympus thou wast, and a god ! 
 
 Though we deny thy nod. 
 We cannot spoil thee of thy divinity. 
 
 What know we elder than thee ? 
 When thou didst, bursting from the great void's husk, 
 Leap like a Hon on the throat o' the dusk ; 
 
 When the angels rose-chapleted 
 Sang each to other. 
 
 The vaulted blaze overhead 
 
 Of their vast pinions spread, 
 Hailing thee brother ; 
 How chaos rolled back from the wonder, 
 And the First Morn knelt down to thy visage of 
 thunder ! 
 
 Thou didst draw to thy side 
 
 Thy young Auroral bride. 
 
 120
 
 ODE TO THE SETTING SUN 
 
 And lift her veil of night and mystery ; 
 
 Tellus with baby hands 
 
 Shook off her swaddling-bands, 
 And from the unswathed vapours laughed to thee. 
 
 Thou twi-form deity, nurse at once and sire I 
 Thou genitor that all things nourishest ! 
 The earth was suckled at thy shining breast, 
 And in her veins is quick thy milky fire. 
 Who scarfed her with the morning ? and who set 
 Upon her brow the day-fall's carcanct ? 
 
 Who queened her front with the enrondured moon ? 
 Who dug night's jewels from their vaulty mine 
 To dower her, past an eastern wizard's dreams, 
 When, hovering on him through his haschish-swoon. 
 All the rained gems of the old Tartarian line 
 Shiver in lustrous throbbings of tinged flame ? 
 Whereof a moiety in the Paolis' seams 
 Statelilv buildcd their Venetian name. 
 Thou hast enwoofed her 
 An empress of the air. 
 And all her births are propertied by thee : 
 Her teeming centuries 
 Drew being from thine eyes : 
 Thou fatt'st the marrow of all quality. 
 
 Who lit the furnace of the mammoth's heart ? 
 Who shagged him like Pilatus' ribbed flanks ? 
 Who raised the columned ranks 
 Of that old prc-diluvian forestry, 
 Vvliich like a continent torn oppressed the sea, 
 
 121
 
 ODE TO THE SETTING SUN 
 
 When the ancient heavens did in rains depart, 
 While the high-danced whirls 
 Of the tossed scud made hiss thy drenched curls ? 
 Thou rear'dst the enormous brood ; 
 Who hast with life imbued 
 The lion maned in tawny majesty. 
 The tiger velvet-barred, 
 The stealthy-stepping pard, 
 And the lithe panther's fleiuous symmetry. 
 
 How came the entombed tree a light-bearer. 
 Though sunk in lightless lair ? 
 Friend of the forgers of earth, 
 Mate of the earthquake and thunders volcanic, 
 Clasped in the arms of the forces Titanic 
 Which rock like a cradle the girth 
 Of the ether-hung world ; 
 Swart son of the swarthy mine, 
 When flame on the breath of his nostrils feeds 
 How is his countenance half-divine. 
 Like thee in thy sanguine weeds ? 
 Thou gavest him his light, 
 Though sepultured in night 
 Beneath the dead bones of a perished world ; 
 Over his prostrate form 
 Though cold, and heat, and storm, 
 The mountainous wrack of a creation hurled. 
 
 Who made the splendid rose 
 Saturate with purple glows ; 
 Cupped to the marge with beauty ; a perfume-press 
 
 122
 
 ODE TO THE SETTING SUN 
 
 Whence the wind vintages 
 Gushes of warmed fragrance richer far 
 
 Than all the flavorous ooze of Cyprus' vats ? 
 Lo, in yon gale which waves her green cymar, 
 With dusk}- cheeks burnt red 
 She sways her heavy head, 
 Drunk with the must of her own odorousncss ; 
 
 While in a moted trouble the vexed gnats 
 Maze, and vibrate, and tease the noontide hush. 
 
 Who girt dissolved lightnings in the grape ? 
 Summered the opal with an Irised flush ? 
 Is it not thou that dost the tulip drape, 
 And huest the daffodilly, 
 Yet who hast snowed the lily, 
 And her frail sister, whom the waters name, 
 Dost vestal-vesture 'mid the blaze of June, 
 Cold as the new-sprung girlhood of the moon 
 Ere Autumn's kiss sultry her cheek with flame ? 
 Thou sway'st thy sceptred beam 
 O'er all delight and dream. 
 Beauty is beautiful but in thy glance : 
 And like a jocund maid 
 In garland-flowers arrayed, 
 Before thy ark Earth keeps her sacred dance. 
 
 And now, O shaken from thine antique throne. 
 And sunken from thy ccerulc cmpery, 
 
 Now that the red glare of thy fall is blown 
 In smoke and flame about the windy sky, 
 
 Where are the wailing voices that should meet 
 Erom hill, stream, grove, and all of mortal shape 
 
 123
 
 ODE TO THE SETTING SUN 
 
 Who tread thy gifts, in vineyards as stray feet 
 Pulp the globed weight of juiced Iberia's grape ? 
 Where is the threne o' the sea ? 
 And why not dirges thee 
 The wind, that sings to himself as he makes stride 
 Lonely and terrible on the Andean height ? 
 
 Where is the Naiad 'mid her sworded sedge ? 
 The Nymph wan-glimmering by her wan fount's 
 verge ? 
 The Dryad at timid gaze by the wood-side ? 
 The Oread jutting light 
 On one up-strained sole from the rock-ledge ? 
 The Nereid tip-toe on the scud o' the surge. 
 With whistling tresses dank athwart her face. 
 And all her figure poised in lithe Circean grace ? 
 Why withers their lament ? 
 Their tresses tear-besprent. 
 Have they sighed hence with trailing garment-hem ? 
 
 sweet, O sad, O fair, 
 
 1 catch your flying hair. 
 
 Draw your eyes down to me, and dream on them ! 
 
 A space, and they fleet from me. Must ye fade — 
 O old, essential candours, ye who made 
 The earth a living and a radiant thing — 
 
 And leave her corpse in our strained, cheated arms ? 
 Lo ever thus, when Song with chorded charms 
 Draws from dull death his lost Eurydice, 
 Lo ever thus, even at consummating, 
 Even in the swooning minute that claims her his, 
 Even as he trembles to the impassioned kiss " 
 
 124
 
 ODE TO THE SETTING SUN 
 
 Of reincarnate Beauty, his control 
 Clasps the cold body, and forgoes the soul ! 
 W'hatso looks lovclily 
 Is but the rainbow on hfe's weeping rain. 
 \\ hy have we longings of immortal pain, 
 And all we long for mortal ? Woe is me, 
 And all our chants but chaplet some decay, 
 As mine this vanishing — nay, vanished Day. 
 The low sky-hne dusks to a leaden hue. 
 
 No rift disturbs the heavy shade and ciiill, 
 Save one, where the charred firmament lets through 
 The scorching dazzle of Heaven ; 'gainst which 
 the hill, 
 Out-flattened sombrely, 
 Stands black as Hfe against eternity. 
 Against eternity ? 
 A rifting hght in me 
 Burns through the leaden broodings of the mind : 
 O blessed Sun, thy state 
 Uprisen or derogate 
 Dafts me no more with doubt ; I seek and find. 
 
 If with exultant tread 
 
 Thou foot the Eastern sea. 
 
 Or like a golden bee 
 Sting the West to angry red, 
 Thou dost image, thou dost follow 
 
 That King-Maker of Creation, 
 Who, ere I Icllas hailed Apollo, 
 
 Gave thee, angel-god, thy station ; 
 rhou art of Him a type memorial. 
 
 125
 
 ODE TO THE SETTING SUN 
 
 Like Him thou hang'st in dreadful pomp of blood 
 Upon thy Western rood ; 
 
 And His stained brow did vail like thine to night, 
 Yet lift once more Its light, 
 And, risen, again departed from our ball. 
 But when It set on earth arose in Heaven. 
 Thus hath He unto death His beauty given : 
 And so of all which form inheriteth 
 
 The fall doth pass the rise in worth ; 
 For birth hath in itself the germ of death, 
 
 But death hath in itself the germ of birth. 
 It is the falling acorn buds the tree. 
 The faUing rain that bears the greenery. 
 
 The fern-plants moulder when the ferns arise. 
 
 For there is nothing lives but something dies. 
 And there is nothing dies but something lives. 
 
 Till skies be fugitives. 
 Till Time, the hidden root of change, updrics. 
 Are Birth and Death inseparable on earth ; 
 For they are twain yet one, and Death is Birth. 
 
 AFTER-STRAIN 
 
 NOW with wan ray that other sun of Song 
 Sets in the Weakening waters of my soul : 
 One step, and lo ! the Cross stands gaunt and long 
 'Twixt me and yet bright skies, a presaged dole. 
 
 Even so, O Cross ! thine is the victory. 
 
 Thy roots are fast within our fairest fields ; 
 
 126
 
 ODE TO THE SETTING SUN 
 
 Brightness may emanate in Heaven from thee, 
 Here thy dread symbol only shadow yields. 
 
 Of reaped joys thou art the heavy sheaf 
 
 Which must be lifted, though the reaper groan ; 
 
 Yea, we may cry till Heaven's great ear be deaf, 
 But we must bear thee, and must bear alone. 
 
 Vain were a Simon ; of the Antipodes 
 
 Our night not borrows the superfluous day. 
 
 Yet woe to him that from his burden flees, 
 Crushed in the fall of what he cast away. 
 
 Therefore, O tender Lady, Queen Mary, 
 Thou gentleness that dost enmoss and drape 
 
 The Cross's rigorous austerity. 
 
 Wipe thou the blood from wounds that needs must 
 gape. 
 
 ' Lo, though suns rise and set, but crosses stay, 
 I leave thee ever,' saith she, ' light of cheer.' 
 
 'Tis so : yon sky still thinks upon the Day, 
 And showers aerial blossoms on his bier. 
 
 Yon cloud with wrinkled fire is edged sharp ; 
 
 And once more welling through the air, ah me ! 
 How the sweet viol plains him to the harp. 
 
 Whose panged sobbings throng tumultuously. 
 
 Oh, this Medusa-pleasure with her stings ! 
 This essence of all suffering, which is joy ! 
 
 127
 
 ODE TO THE SETTING SUN 
 
 I am not thankless for the spell it brings, 
 Though tears must be told down for the charmed toy. 
 
 No ; while soul, sky, and music bleed together, 
 Let me give thanks even for those griefs in me, 
 
 The restless windward stirrings of whose feather 
 Prove them the brood of immortality. 
 
 My soul is quitted of death-neighbouring swoon, 
 Who shall not slake her immitigable scars 
 
 Until she hear ' My sister ! ' from the moon, 
 And take the kindred kisses of the stars. 
 
 12M
 
 TO THS T>£AD CAI^DI^N^AL OF 
 ^'6STMI^ST6% 
 
 {Henry Ed'u-ard Manning : Di^d January 1892)
 
 TO THE DEAD CARDINAL 
 OF WESTMINSTER 
 
 I 
 
 WILL not pcrturbate 
 Thy Paradisal state 
 With praise 
 Of thy dead days ; 
 
 To the new-heavened say, 
 * Spirit, thou wert fine clay ' : 
 This do. 
 Thy praise who knew. 
 
 Therefore my spirit clings 
 Heaven's porter by the wings, 
 And holds 
 Its gated golds 
 
 Apart, with thee to press 
 A private business ; — 
 Whence, 
 Deign me audience. 
 
 Anchorite, who didst dwell 
 With all the world for celJ, 
 My soul 
 Round me doth roll 
 
 A sequestration bare. 
 Too far alike we were, 
 Too far 
 Dissimilar. 
 
 131 K2
 
 TO THE DEAD CARDINAL OF WESTMINSTER 
 
 For its burning fruitage I 
 Do climb the tree o' the sky ; 
 Do prize 
 Some human eyes. 
 
 Tou smelt the Heaven-blossoms, 
 And all the sweet embosoms 
 The dear 
 Uranian year. 
 
 Those Eyes my weak gaze shuns, 
 Which to the suns are Suns, 
 Did 
 Not affray your lid. 
 
 The carpet was let down 
 (With golden moultings strown) 
 For you 
 Of the angels' blue. 
 
 But I, ex-Paradised, 
 The shoulder of your Christ 
 Find high 
 To lean thereby. 
 
 So flaps my helpless sail, 
 Bellying with neither gale, 
 Of Heaven 
 Nor Orcus even. 
 
 132
 
 TO THE DEAD CARDINAL OF WESTMINSTER 
 
 Life is a coquetry 
 Of Death, which wearies me. 
 Too sure 
 Of the amour ; 
 
 A tiring-room where I 
 Death's divers garments try, 
 TiUfit 
 Some fashion sit. 
 
 It seemeth me too much 
 I do rehearse for such 
 A mean 
 And single scene. 
 
 The sandy glass hence bear- 
 Antique remembrancer : 
 My veins 
 Do spare its pains. 
 
 With secret sympathy 
 My thoughts repeat in me 
 Infirm 
 The turn o' the worm 
 
 Beneath my appointed sod ; 
 The grave is in my blood ; 
 I shake 
 To winds that take
 
 TO THE DEAD CARDINAL OF WESTMINSTER 
 
 Its grasses by the top ; 
 The rains thereon that drop 
 Perturb 
 With drip acerb 
 
 My subtly answering soul ; 
 The feet across its knoll 
 Do jar 
 Me from afar. 
 
 As sap foretastes the spring ; 
 As Earth ere blossoming 
 Thrills 
 With far daflfodils, 
 
 And feels her breast turn sweet 
 With the unconceived wheat ; 
 So doth 
 My flesh foreloathe 
 
 The abhorred spring of Dia, 
 With seething presciences 
 Affirm 
 The preparate worm. 
 
 I have no thought that I, 
 When at the last I die, 
 Shall reach 
 To gain your speech. 
 
 134
 
 TO THE DEAD CARDINAL OF WESTMINSTER 
 
 But you, should that be so, 
 May very well, I know, 
 May well 
 To me in hell 
 
 With recognizing eyes 
 Look from your Paradise — 
 ' God bless 
 Thy hopelessness ! * 
 
 Call, holy soul, O call 
 The hosts angelical, 
 And say, — 
 * See, far away 
 
 ' Lies one I saw on earth ; 
 One stricken from his birth 
 With curse 
 Of destinate verse. 
 
 * Whit place doth He ye serve 
 For such sad spirit reserve, — 
 
 Given, 
 In dark lieu of Heaven, 
 
 * The impitiable Daemon, 
 Beauty, to adore and dream on. 
 
 To be 
 Perpetually 
 
 135
 
 TO THE DEAD CARDINAL OF WESTMINSTER 
 
 * Hers, but she never his ? 
 He reapeth miseries ; 
 
 Foreknows 
 His wages woes ; 
 
 * He lives detached days ; 
 He serveth not for praise ; 
 
 For gold 
 He is not sold ; 
 
 * Deaf is he to world's tongue ; 
 He scorneth for his song 
 
 The loud 
 Shouts of the crowd ; 
 
 * He asketh not world's eyes ; 
 Not to world's ears he cries ; 
 
 Saith, — " These 
 Shut, if ye please ! " 
 
 * He measureth world's pleasure, 
 World's ease, as Saints might measure ; 
 
 For hire 
 Just love entire 
 
 * He asks, not grudging pain ; 
 And knows his asking vain, 
 
 And cries — 
 " Love ! Love ! " and dies, 
 
 136
 
 TO THE DEAD CARDINAL OF WESTMINSTER 
 
 * In guerdon of long duty, 
 Unowned by Love or Beauty ; 
 
 And goes — 
 Tel], tell, who knows ! 
 
 * Aliens from Heaven's worth. 
 Fine beasts who nose i' the earth. 
 
 Do there 
 Reward prepare. 
 
 ' But are kis great desires 
 Food but tor nether fires ? 
 Ah me, 
 A mystery ! 
 
 * Can it be his alone, 
 
 To find when all is known, 
 That what 
 He solely sought 
 
 * Is lost, and thereto lost 
 All that its seeking cost ? 
 
 That he 
 Must finally, 
 
 * Through sacrificial tears, 
 And ancliorctic years, 
 
 Tryst 
 With the sensualist ? ' 
 
 137
 
 TO THE DEAD CARDINAL OF WESTMINSTER 
 
 So ask ; and if they tell 
 The secret terrible, 
 
 Good friend, 
 I pray thee send 
 
 Some high gold embassage 
 To teach my unripe age. 
 Tell! 
 Lest my feet walk hell. 
 
 138
 
 ^•/ CORYMB us FOR <^IUTUMN
 
 A CORYMBUS FOR AUTUMN 
 
 HEARKEN my chant, 'tis 
 As a Bacchante's, 
 A grape-spurt, a vine-splash, a tossed 
 tress, flown vaunt 'tis ! 
 Suffer my singing, 
 Gipsy of Seasons, ere thou go winging ; 
 Ere Winter throws 
 His slaidng snows 
 In thy feasting-flagon's impurpurate glows ! 
 The sopped sun — toper as ever drank hard — 
 Stares foolish, hazed, 
 Rubicund, dazed, 
 Totty with thine October tankard. 
 Tanned maiden ! with cheeks like apples russet, 
 
 And breast a brown agaric faint-flushing at tip, 
 And a mouth too red for the moon to buss it 
 But her cheek unvow its vestalship ; 
 Thy mists enchp 
 Her steel-clear circuit illuminous, 
 Until it crust 
 Rubiginous 
 With the glorious gules of a glowing rust. 
 
 Far other saw we, other indeed. 
 
 The crescent moon, in the May-day? dead, 
 Fly up with its slender white wings spread 
 
 Out of its nest in the sea's waved mead. 
 
 141
 
 A CORYMBUS FOR AUTUMN 
 
 How are the veins of thee, Autumn, laden ? 
 
 Umbered juices, 
 
 And pulped oozes 
 Pappy out of the cherry-bruises, 
 Froth the veins of thee, wild, wild maiden ! 
 
 With hair that musters 
 
 In globed clusters, 
 In tumbhng clusters, like swarthy grapes, 
 Round thy brow and thine ears o'ershaden ; 
 With the burning darkness of eyes like pansies, 
 
 Like velvet pansies 
 
 Wherethrough escapes 
 The splendid might of thy conflagrate fancies ; 
 With robe gold-tawny not hiding the shapes 
 Of the feet whereunto it faUeth down, 
 
 Thy naked feet unsandalled ; 
 With robe gold-tawny ihkt does not veil 
 
 Feet where the red 
 
 Is meshed in the brown, 
 Like a rubied sun in a Venice-sail. 
 
 The wassailous heart of the Year is thine ! 
 His Bacchic fingers disentwine 
 
 His coronal 
 
 At thy festival ; 
 His revelling fingers disentwine 
 
 Leaf, flower, and all. 
 
 And let them faU 
 Blossom and all in thy wavering wine. 
 The Summer looks out from her brazen tower, 
 Through the flashing bars of July, 
 
 142 

 
 A CORYMBUS FOR AUTUMN 
 
 Waiting thy ripened golden shower ; 
 
 Whereof there cometh, with sandals fleet, 
 The North-west flying viewlessly, 
 
 With a sword to sheer, and untameable feet. 
 And the gorgon-head of the Winter shown 
 To stiffen the gazing earth as stone. 
 
 In crystal Heaven's magic sphere 
 
 Poised in the palm of thy fervid hand, 
 Thou seest the enchanted shows appear 
 That stain Favonian firmament ; 
 Richer than ever the Occident 
 
 Gave up to bygone Summer's wand. 
 Day's dying dragon lies drooping his crest, 
 Panting red pants into the West. 
 Or the butterfly sunset claps its wings 
 
 With flitter alit on the swinging blossom, 
 The gusty blossom, that tosses and swings. 
 
 Of the sea with its blown and ruffled bosom ; 
 Its ruffled bosom wherethrough the wind sings 
 Till the crisped petals are loosened and strewn 
 Overblown, on the sand ; 
 Shed, curling as dead 
 Rose-leaves curl, on the flecked strand. 
 
 Or higher, holier, saintlier when, as novir, 
 All Nature sacerdotal seems, and thou. 
 
 The calm hour strikes on yon golden gong, 
 In tones of floating and mellow light 
 
 A spreading summons to even-song : 
 
 H3
 
 ACORYMBUS FOR AUTUMN 
 
 See how there 
 The cowled Night 
 Kneels on the Eastern sanftuary-stair. 
 What is this feel of incense everywhere ? 
 
 Chngs it round folds of the blanch-amiced clouds, 
 Upwaf ted by the solemn thurifer, 
 
 The mighty Spirit unknown, 
 That swingeth the slow earth before the embannered 
 Throne ? 
 Or is't the Season under all these shrouds 
 Of light, and sense, and silence, makes her known 
 A presence everywhere. 
 An inarticulate prayer, 
 A hand on the soothed tresses of the air ? 
 
 But there is one hour scant 
 Of this Titanian, primal liturgy ; 
 
 As there is but one hour for me and thee, 
 Autumn, for thee and thine hierophant, 
 Of this grave-ending chant. 
 Round the earth still and stark 
 Heaven's death-Hghts kindle, yellow spark by spark, 
 Beneath the dreadful catafalque of the dark. 
 
 And I had ended there : 
 But a great wind blew all the stars to flare. 
 And cried, ' I sweep the path before the moon ! 
 Tarry ye now the coming of the moon. 
 
 For she is coming soon ' ; 
 Then died before the coming of the moon. 
 And she came forth upon the trepidant air. 
 
 In vesture unimagined-fair. 
 
 144
 
 \ 
 
 \ 
 
 A CORYMBUS FOR AUTUMN 
 
 Woven as woof of flag-lilies ; 
 
 And curdled as of flag-lilies 
 
 The vapour at the feet of her, 
 And a haze about her tinged in fainter wise ; 
 As if she had trodden the stars in press, 
 Till the gold wine spurted over her dress, 
 Till the gold wine gushed out round her feet ; 
 
 Spouted over her stained wear, 
 And bubbled in golden froth at her feet. 
 
 And hung like a whirlpool's mist round her. 
 
 Still, mighty Season, do I see't, 
 Thy sway is still majcstical ! 
 Thou hold'st of God, by title sure, 
 Thine indefeasible investiture. 
 
 And that right round thy locks are native to ; 
 The heavens upon thy brow imperial, 
 
 This huge terrene thy ball. 
 And o'er thy shoulders thrown wide air's depending 
 paU. 
 What if thine earth be blear and bleak of hue ? 
 
 Still, still the skies are sweet ! 
 Still, Season, still thou hast thy triumphs there ! 
 How have I, unaware. 
 Forgetful of my strain inaugural. 
 
 Cleft the great rondure of thy reign complete, 
 Yielding thee half, who hast indeed the all ? 
 I will not think thy sovereignty begun 
 
 But with the shepherd Sun 
 That washes in the sea the stars' gold fleeces ; 
 Or that with Day it ceases, 
 
 H5
 
 A CORYMBUS FOR AUTUMISJ 
 
 Who sets his burning lips to the salt brine, 
 
 And purples it to wine ; 
 While I behold how ermined Artemis 
 
 Ordained weed must wear. 
 
 And toil thy business ; 
 
 Who witness am of her, 
 Her too in autumn turned a vintager ; 
 And, laden with its lamped clusters bright. 
 The fiery-fruited vineyard of this night. 
 
 146
 
 SCCLSSIASriCAL BALLADS
 
 [Of this series only two Ballads were completed : 
 ' The Veteran of Heaven ' — in some sense a divine 
 parody of Macaulay's ' On the Battle of Naseby ' ; and 
 a prophetic apostrophe of the Church under the title 
 of ' The Lily of the King.']
 
 THE VETERAN OF HEAVEN 
 
 O CAPTAIN of the wars, whence won Ye so great 
 scars ? 
 In what fight did Ye smite, and what manner 
 was the foe ? 
 Was it on a day of rout they compassed Thee about, 
 Or gat Ye these adornings when Ye wrought their 
 overthrow ? 
 
 * HTwas on a day of rout they girded Me about, 
 They wounded all My brow, and they smote Me 
 through the side : 
 My hand held no sword when I met their armed horde, 
 And the conqueror fell down, and the Conquered 
 bruised his pride.' 
 
 What is this, unheard before, that the Unarmed makes 
 war. 
 And the Slain hath the gain, and the Victor hath the 
 rout ? 
 What wars, then, are these, and what the enemies. 
 Strange Chief, witli the scars of Thy conquest 
 trenched about ? 
 
 149
 
 ECCLESIASTICAL BALLADS 
 
 *The Prince I drave forth held the Mount of the 
 North, 
 Girt with the guards of flame that roll round the 
 pole. 
 I drave him with My wars from all his fortress-stars, 
 And the sea of death divided that My march might 
 strike its goal. 
 
 * In the keep of Northern Guard, many a great dae- 
 monian sword 
 Burns as it turns round the Mount occult, apart : 
 There is given him power and place still for some cer- 
 tain days. 
 And his name would turn the Sun's blood back upon 
 its heart.' 
 
 What is Thy Name ? Oh, show ! — * My Name ye may not 
 know ; 
 'Tis a going forth with banners, and a baring of much 
 swords : 
 But My titles that are high, are they not upon My 
 thigh ? 
 " King of Kings ! " are the words, " Lord of Lords ! " ; 
 It is written " King of Kings, Lord of Lords." ' 
 
 150
 
 n 
 
 LILIUM REGIS 
 
 OLILY of the King ! low lies thy silver wing, 
 And long has been the hour of thine unqueening ; 
 And thy scent of Paradise on the night-wind 
 spills its sighs, 
 Nor any take the secrets of its meaning. 
 O Lily of the King ! I speak a heavy thing, 
 
 patience, most sorrowful of daughters ! 
 
 Lo, the hour is at hand for the troubling of the land, 
 And red shaU be the breaking of the waters. 
 
 Sit fast upon thy stalk, when the blast shall with thee talk, 
 
 With the mercies of the King for thine awning ; 
 And the just understand that thine hour is at hand, 
 
 Thine hour at hand with power in the dawning. 
 When the nations lie in blood, and their kings a broken 
 brood, 
 
 Look up, O most sorrowful of daughters ! 
 Lift up thy head and hark what sounds are in the dark, 
 
 For His feet are coming to thee on the waters ! 
 
 O Lily of the King ! I shall not see, that sing, 
 
 1 shall not see the hour of thy queening ! 
 
 But my Song shall see, and wake like a flower that dawn- 
 winds shake, 
 
 And sigh with joy the odours of its meaning. 
 O Lily of the King, remember then the thing 
 
 That this dead mouth sang ; and thy daughters. 
 As they dance before His way, sing there on the Day 
 
 What I sang when the Night was on the waters ! 
 
 i5»
 
 TRANSLATIONS
 
 A SUNSET 
 
 FROM Hugo's * feuilles d'automne * 
 
 {LOVE the evenings, passionless and fair, I love the 
 evens, 
 Whether old manor-fronts their ray with golden 
 fulgence leavens, 
 In numerous leafage bosomed close ; 
 Whether the mist in reefs of fire extend its reaches sheer, 
 Or a hundred sunbeams splinter in an azure atmosphere 
 On cloudy archipelagos. 
 
 Oh gaze ye on the firmament ! a hundred clouds in 
 
 motion. 
 Up-piled in the immense sublime beneath the winds' 
 commotion. 
 
 Their unimagined shapes accord : 
 Under their waves at intervals flames a pale levin 
 
 through, 
 As if some giant of the air amid the vapours drew 
 A sudden elemental sword. 
 
 The sun at bay with splendid thrusts still keeps the 
 
 sullen fold ; 
 And momently at distance sets, as a cupola of gold, 
 
 The thatched roof of a cot a-glance ; 
 Or on the blurred horizons joins his battle with the haze ; 
 Or pools the glooming fields about with inter-isolate 
 blaze, 
 
 Great moveless meres of radiance. 
 
 155
 
 TRANSLATIONS 
 
 Then mark you how there hangs athwart the firma- 
 ment's swept track, 
 Yonder, a mighty crocodile with vast irradiant back, 
 
 A triple row of pointed teeth f 
 Under its burnished belly slips a ray of eventide, 
 The flickerings of a hundred glowing clouds its tene- 
 brous side 
 With scales of golden mail ensheathe. 
 
 Then mounts a palace, then the air vibrates — the vision 
 
 flees. 
 Confounded to its base, the fearful cloudy edifice 
 
 Ruins immense in mounded wrack : 
 Afar the fragments strew the sky, and each enver- 
 
 meiled cooe 
 Hangeth, peak downward, overhead, hke mountains 
 overthrown 
 When the earthquake heaves its hugy back. 
 
 These vapours, with their leaden, golden, iron, bronzed 
 
 glows. 
 Where the hurricane, the waterspout, thunder, and hell 
 
 repose. 
 
 Muttering hoarse dreams of destined harms, — 
 'Tis God who hangs their multitude amid the skiey 
 
 deep, 
 As a warrior that suspendeth from the roof-tree of his 
 
 keep 
 
 His dreadful and resounding arms ! 
 
 156
 
 A SUNSET 
 
 All vanishes ! The sun, from topmost heaven precipitated, 
 Like to a globe of iron which is tossed back fiery red 
 
 Into the furnace stirred to fume, 
 Shocking the cloudy surges, plashed from its impetuous 
 
 ire, 
 Even to the zenith spattereth in a flecking scud of fire 
 The vaporous and inflamed spume. 
 
 O contemplate the heavens ! Whenas the vein-drawn 
 
 day dies pale, 
 In every season, every place, gaze through their every 
 veil, 
 
 With love that has not speech for need ! 
 Beneath their solemn beauty is a mystery infinite : 
 If winter hue them like a pall, or if the summer night 
 Fantasy them with starry brede. 
 
 IS7
 
 HEARD ON THE MOUNTAIN 
 
 FROM Hugo's ' feuilles d'automne ' 
 
 HAVE you sometimes, calm, silent, let your tread 
 aspirant rise 
 Up to the mountain's summit, in the presence of 
 
 the skies ? 
 Was't on the borders of the South ? or on the Bretagne 
 
 coast ? 
 And at the basis of the mount had you the Ocean 
 
 tossed ? 
 And there, leaned o'er the wave and o'er the im- 
 
 measurableness. 
 Calm, silent, have you hearkened what it says ? Lo, what 
 
 it says ! 
 One day at least, whereon my thought, enlicensed to 
 
 muse. 
 Had drooped its wing above the beached margent of 
 
 the ooze. 
 And, plunging from the mountain height into the im- 
 mensity. 
 Beheld upon one side the land, on the other side the sea. 
 I hearkened, comprehended, — never, as from those 
 
 abysses. 
 No, never issued from a mouth, nor moved an ear such 
 
 voice as this is ! 
 
 A sound it was, at outset, immeasurable, confused. 
 Vaguer than is the wind among the tufted trees effused. 
 Full of magnificent accords, suave murmurs, sweet as is 
 The evensong, and mighty as the shock of panoplies 
 
 158
 
 HEARD ON THE MOUNTAIN 
 
 When the hoarse meUe in its arms the closing squadrons 
 
 grips, 
 And pants, in furious breathings, from the clarions' 
 
 brazen lips. 
 Unutterable the harmony, unsearchable its deep. 
 Whose fluid undulations round the world a girdle keep, 
 And through the vasty heavens, which by its surges are 
 
 washed young. 
 Its infinite volutions roll, enlarging as they throng, 
 Even to the profound arcane, whose ultimate chasms 
 
 sombre 
 Its shattered flood englut with time, with space and 
 
 form and number. 
 Like to another atmosphere, with thin o'erflowing 
 
 robe, 
 The hymn eternal covers all the inundated globe : 
 And the world, swathed about with this investuring 
 
 symphony. 
 Even as it trepidates in the air, so trepidates in the har- 
 mony. 
 
 And pensive, I attended the ethereal lutany, . 
 
 Lost within this containing voice as if within the sea. 
 
 Soon I distinguished, yet as tone which veils confuse 
 
 and smother, 
 Amid this voice two voices, one commingled with the 
 
 other. 
 Which did from off the land and seas even to the 
 
 heavens a«pirc ; 
 Chanting the universal chant in simultaneous quire. 
 
 159
 
 TRANSLATIONS 
 
 And I distinguished them amid that deep and Tumor- 
 ous sound, 
 
 As who beholds two currents thwart amid the fluctuous 
 profound. 
 
 The one was of the waters ; a be-radiant hymnal speech ! 
 That was the voice o' the surges, as they parleyed each 
 
 with each. 
 The other, which arose from our abode terranean, 
 Was sorrowful ; and that, alack ! the murmur was of man ; 
 And io this mighty quire, whose chantings day and 
 
 night resound, 
 Every wave had its utterance, and every man his sound. 
 
 Now, the magnificent Ocean, as I said, unbannering 
 A voice of joy, a voice of peace, did never stint to sing, 
 Most like in Sion's temples to a psaltery psaltering. 
 And to creation's beauty reared the great lauds of his 
 
 song. 
 Upon the gale, upon the squall, his clamour borne along 
 Unpausingly arose to God in mere triumphal swell ; 
 And every one among his waves, that God alone can 
 
 quell, 
 When the other of its song made end, into the singing 
 
 pressed. 
 Like that majestic lion whereof Daniel was the guest. 
 At intervals the Ocean his tremendous murmur awed ; 
 And, toward where the sunset fires fell shaggily and 
 
 broad. 
 Under his golden mane, methought that I saw pass 
 
 the hand of God. 
 
 1 60
 
 I 
 
 HEARD ON THE MOUNTAIN 
 
 Meanwhile, and side by side with that august fnnfaronnade 
 1"he other voice, Hke the sudden scream of a destrier 
 
 affraved. 
 Like an infernal door that grates ajar its rusty throat, 
 Like to a bow of iron that gnarls upon an iron rote, 
 Grinded ; and tears, and shriekings, the anathema, the 
 
 lewd taunt, 
 Refusal of viaticum, refusal of the font, 
 And clamour, and maledidlion, and dread blasphemy, 
 
 among 
 That hurtling crowd of rumour from the diverse human 
 
 tongue. 
 Went by as who beholdeth, when the valleys thick 
 
 t'ward night. 
 The long drifts of the birds of dusk pass, blackening 
 
 flight on flight. 
 What was this sound whose thousand echoes vibrated 
 
 unsleeping ? 
 Alas ! the sound was earth's and man's, for earth and 
 
 man were weeping. 
 
 Brothers ! of these two voices strange, most unimagin- 
 ably, 
 Unceasingly regenerated, dying unceasingly. 
 Hearkened of the Eternal throughout His Eternity, 
 The one voice uttercth Nature, and the other voice 
 Humanity. 
 
 Then 1 alit in reverie ; for my ministering sprite. 
 Alack ! had never yet deployed a pinion of an ampler 
 (lii-ht, 
 
 i6i 
 
 M
 
 TRANSLATIONS 
 
 Nor ever had my shadow endured so large a day to 
 
 burn : 
 And long I rested dreaming, contemplating turn by 
 
 turn 
 Now that abyss obscure which lurked beneath the 
 
 water's roll, 
 And now that other untemptable abyss which opened 
 
 in my soul. 
 And I made question of me, to what issues are we here, 
 Whither should tend the thwarting threads of all this 
 
 ravelled gear ; 
 What doth the soul ; to be or live if better worth it is ; 
 And why the Lord, Who, only, reads within that book 
 
 of His, 
 In fatal hymeneals hath eternally entwined 
 The vintage-chant of nature with the dirging cry of 
 
 humankind ? 
 
 The metre of the second of these two translations is an experiment. 
 The splendid fourteen syllable metre of Chapman I have treated after the 
 manner of Drydenian rhyming heroics, with the occasional triplet, and 
 even the occasional Alexandrine, a treatment which can well extend, I 
 believe, the majestic resource* of the metre. 
 
 162 
 
 I
 
 AN ECHO OF VICTOR HUGO 
 
 CE'S a veil the real has : 
 All the shadows of our scene 
 Are but shows of things that pass 
 On the other side the screen. 
 
 Time his glass sits nodding by ; 
 
 'Twiit its turn and turn a spawn 
 Of universes buzz and die 
 
 Like the ephemeris of the dawn. 
 
 Turn again the wasted glass ! 
 
 Kingly crown and warrior's crest 
 Are not worth the blade of grass 
 
 God fashions for the swallow's nest. 
 
 Kings must lay gold circlets down 
 
 In God's sepulchral ante-rooms, 
 The wear of Heaven 's the thorny crown : 
 
 He paves His temples with their tombs. 
 
 O our towered altitudes ! 
 
 O the lustres of our thrones ! 
 What ! old Time shall have his moods 
 
 Like Caesars and Napoleons ; 
 
 Have his towers and conquerors forth, 
 
 Till he, weary of the toys, 
 Put back Ramcbes in the earth 
 
 And break his Nincvehs and Troys. 
 
 The fint two itaruat and the lait arc my own : the thoughts of the 
 otLcri arc Victor 1 lugo'i. The mef.rc of the original it departed from. 
 
 163 MZ
 
 MISCSLLANSOUS POEMS
 
 T 
 
 DREAM-TRYST 
 
 HE breaths of kissing night and day 
 Were mingled in the eastern Heaven : 
 Throbbing with unheard melody 
 Shook Lyra all its star-chord seven : 
 
 When dnsk shrunk cold, and light trod shy, 
 
 And dawn's grey eyes were troubled grey ; 
 And souls went palely up the sky, 
 And mine to Lucide. 
 
 There was no change in her sweet eyes 
 
 Since last I saw those sweet eyes shine ; 
 There was no change in her deep heart 
 
 Since last that deep heart knocked at mine. 
 Her eyes were clear, her eyes were Hope's, 
 
 Wherein did ever come and go 
 The sparkle of the fountain-drops 
 From her sweet soul below. 
 
 The chambers in the house of dreams 
 
 Are fed with so divine an air. 
 That Time's hoar wings grow young therein, 
 And they who walk there are most fair. 
 I joyed for me, I joyed for her, 
 
 Who with the Past meet girt about : 
 Where our last kiss still warms the air, 
 Nor can her eyes go out. 
 
 167
 
 ARAB LOVE-SONG 
 
 THE hunched camels of the night* 
 Trouble the bright 
 And silver waters of the moon. 
 The Maiden of the Morn will soon 
 Through Heaven stray and sing, 
 Star gathering. 
 
 Now while the dark about our loves is strewn, 
 Light of my dark, blood of my heart, O come ! 
 And night will catch her breath up, and be dumb. 
 
 Leave thy father, leave thy mother 
 
 And thy brother ; 
 
 Leave the black tents of thy tribe apart ! 
 
 Am I not thy father and thy brother. 
 
 And thy mother ? 
 
 And thou — what needest with thy tribe's black tents 
 
 Who hast the red pavilion of my heart ? 
 
 • Cloud-shapes obseived by travellers in the Ease. 
 
 1 68
 
 BUONA NOTTE 
 
 'Jam Williams, in her last letter to Skelley, wrote : 
 ' ff'kydoyou talk of never enjoy in gmoments like the fast? 
 Are you going to join your friend Plato, or do you exfect 1 
 shall do so soon F Bvona Notte.^ This letter was dated 
 July 6th,andSheUey was drowned on theSth. These verses 
 are supposed to he addressed to Jane by the poet^s spirit 
 while his body is tossing on the waters ofSpezzia. 
 
 ARIEL to Miranda : — Hear 
 This good-night the sea-winds bear ; 
 I^And let thine unacquainted ear 
 Take grief for their interpreter. 
 
 Good-night ! I have risen so high 
 
 Into slumber's rarity, 
 
 Not a dream can beat its feather 
 
 Through the unsustaining ether. 
 
 Let the sea-winds make avouch 
 
 How thunder summoned me to couch, 
 
 Tempest curtained me about 
 
 And turned the sun with his own hand out : 
 
 And though I toss upon my bed 
 
 My dream is not disquieted ; 
 
 Nay, deep I sleep upon the deep, 
 
 And my eyes are wet, but I do not weep ; 
 
 And I fell to sleep so suddenly 
 
 That my lips are moist yet — could'st thou see — 
 
 With the good-night draught I have drunk to thee. 
 
 Thou canst not wipe them ; for it was Death 
 
 Damped my lips that has dried my breath. 
 
 169
 
 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 
 
 A little while — it is not long — 
 The salt shall dry on them like the song. 
 Now know'st thou that voice desolate, — 
 Mourning ruined joy's estate, — 
 Reached thee through a closing gate. 
 * Go'st thou to Plato ? ' Ah, girl, no ! 
 It is to Pluto that I go. 
 
 170 
 
 1
 
 THE PASSION OF MARY 
 
 VERSES IN PASSION-TIDE 
 
 OLADY Mary, thy bright crown 
 Is no mere crown of majesty ; 
 For with the reflex of His own 
 Resplendent thorns Christ circled thee. 
 
 The red rose of this Passion-tide 
 Doth take a deeper hue from thee, 
 
 In the five wounds of Jesus dyed, 
 
 And in thy bleeding thoughts, Mary ! 
 
 The soldier struck a triple stroke, 
 That smote thy Jesus on the tree : 
 
 He broke the Heart of Hearts, and broke 
 The Saint's and Mother's hearts in thee. 
 
 Thy Son went up the angels' ways, 
 
 His passion ended ; but, ah me ! 
 Ikou found'st the road of further days 
 
 A longer way of Calvary : 
 
 On the hard cross of hope deferred 
 
 Thou hung'st in loving agony. 
 Until the mortal-dreaded word 
 
 Which chills our mirth, spake mirth to thee. 
 
 The angel Death from this cold tomb 
 
 Of life did roll the stone away ; 
 And He thou barest in thy womb 
 
 Caught thee at last into the day. 
 Before the living throne of Whom 
 
 The Lights oi Heavcu burning pray. 
 
 «7«
 
 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 
 
 L'ENVOY 
 
 O thou who dwellest in the day ! 
 
 Behold, I pace amidst the gloom : 
 Darkness is ever round my way 
 
 With little space for sunbeam-room. 
 
 Yet Christian sadness is divine 
 Even as thy patient sadness was : 
 
 The salt tears in our Hfe's dark wine 
 Fell in it from the saving cross. 
 
 Bitter the bread of our repast ; 
 
 Yet doth a sweet the bitter leaven : 
 Our sorrow is the shadow cast 
 
 Around it by the hght of Heaven. 
 
 O Hght in Light, shine down from Heaven ! 
 
 172
 
 MESSAGES 
 
 WHAT shall I your true-love tell, 
 r'arth-forsaking maid ? 
 What shall I your true-love tell, 
 When life's spedre's laid ? 
 
 ' Tell him that, our side the grave, 
 
 Maid may not conceive 
 Life should be so sad to have, 
 
 That's so sad to leave ! ' 
 
 ^j 
 
 What shall I }our true-love tell. 
 
 When I come to him ? 
 What shall I your true-love tcU — 
 
 Eyes growing dim ! 
 
 ' Tell him this, when you shall part 
 
 From a maiden pined ; 
 That I see him with my heart, 
 
 Now my eyes are blind.' 
 
 What shall I your true-love tell ? 
 
 Speaking-while is scant. 
 \\'hat shall I your true-love tell, 
 
 Death's white postulant ? 
 
 * Tell him — love, with speech at strife. 
 
 For last utterance saith : 
 I, who loved with all my life. 
 
 Love with all my death.' 
 
 173
 
 AT LORD'S 
 
 IT is little I repair to the matches of the Southron folk, 
 Though my own red roses there may blow ; 
 It is little I repair to the matches of the Southron folk, 
 Though the red roses crest the caps, I know. 
 For the field is fuU of shades as I near the shadowy coast, 
 And a ghostly batsman plays to the bowling of a ghost, 
 And I look through my tears on a soundless-clapping host 
 As the run-stealers flicker to and fro, 
 
 To and fro : — 
 O my Hornby and my Barlow long ago ! 
 
 174
 
 LOVE AND THE CHILD 
 
 WHY do you so clasp me, 
 And draw me to your knee ? 
 Forsooth, you do but chafe me, 
 I pray you let me be : 
 I will be loved but now and then 
 When it likcth me ! ' 
 
 So I heard a young child, 
 
 A thwart child, a young child 
 Rebellious against love's arms. 
 
 Make its peevish cry. 
 
 To the tender God I turn : — 
 
 ' Pardon, Love most High ! 
 For I think those arms were even Thine, 
 
 And that child was even I.' 
 
 m
 
 DAPHNE 
 
 THE river-god's daughter, — the sun-god sought her, 
 Sleeping with never a zephyr by her. 
 Under the noon he made his prey sure, 
 Woofed in w^eeds of a woven azure, 
 As down he shot in a whistle of fire. 
 
 Slid off, fair daughter ! her vesturing water ; 
 
 Like a cloud from the scourge of the winds fled she : 
 With the breath in her hair of the keen Apollo, 
 And feet less fleet than the feet that follow, 
 
 She throes in his arms to a laurel-tree. 
 
 Risen out of birth's waters the soul distraught errs, 
 Nor whom nor whither she flieth knows she : 
 
 With the breath in her hair of the keen Apollo, 
 
 And fleet the beat of the feet that follow, 
 She throes in his arms to a poet, woe's me ! 
 
 You plucked the boughed verse the poet bears — 
 
 It shudders and bleeds as it snaps from the tree. 
 A love-banning love, did the god but know it, 
 Which barks the man about with the poet. 
 And muflies his heart of mortality ! 
 
 Yet I translate — ward of song's gate ! — 
 
 Perchance all ill this mystery. 
 We both are struck with the self-same quarrel ; 
 We grasp the maiden, and clasp the laurel — 
 
 Do we weep or we laugh more, Phcebe mi F 
 
 176
 
 DAPHNE 
 
 * His own green lays, unwithering bays, 
 Gird Keats' unwithering brow,' say ye ? 
 
 O fools, that is only the empty crown ! 
 
 The sacred head has laid it down 
 
 With Hob, Dick, Marian, and Margery. 
 
 >77
 
 ABSENCE 
 
 HEN music's fading 's faded, 
 
 And the rose's death is dead, 
 And my heart is fain of tears, because 
 Mine eyes have none to shed ; 
 
 I said. 
 Whence shall faith be fed ? 
 
 Canst thou be what thou hast been ? 
 
 No, no more what thou hast ! 
 Lo, all last things that I have known, 
 
 And all that shall be last. 
 Went past 
 With the thing thou wast ! 
 
 If the petal of this Spring be 
 As of the Spring that 's flown, 
 
 If the thought that now is sweet is 
 As the sweet thought overblown ; 
 Alone 
 
 Canst thou be thy self gone. 
 
 To yester-rose a richer 
 
 The rose-spray may bear ; 
 Thrice thousand fairer you may be, — 
 
 But tears for the fair 
 You were 
 When you first were fair ! 
 
 Know you where they have laid her. 
 Maiden May that died — 
 
 178
 
 ABSENCE 
 
 With the loves that Hvcd not 
 Strewing her soft side ? 
 I cried, 
 Where Has-been may hide ? 
 
 To him that waiteth, all things ! 
 
 Even death, if thou wait ! 
 And they that part too early 
 
 May meet again too late : — 
 Ah, fate ' 
 If meeting be too late ! 
 
 And when the year new-launched 
 Shall from its wake extend 
 
 The blossomy foam of Summer, 
 What shall I attend. 
 My friend ! 
 
 Flower of thee, my friend ? 
 
 Sweet shall have its sorrow, 
 
 The rainbow its rain, 
 Loving have its leaving, 
 
 And bliss is of pain 
 So fain. 
 Ah, is she bliss or pain ? 
 
 179 »«
 
 TO W. M. 
 
 OTREE of many branches ! One thou hast 
 Thou barest not, but grafted'st on thee. Now, 
 Should all men's thunders break on thee, and leave 
 Thee reft of bough and blossom, that one branch 
 Shall cHng to thee, my Father, Brother, Friend, 
 Shall cling to thee, until the end of end. 
 
 i6o
 
 I 
 
 A FALLEN YEW 
 
 T seemed corrival of the world's ^reat prime, 
 Made to un-edge the scythe of Time, 
 And last with stateliest rhyme. 
 
 No tender Dryad ever did indue 
 That rigid chiton of rough yew. 
 To fret her white f^esh through : 
 
 But some god like to those grim Asgard lords. 
 Who walk the fables of the hordes 
 From Scandinavian fjords, 
 
 Upheaved its stubborn girth, and raised unriven, 
 Against the whirl-blast and the levin. 
 Defiant arms to Heaven. 
 
 When doom puffed out the stars, we might have said, 
 It would decline its heavy head. 
 And see the world to bed. 
 
 For this firm yew did from the vassal leas, 
 And rain and air, its tributaries, 
 Its revenues increase, 
 
 And levy impost on the golden sun, 
 Take the bhnd years as they might run, 
 And no fate seek or shun. 
 
 But now our yew is strook, is fallen — yea. 
 Hacked like dull wood of every day 
 To this and that, men say. 
 
 i8i
 
 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 
 
 Never ! — To Hades' shadowy shipyards gone, 
 Dim barge of Dis, down Acheron 
 It drops, or Lethe wan. 
 
 Stirred by its fall — poor destined bark of Dis ! — 
 Along my soul a bruit there is 
 Of echoing images, 
 
 Reverberations of mortality : 
 
 Spelt backward from its death, to me 
 Its life reads saddenedly. 
 
 Its breast was hollowed as the tooth of eld ; 
 And boys, there creeping unbelield, 
 A laughing moment dwelled. 
 
 Yet they, within its very heart so crept, 
 Reached not the heart that courage kept 
 With vnnds and years beswept. 
 
 And in its boughs did close and kindly nest 
 The birds, as they within its breast, 
 By all its leaves caressed. 
 
 But bird nor child might touch by any art 
 Each other's or the tree's hid heart, 
 A whole God's breadth apart ; 
 
 The breadth of God, the breadth of death and life ! 
 Even so, even so, in undreamed strife 
 With pulseless Law, the wife, — 
 
 182
 
 A FALLEN YE\^^ 
 
 The sweetest wife on sweetest marriage-day, — 
 Their souls at grapple in mid-way, 
 Sweet to her sweet may say : 
 
 ' I take you to my inmost heart, my true ! ' 
 Ah, fool ! but there is one heart you 
 Shall never take him to ! 
 
 The hold that falls not when the town is got, 
 The heart's heart, whose immured plot 
 Hath keys yourself keep not ! 
 
 Its ports you cannot burst — you are withstood- 
 For him that to your Hstening blood 
 Sends precepts as he would. 
 
 Its gates are deaf to Love, high summoner ; 
 Yea, Love's great warrant runs not there : 
 You are your prisoner. 
 
 Yourself are with yourself the sole consortress 
 In that unleaguerable fortress ; 
 It knows you not for portress. 
 
 Its keys are at the cinfture hung of God ; 
 It; gates arc trepidant to His nod ; 
 By Him its floors are trod. 
 
 And if His feet shall rock those floors in wrath. 
 Or blest aspersion sleek His path. 
 Is only choice it hath. 
 
 I. S3
 
 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 
 
 Yea, in that ultimate heart's occult abode 
 To lie as in an oubliette of God, 
 Or in a bower untrod, 
 
 Built by a secret Lover for His Spouse ; — 
 Sole choice is this your life allows, 
 Sad tree, whose perishing boughs 
 So few birds house ! 
 
 184
 
 A JUDGEMENT IN HEAVEN 
 
 ATHWART the sod which is treading for God* 
 /\ the Poet paced with his splendid eyes ; 
 1 V Paradise-verdure he stately passes * to win to 
 
 the Father of Paradise, 
 Through the conscious and palpitant grasses * of inter- 
 tangled relucent dyes. 
 
 The angels a-play on its fields of Summer * (their wild 
 
 wings rustled his guides' cymars) 
 Looked up from disport at the passing comer,* as they 
 
 pelted each other with handfuls of stars ; 
 And the warden-spirits with startled feet rose,^'hand on 
 
 sword, by their tethered cars. 
 
 With plumes night-tindlured englobed and cindlured * 
 
 of Saints, his guided steps held on 
 To where on the far crystalline pale * of that transtcllar 
 
 Heaven there shone 
 The immutable crocean dawn • effusing from the 
 
 Father's Throne. 
 
 Through the reverberant Eden-ways * the bruit of his 
 
 great advent driven. 
 Back from the fulgent justle and press * with mighty 
 
 echoing so was given. 
 As when the surly thunder smites * upon the clanged 
 
 gates of Heaven. 
 
 I hare throughout thii poem used an aiteri'k to indicate the caeiura in 
 the middle of the line, after the manner of the old Saxon lectioii-point. 
 
 185
 
 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 
 
 Over the bickering gonfalons, * far-ranged as for Tar- 
 tarean wars, 
 
 Went a waver of ribbed fire * — as night-seas on phos- 
 phoric bars 
 
 Like a fiame-plumed fan shake slowly out * their ridgy 
 reach of crumbling stars. 
 
 At length to where on His fretted Throne * sat in tlie 
 
 heart of His aged dominions 
 The great Triune, and Mary nigh, * lit round with 
 
 spears of their hauberked minions. 
 The Poet drew, in the thunderous blue * involved 
 
 dread of those mounted pinions. 
 
 As in a secret and tenebrous cloud * the watcher from 
 
 the disquiet earth 
 At momentary intervals * beholds from its ragged rifts 
 
 break forth 
 The flash of a golden perturbation, * the travelling 
 
 threat of a witched birth ; 
 
 Till heavily parts a sinister chasm, * a grisly jaw, whose 
 
 verges soon, 
 Slowly and ominously filled * by the on-coming 
 
 plenilune, 
 Supportlessly congest with fire, * and suddenly spit 
 
 forth the moon : — 
 
 With beauty, not terror, through tangled error * of 
 night-dipt plumes so burned their charge ; 
 
 1 86
 
 A JUDGEMF.XT T\ HF WF.X 
 
 Swayed and parted the globing clusters * so, dis- 
 closed from their kindling marge, 
 
 Roseal-chapleted, splendent-vestured, * the Poet there 
 where God's light lay large. 
 
 Hu, hu ! a wonder ! a wonder ! see, * clasping the Poet'? 
 
 glories clings 
 A dingy creature, even to laughter * cloaked and clad in 
 
 patchwork things. 
 Shrinking close from the unused glows * of the seraphs' 
 
 versicoloured wings. 
 
 A Rhymer, rhyming a futile rhyme, * he had crept for 
 
 convoy through Eden-ways 
 Into the shade of the Poet's glory, * darkened under his 
 
 prevalent rays, 
 Fearfully hoping a distant welcome * as a poor kinsman 
 
 of his lays. 
 
 The angels laughed with a lovely scorning : * — ' Who 
 
 has done this sorry deed in 
 The garden of our Father, God ? * 'mid his blossoms 
 
 to sow this weed in ? 
 Never our fingers knew this stuff : * not so fashion the 
 
 looms of Eden ! ' 
 
 The Poet bowed his brow majestic,* searching that 
 
 patchwork through and through, 
 Feehng God's lucent gazes traverse * his singing-stoling 
 
 and spirit too : 
 
 187
 
 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 
 
 The hallowed harpers were fain to frown * on the 
 strange thing come 'mid their sacred crew. 
 
 Only the Poet that was earth * his fellow-earth and 
 his own self knew. 
 
 Then the Poet rent off robe and wreath, * so as a slough- 
 ing serpent doth, 
 
 Laid them at the Rhymer's feet,* shed down wreath 
 and raiment both, 
 
 Stood in a dim and shamed stole,* like the tattered 
 wing of a musty moth. 
 
 {The Poet addresses his Maker) 
 
 ' Thou gav'st the weed and wreath of song, * the weed 
 and wreath are solely Thine, 
 
 And this dishonest vesture * is the only vesture that is 
 mine ; 
 
 The life / textured, Thou the song :* my handi- 
 craft is not divine ! ' 
 
 {The Poet addresses the Rhymer) 
 
 He wrested o'er the Rhymer's head * that garmenting 
 which wrought him wrong ; 
 
 A flickering tissue argentine * down dripped its shiver- 
 ing silvers long : — 
 
 ' Better thou wov'st thy woof of life * than thou didst 
 weave thy woof of song ! ' 
 
 Never a chief in Saintdom was, * but turned him from 
 the Poet then ; 
 
 i88
 
 A JUDGEMENT IN HEAVEN 
 
 Never an eye looked mild on him * 'mid all the angel 
 
 myriads ten, 
 Save sinless Mary, and sinful Mary * — the Mary titled 
 
 Magdalen. 
 
 ' Turn yon robe,' spake Magdalen, * ' of torn bright 
 
 song, and see and feel.' 
 They turned the raiment, saw and felt * what their 
 
 turning did reveal — 
 All the inner surface piled * with bloodied hairs, like 
 
 hairs of steel. 
 
 ' Take, I pray, yon chaplet up, * thrown down ruddied 
 
 from his head.' 
 They took the roseal chaplet up,* and they stood 
 
 astonished : 
 Every leaf between their fingers,* as they bruised it, 
 
 burst and bled. 
 
 * See his torn flesh through those rents ; * see the punc- 
 tures round his hair, 
 
 As if the chaplet-flowers had driven * deep roots in to 
 nourish there — 
 
 Lord, who gav'st him robe and wreath,* what was this 
 Thou gav'st for wear ? ' 
 
 ' Fetch forth the Paradisal qarb ! ' * spake the Father, 
 
 sweet and low ; 
 Drew them both by the frightened hand * where Mary's 
 
 throne made irised bow — 
 ' Take, Princess Mary, of thy good grace,* two spirits 
 
 greater th.in ihcy know.* 
 
 189
 
 EPILOGUE TO 
 
 ' A JUDGEMENT IN HEAVEN ' 
 
 VIRTUE may unlock hell, or even 
 A sin turn in the wards of Heaven, 
 (As ethics of the text-book go,) 
 So little men their ov^^n deeds know, 
 Or through the intricate mele^ 
 Guess witherward draws the battle-sway ; 
 So little, if they know the deed, 
 Discern what therefrom shall succeed. 
 To wisest moralists 'tis but given 
 To work rough border-law of Heaven, 
 Within this narrow life of ours, 
 These marches 'twixt delimitless Powers. 
 Is it, if Heaven the future showed. 
 Is it the all-severest mode 
 To see ourselves with the eyes of God ? 
 God rather grant, at His assize. 
 He see us not with our own eyes ! 
 
 Heaven, which man's generations draws, 
 
 Nor deviates into replicas. 
 
 Must of as deep diversity 
 
 In judgement as creation be. 
 
 There is no expeditious road 
 
 To pack and label men for God, 
 
 And save them by the barrel-load. 
 
 Some may perchance, with strange surprise. 
 
 Have blundered into Paradise. 
 
 In vasty dusk of life abroad. 
 
 190
 
 EPILOGUE 
 
 They fondly thought to err from God, 
 Nor knew the circle that they trod ; 
 And, wandering all the nieht about, 
 Found them at morn where they set out. 
 Death dawned ; Heaven lay in prospect wide 
 Lo ! they were standing by His side ! 
 
 The Rhymer a life uncomplex, 
 
 \\ ith just such cares as mortals vex, 
 
 So simply felt as all men feel. 
 
 Lived purely out to his soul's weal. 
 
 A double Hfe the Poet Hved, 
 
 And with a double burthen grieved ; 
 
 The life of flesh and life of song, 
 
 The pangs to both lives that belong ; 
 
 Immortal knew and mortal pain. 
 
 Who in two worlds could lose and gain, 
 
 And found immortal fruits must be 
 
 Mortal through hi? mortality. 
 
 The life of flesh and hfe of song ! 
 
 If one hfe worked the other wrong. 
 
 What expiating agony 
 
 May for him, damned to poesy, 
 
 Shut in that little sentence be — 
 
 What deep austerities of strife — 
 
 ' He hved his life.' He hved kis life ! 
 
 191
 
 THE SERE OF THE LEAF 
 
 WINTER wore a flapping wind, and his beard, 
 disentwined, 
 Blew cloudy in the face of the Fall, 
 When a poet-soul flew South, with a singing in her 
 mouth. 
 O'er the azure Irish parting-wall. * 
 There stood one beneath a tree whose matted greenery 
 
 Was fruited with the songs of birds ; 
 By the melancholy water drooped the slender sedge, its 
 daughter, 
 Whose silence was a sadness passing words : 
 He held him very still, 
 And he heard the running rill. 
 And the soul-voice singing blither than the birds. 
 
 All Summer the sunbeams drew the curtains from the 
 dreams 
 Of the rose-fay, while the sweet South wind 
 Lapped the silken swathing close round her virginal 
 repose 
 When night swathed folding slumbers round her mind. 
 l^ow the elf of the flower had sickened in her bower, 
 
 And fainted in a thrill of scent ; 
 But her lover of the South, with a moan upon his 
 mouth. 
 Caught her spirit to his arms as it went : 
 Then the storm.s of West and North 
 Sent a gusty vaward forth. 
 Sent a skirring desolation, and he went. 
 
 * MiM Kathariae Tjnan'g vitit to London, 1889. 
 19s
 
 THE SERE OF THE LEAF 
 
 And a troop of roving gales rent the lily's silver veils, 
 
 And tore her from her trembling leaves ; 
 And the Autumn's smitten face flushed to a red dis- 
 grace, 
 And she grieved as a captive grieves. 
 Once the gold-barred cage of skies with the sunset's 
 moulted dyes 
 Was splendorously littered at the even ; 
 Beauty-fraught o'er shining sea, once the sun's argosy 
 To rich wreck on the Western reefs was driven ; 
 Now the sun, in Indian pall, 
 Treads the russet-amber fall 
 From the ruined trees of Heaven. 
 
 Too soon fails the light, and the swart boar, night, 
 
 Gores to death the bleeding day ; 
 And the dusk has no more a calm at its core, 
 
 But is turbid with obscene array. 
 For the cloud, a thing of ill dilating baleful o'er the hill, 
 
 Spreads a bulk hke a huge Afreet 
 Drifting in gigantic sloth, or a murky behemoth, 
 
 For the moon to set her silver feet ; 
 For the moon's white paces. 
 And its nostril for her traces. 
 As she urges it with wild witch feet. 
 
 And the stars, forlornly fair, shiver keenly through the 
 air, 
 All an-aching till their watch be ceased ; 
 And the hours like maimed flies lag on, ere night hatch 
 her golden dragon 
 
 '93
 
 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 
 
 In the mold of the upheaved East. 
 *As the cadent languor lingers after Music droops her 
 fingers, 
 
 Beauty still falls dying, dying through the days ; 
 But ah ! ' said he who stood in that Autumn solitude, 
 
 * Singing-soul, thou art 'lated with thy lays ! 
 
 All things that on this globe err 
 Fleet into dark Oftober, 
 When day and night encounter, the nights war down 
 the days. 
 
 * For the song in thy mouth is all of the South, 
 
 Though Winter wax in strength more and more, 
 And at eve with breath of malice the stained windows 
 of day's palace 
 Pile in shatters on the Western floor.' 
 But the song sank down his soul Hke a Naiad through 
 her pool. 
 He could not bid the visitant depart ; 
 For he felt the melody make tune like a bee 
 In the red rose of his heart : 
 Like a Naiad in her pool 
 It lay within his soul. 
 Like a bee in the- red rose of his heart. 
 
 She sang of the shrill East fled and bitterness sur- 
 ceased : — 
 
 * O the blue South wind is musical ! 
 
 And the garden 's drenched with scent, and my soul 
 hath its content. 
 This eve or anv eve at all.' 
 
 194 
 
 I
 
 THE SERE OF THE LEAF 
 
 On his form the blushing shames of her ruby-plumaged 
 flames 
 Flickered hotly, like a quivering crimson snow : 
 *And hast thou thy content ? Were some rain of it 
 besprent 
 On the soil where I am drifted to and fro, 
 My soul, blown o'er the ways 
 Of these arid latter days. 
 Would blossom like a rose of Jericho. 
 
 * I know not equipoise, only purgatorial joys, 
 
 Grief's singing to the soul's instrument. 
 And forgetfulness which yet knoweth that it doth forget ; 
 
 But content — what is content ? 
 For a harp of singeing wire, and a goblet dripping fire, 
 And desires that hunt down Beauty through the 
 Heaven 
 With unslackenable bounds, as the deep-mouthed 
 thunder-hounds 
 Bay at heel the fleeing levin, — 
 The chaliccd lucencies 
 From pure holy-wells of eyes, 
 And the bliss unbarbed with pain I have given. 
 
 * Is — O framed to suffer joys ! — thine the sweet without 
 
 alloys 
 Of the many, who art numbered with the few f 
 And thy flashing breath of song, does it do thy lips no 
 wrong, 
 Nor sear them as the heats spill through ? 
 When the welling musics rise, like tears from heart to 
 eyes, 
 
 195 02
 
 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 
 
 • Is there not a pang dissolved in them for thee ? 
 Does not Song, Hke the Queen of radiant Love, 
 
 Hellene, 
 Float up dripping from a bitter sea ? 
 
 No tuned metal known 
 
 Unless stricken yields a tone, 
 Be it silver, or sad iron like to me. 
 
 * Yet the rhymes still roll from the bell-tower of thy 
 soul, 
 Though no tongued griefs give them vent ; 
 If they ring to me no gladness, if my joy be sceptred 
 sadness, 
 I am glad, yet, for thy content. 
 Not always does the lost, 'twixt the fires of heat and 
 frost. 
 Envy those whom the healing lustres bless ; 
 But may sometimes, in the pain of a yearning past 
 attain. 
 Thank the angels for their happiness ; 
 'Twixt the fire and fiery ice. 
 Looking up to Paradise, 
 Thank the angels for their happiness. 
 
 'The heart, a censered fire whence fuming chants aspire. 
 
 Is fed with oozed gums of precious pain ; 
 And unrest swings denser, denser, the fragrance from 
 that censer. 
 With the heart-strings for its quivering chain. 
 Yet 'tis vain to scale the turret of the cloud-uplifted 
 spirit, 
 And bar the immortal in, the mortal out ; 
 
 196
 
 THE SERE OF THE LEAF 
 
 For sometime unaware comes a footfall up the stair, 
 And a soft knock under which no bolts are stout, 
 
 And lo, there pleadeth sore 
 
 The heart's voice at the door, 
 " I am your child, you may not shut me out ! " 
 
 * The breath of poetry in the mind's autumnal tree 
 Shakes down the saddened thoughts in singing 
 showers, 
 But fallen from their stem, what part have we in them ? 
 " Nay," pine the trces,"they were, but are not ours." 
 Xot for the mind's delight these sered leaves alight, 
 
 But, loosened by the breezes, fall they must. 
 U hat ill if they decay ? yet some a little way 
 IMay flit before deserted by the gust, 
 May touch some spirit's hair, 
 May cling one moment there, — 
 She turns ; they tremble down. Drift o'er them, 
 dust ! ' 
 
 197
 
 TO STARS 
 
 You, my unrest, and Night's tranquillity, 
 Bringers of peace to it, and pang to me : 
 You that on heaven and on my heart cast fire, 
 To heaven a purging light, my heart unpurged desire ; 
 Bright juts for foothold to the climbing sight 
 Which else must slip from the steep infinite ; 
 Reared standards which the sequent centuries 
 Snatch, each from his forerunner's grasp who dies. 
 To lead our forlorn hope upon the skies ; 
 Bells that from night's great bell-tower hang in gold, 
 Whereon God rings His changes manifold ; 
 Meek guides and daughters to the blinded heaven 
 In CEdipean, remitless wandering driven ; 
 The burning rhetoric, quenchless oratory, 
 Of the magniloquent and all-suasive sky ; 
 I see and feel you — but to feel and see 
 How two child-eyes have dulled a firmament for me. 
 
 Once did I bring her, hurt upon her bed, 
 
 Flowers we had loved together ; brought, and said : — 
 
 * I plucked them ; yester-morn you liked them wild.' 
 And then she laid them on my eyes, and smiled. 
 And now, poor Stars, your fairness is not fair, 
 Because I cannot gather it for her ; 
 
 I cannot sheave you in my arms, and say : — 
 
 * See, sweet, you liked these yester-eve ; like them for 
 
 me to-day ! ' 
 
 She has no care, my Stars, of you or me ; 
 She has no care, we tire her speedily j 
 
 198 
 
 i
 
 TO STARS 
 
 She has no care, because she cannot see — 
 
 She cannot see, who sees not past her sight. 
 
 We are set too high, we tire her with our height : 
 
 Her years are small, and ill to strain above. 
 
 She may not love us : wherefore keep we love 
 
 To her who may not love us — you and I ? 
 
 And yet you thrill down towards her, even as I, 
 
 With all your golden eloquence held in mute. 
 
 We may not plead, we may not plead our suit ; 
 
 Our winged love must beat against its bars : 
 
 For should she enter once within those guarding bars, 
 
 Our love would do her hurt — oh, think of that, my Stars 
 
 199
 
 LINES FOR A DRAWING OF 
 OUR LADY OF THE NIGHT 
 
 T 
 
 HIS, could I paint my inward sight, 
 This were Our Lady of the Night : 
 
 She bears on her front's lucency 
 The starhght of her purity : 
 
 For as the white rays of that star 
 The union of all colours are, 
 
 She sums all virtues that may be 
 In her sweet light of purity. 
 
 The mantle which she holds on high 
 Is the great mantle of the sky. 
 
 Think, O sick toiler, when the night 
 Comes on thee, sad and infinite, 
 
 Think, sometimes, 'tis our own Lady 
 Spreads her blue mantle over thee, 
 
 And folds the earth, a wearied thing. 
 Beneath its gentle shadowing ; 
 
 Then rest a little ; and in sleep 
 Forget to weep, forget to weep ! 
 
 200
 
 ORISON-TRYST 
 
 SHE told me, in the morning her white thought 
 Did beat to Godward, Hke a carrier-dove. 
 My name beneath its wing. And I — how long ! — 
 That, hke a bubble from a water-flower 
 Released as it withdraws itself up-curled 
 Into the nightly lake, her sighed name 
 So loosened from my sleepward-sinking heart ; 
 And in the morning did like Phosphor set it 
 To lead the vanward of my orient soul 
 \\ hen it storms Heaven ; and did all alone, 
 Methought, upon the live coals of my love 
 Those distillations of rich memory cast 
 To feed the fumes of prayer : — oh ! I was then 
 Like one who, dreaming soHtude, awakes 
 In sobbing from his dream ; and, straining arms 
 That ache for their own void, with sudden shock 
 Takes a dear form beside him. 
 
 Now, when light 
 Pricks at my lids, I never rouse but think — 
 ' Is 't orison-time with her ? ' — And then my hand 
 Presses thy letters in my pulses shook ; 
 Where, neighboured on my heart with those pure linc3 
 In amity of kindred purcness, lies 
 Image of Her conceived Immaculate ; 
 And on the purple inward, thine, — ah ! thine 
 O' the purple-lined side. 
 
 And I do set 
 Tryst with thy soul in its own Paradise ; 
 As lovers of an cart hly rate that use, 
 In severance, for their sweet messages 
 Some concave of a tree, and do their hearts 
 
 201
 
 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 
 
 Enharbour in its continent heart — I drop 
 
 My message in the hollow breast of God. 
 
 Thy name is known in Heaven ; yea, Heaven is weary 
 
 With the reverberation of thy name ; 
 
 I fill with it the gap between two sleeps, 
 
 The inter-pause of dream : hell's gates have learned 
 
 To shake in it ; and their fierce forayers 
 
 Before the iterate echoing recoil, 
 
 In armed watches when my preparate soul 
 
 (A war-cry in the alarums of the Night) 
 
 Conjoins thy name with Hers, Auxihatrix. 
 
 202
 
 'whereto art thou 
 
 COME ? ' 
 
 ' 1 FRIEND, whereto art thou come ? ' Thus Verity ; 
 r"^ Of each that to the world's sad Olivet 
 1. Comes with no multitude, but alone by night, 
 
 Lit with the one torch of his lifted soul, 
 
 Seeking her that he may lay hands on her ; 
 
 Thus : and waits answer from the mouth of deed. 
 
 Truth is a maid, whom men woo diversely ; 
 
 This, as a spouse ; that, as a light-o'-love, 
 
 To know, and having known, to make his brag. 
 
 But woe to him that takes the immortal kiss, 
 
 And not estates her in his housing life, 
 
 Mother of all his seed ! So he betrays, 
 
 Not Truth, the unbetrayable, but himself : 
 
 And with his kiss's rated traitor-craft 
 
 The Haceldama of a plot of days 
 
 He buys, to consummate his Judasry 
 
 Therein with Judas' guerdon of despair. 
 
 203
 
 SONG OF THE HOURS 
 
 SCENE : Before the Palace of the Sun, into which a god has 
 just -passed as the guest of Hy-perion. Time : Dawn. 
 The Hours of Night and Day advance on each other 
 as the gates close. 
 
 MORNING HOURS 
 
 IN curbed expanses our wheeling dances 
 Meet from the left and right ; 
 Under this vaporous awning 
 Tarrying awhile in our flight, 
 Waiting the day's advances. 
 We, the children of light, 
 Clasp you on verge of the dawning, 
 Sisters of Even and Night ! 
 
 CHORUS 
 
 We who lash from the way of the sun 
 
 With the whip of the winds the thronging clouds, 
 Who puff out the lights of the stars, or run 
 
 To scare dreams back to their shrouds, 
 Or tiar the temples of Heaven 
 
 With a crystalline gleam of showers ; 
 
 EVENING HOURS 
 
 While to flit with the soft moth. Even, 
 Round the lamp of the day is ours ; 
 
 NIGHT HOURS 
 
 And ours with her crescent argentine. 
 
 To make Night's forehead fair, 
 To wheel up her throne of the earth, and twine 
 
 The daffodils in her hair ; 
 
 204
 
 SONG OF THE HOURS 
 
 ALL 
 
 We, moulted as plumes are, 
 
 From the wings whereon Time is borne ; 
 
 MORNING HOURS 
 
 We, buds who in blossoming foretell 
 The date when our leaves shall be torn ; 
 
 NIGHT HOURS 
 
 We, knowing our dooms are to plunge with the 
 gloom's car 
 Down the steep ruin of morn ; 
 
 ALL 
 
 We hail thee. Immortal ! 
 We robes of Life, mouldering while worn. 
 
 NIGHT HOURS 
 
 Sea-birds, winging o'er sea calm-strewn 
 To the lure of the beacon-stars, are we. 
 
 O'er the foamy wake of the white-sailed moon. 
 Which to men is the Galaxy. 
 
 MORNING HOURS 
 
 Our eyes, through our pinions folJen, 
 
 By the filtered flame are teased 
 As we bow when the sun makes golden 
 
 Earthquake in the East. 
 
 205
 
 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 
 
 EVENING HOURS 
 
 And we shake on the sky a dusted fire 
 
 From the ripened sunset's anther, 
 While the flecked main, drowsing in gorged desire, 
 
 Purrs hke an outstretched panther. 
 
 MORNING HOURS 
 
 O'er the dead moon-maid 
 
 We draw softly the day's white pall ; 
 And our children the Moments we see as 
 
 In drops of the dew they fall, 
 Or on light plumes laid they shoot the cascade 
 
 Of colours some Heaven's bow call ; 
 
 ALL 
 
 And we sing. Guest, to thee, as 
 Thou pacest the crystal-paved hall ! 
 
 We, while the sun with his hid chain swings 
 
 Like a censer around him the blossom-sweet earth, 
 Who dare the lark with our passionate wings. 
 
 And its mirth with our masterless mirth ; 
 
 Or — when that flying laughter 
 Has sunk and died away 
 
 Which beat against Heaven's rafter — 
 Who vex the clear eyes of day. 
 Who weave for the sky in the loom of the cloud 
 
 A mantle of waving rain. 
 We, whose hair is jewelled with joys, or bowed 
 
 Under veilings of misty pain ; 
 
 206
 
 SONG OF THE HOURS 
 
 We hymn thee at leaving 
 Who strew thy feet's coming, O Guest ! 
 
 We, the Hnked cin6lure which girdles 
 Mortality's feverous breast, 
 Who heave in its heaving, who grieve in its grieving, 
 
 Are restless in its unrest ; 
 Our beings unstirred else 
 
 Were it not for the bosom they pressed. 
 
 We see the wind, like a light swift leopard 
 
 Leap on the flocks of the cloud that flee, 
 As we follow the feet of the radiant shepherd 
 
 Whose bright sheep drink of the sea. 
 
 When that drunken Titan the Thunder 
 Stumbles through staggered Heaven, 
 
 And spills on the scorched earth under 
 The fiery wine of the levin, 
 With our mystic measure of rhythmic motion 
 
 We charm him in snorting sleep. 
 While round him the sun enchants from ocean 
 
 The walls of a cloudy keep. 
 
 Beneath the deep umbers 
 Of night as we watch and hark. 
 
 The dim-winged dreams which feed on 
 The blossoms of day we mark. 
 As in murmurous numbers they swarm to the 
 slumbers 
 
 That cell the hive of the dark ; 
 And life shakes, a reed on 
 
 Our tide, in the death-wind stark. 
 
 207
 
 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 
 
 Time, Eternity's fountain, whose waters 
 
 Fall back thither from whence they rose, 
 Deweth with us, its showery daughters. 
 
 The Life that is green in its flows. 
 But whether in grief or mirth we shower, 
 
 We make not the thing we breed, 
 For what may come of the passing Hour 
 Is what was hid in the seed. 
 And now as wakes. 
 
 Like love in its first bUnd guesses, 
 Or a snake just stirring its coils, 
 Sweet tune into half-caresses. 
 Before the sun shakes the cHnging flakes 
 
 Of gloom from his spouting tresses, 
 Let winds have toils 
 
 To catch at our fluttering dresses ! 
 Winter, that numbeth the throstle and stilled wren, 
 
 Has keen frost-edges our plumes to pare. 
 Till we break, with the Summer's laughing children. 
 Over the fields of air. 
 
 While the winds in their tricksome courses 
 
 The snowy steeds vault upon 
 That are foaled of the white sea-horses 
 And washed in the streams of the sun. 
 Thaw, O thaw the enchanted throbbings 
 
 Curdled at Music's heart ; 
 Tread she her grapes till from their englobings 
 The melodies spurt and smart ! 
 We fleet as a rain. 
 
 Nor yearn for the being men own. 
 
 208
 
 SONG OF THE HOURS 
 
 With whom is naught beginneth 
 Or cndeth without some moan ; 
 
 \Vc soar to our zenith 
 
 And are panglcssly overblown. 
 
 Yet, if the roots of the truth were bare, 
 
 Our transience is only a mortal seeming ; 
 Fond men, we are fixed as a still despair. 
 And we fleet but in your dreaming. 
 
 We are columns in Time's hall, mortals, 
 
 Wherethrough Life hurricth ; 
 You pass in at birth's wide portals, 
 And out at the postern of death. 
 As you chase down the vista your dream or your love 
 
 The swift pillars race you by, 
 And you think it is we who move, who move, — 
 It is you who die, who die ! 
 O firmament, even 
 
 You pass, by whose fixture man voweth ; 
 God breathes you forth as a bubble 
 
 And shall suck you back into His mouth ! 
 Through earth, sea, and heaven a doom shall be 
 driven. 
 And, sown in the furrows it plougheth. 
 As fire bursts from stubble 
 
 Shall spring the new wonders none troweth. 
 
 The bowed East liftcth the dripping sun, 
 
 A golden cup, to the lips of Night, 
 Over whose check in flushes run 
 
 The heats of the liquid light. 
 
 209
 
 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 
 
 MORNING HOURS 
 
 To our very pinions' ridge 
 
 We tremble expeftantly ; — 
 Is it ready, the burnished bridge 
 
 We must cast for our King o'er the sea ? 
 And who will kneel with sunbeam-slips 
 
 To dry the flowers' sweet eyes ? 
 Who touch with fire her finger-tips 
 For the lamp of the grape, as she flies ? 
 
 ALL 
 
 List, list to the prances, his chariot advances, 
 
 It comes in a dust of light ! 
 From under our brightening awning 
 
 We wheel in a diverse flight : 
 Yet the hands we unclasp, as our dances 
 
 Sweep off to the left and the right, 
 Are but loosed on the verge of the dawning 
 
 To join on the verge of the night. 
 
 210
 
 p 
 
 PASTORAL 
 
 AN-imbucd 
 Tempe wood, 
 
 Pretty player's sporting-place ; 
 Tcmpe wood's 
 Solitude's 
 Everywhere a courting-placc. 
 Kiss me, sweet 
 Gipsy fleet, 
 Though a kissed maid hath her red ; 
 Kisses grow — 
 Trust me so — 
 Faster than they're gathered ! 
 I will flute a tunc 
 
 On the pipes of ivory ; 
 All long noon 
 
 Piping of a melody ; 
 A merry, merry, merry, merry, 
 Merry, merry melody. 
 Dance, ho ! foot it so ! Feat fleets the melody ! 
 
 Let the wise 
 
 Say, youth dies ; — 
 'Tis for pleasure's mending, Sweet ! 
 
 Kisses arc 
 
 Costlier far. 
 That they have an ending, Sweet ! 
 
 Half a kiss's 
 
 Dainty bliss is 
 From the day of kiss-no-more ; 
 
 211 r2
 
 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 
 
 When we shall, 
 
 Roseal 
 Lass, do this and this no more ! 
 And we pipe a tune 
 
 On the pipes of ivory ; 
 All long noon 
 
 Fluting of a melody : — 
 A merry, merry, merry, merry. 
 
 Merry, merry melody. 
 Dance, ho ! trip it so ! Feat fleets the melody ! 
 
 My love must 
 
 Be to trust, 
 While you safely fold me close : 
 
 Yours will smile 
 
 A kissing-while, 
 For the hours I hold you close. 
 
 Maiden gold ! 
 
 Clipping bold 
 Here the truest mintage is : 
 
 Lips will bear 
 
 But, I swear. 
 In the press their vintages ! 
 I will flute a tune 
 
 On the pipes of ivory ; 
 All long noon 
 
 Piping of a melody : — 
 A merry, merry, merry, merry, 
 
 Merry, merry melody. 
 Dance, ho ! foot it so ! Feat fleets the melody ! 
 
 212
 
 PAST THINKING OF 
 SOLOMON 
 
 Remember thy Creator in the days oj thy youth, he j ore 
 the years draw nigh oj which thou shalt say : They -please 
 me not ; hejore the sun, and the light, and the moon, and 
 the stars be darkened, and the clouds return after the rain. 
 
 ECCLESUSTES. 
 
 W 
 
 ISE-UNTO-HELL Ecclesiast, 
 Who siev'dst life to the gritted last ! 
 
 This thy sting, thy darkness, Mage — 
 Cloud upon sun, upon youth age ? 
 
 Now is come a darker thing, 
 And is come a colder sting, 
 
 Unto us, who find the womb 
 Opes on the courtyard of the tomb. 
 
 Now in this fuliginous 
 City of flesh our sires for us 
 
 Darkly built, the sun at prime 
 Is liidden, and betwixt the time 
 
 Of day and night is variance none, 
 Who know not altern moon and sun ; 
 
 213
 
 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 
 
 Whose deposed heaven through dungeon-bars 
 Looks down bhnded of its stars. 
 
 Yea, in the days of youth, God wot, 
 Kg -v we say : They please me not. 
 
 214
 
 A DEAD ASTRONOMER 
 
 STEPHEN PERRY, S.J. 
 
 STARRY amorist, starward gone. 
 Thou art — what thou didst gaze upon ! 
 Passed through thy golden garden's bars. 
 Thou seest the Gardener of the Stars. 
 
 She, about whose mooned brows 
 Seven stars make seven glows, 
 Seven lights for seven woes ; 
 She, like thine own Galaxy, 
 All lustres in one purity : — 
 What said'st thou, Astronomer, 
 U'hen thou did'st discover i?)^r r* 
 When thy hand its tube let fall, 
 Thou found'st the fairest Star of all ! 
 
 21!
 
 CHEATED ELSIE 
 
 ELSIE was a maiden fair 
 As the sun 
 Shone upon : 
 Born to teach her swains despair 
 By smihng on them every one ; 
 Born to win all hearts to her 
 Just because herself had none ; 
 All the day she had no care, 
 For she was a maiden fair 
 As the sun 
 Shone upon, 
 Heartless as the brooks that run. 
 
 All the maids, with envy tart, 
 Sneering said, ' She has no heart.* 
 All the youths, with bitter smart. 
 Sighing said, ' She has no heart ! ' 
 
 Could she care 
 For their sneers or their despair 
 When she was a maiden fair 
 
 As the sun 
 
 Shone upon, 
 Heartless as the brooks that run ? 
 
 But one day whenas she stood 
 
 In a wood 
 Haunted by the fairy brood. 
 Did she view, or dream she viewed 
 
 In a vision's 
 
 Wild misprisions, 
 
 216
 
 Fairies. 
 
 Elsie. 
 
 Pedlar. 
 
 Elsie. 
 
 CHEATED ELSIE 
 
 How a pedlar, dry and rude 
 As a crook'd branch taking flesh, 
 Caught the spirit in a mesh, 
 Singing of — ' What is't ye lack ? ' 
 
 \\ izard-pack 
 
 On twisted back, 
 Still he sang, ' What is't ye lack ? 
 
 * Lack ye land or lack ye gold. 
 What I give, I give unsold ; 
 Lack ye wisdom, lack ye beauty, 
 
 To your suit he 
 Gives unpaid, the pedlar old ! * 
 
 Beware, beware ! the gifts he gives 
 
 One pays for, sweetheart, while one Hves ! 
 
 What is it the maidens say 
 That I lack ? 
 
 By this bright day, 
 Can so fair a maiden lack ? 
 Maid so sweet 
 Should be complete. 
 
 Yet a thing they say I lack. 
 
 In thy pack, — 
 
 Pedlar, tell— 
 Hast thou ever a heart to sell ? 
 
 217
 
 Pedlar. 
 
 Elsie. 
 Pedlar. 
 
 Elsie. 
 Fairies. 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 
 
 Yea, a heart I have, as tender 
 As the mood of evening air. 
 
 Elsie. 
 
 Fairies. 
 
 Name thy price ! 
 
 The price, by Sorrow ! 
 Only is, the heart to wear. 
 
 Not great the price, as was my fear. 
 
 So cheap a price was ne'er so dear. 
 
 Beware, beware, 
 
 O rash and fair ! 
 
 The gifts he gives. 
 Sweetheart, one pays for while one lives ! 
 
 Scarce the present did she take. 
 When the heart began to ache. 
 
 Ah, what is this ? Take back thy gift ! 
 
 I had not, and I knew no lack ; 
 Now I have, I lack for ever ! 
 
 The gifts he gives, he takes not back. 
 
 2l8
 
 CHEATED ELSIE 
 
 Elsie. 
 
 Ah ! why the present did I take, 
 
 And knew not that a heart would ache ? 
 
 Fairies. 
 
 Ache ! and is that all thy sorrow ? — 
 Beware, beware — a heart will break ! 
 
 219
 
 THE FAIR INCONSTANT 
 
 DOST thou still hope thou shalt be fair, 
 When no more fair to me ? 
 Or those that by thee taken were 
 Hold their captivity ? 
 Is this thy confidence ? No, no ; 
 Trust it not ; it can not be so. 
 
 But thou too late, too late shalt find 
 'Twas I that made thee fair ; 
 
 Thy beauties never from thy mind 
 But from my loving were ; 
 
 And those delights that did thee stole 
 
 Confessed the vicinage of my soul. 
 
 The rosy reflex of my heart 
 
 Did thy pale cheek attire ; 
 And what I was, not what thou art, 
 
 Did gazers-on admire. 
 Go, and too late thou shalt confess 
 
 I looked thee into loveliness ! 
 
 220
 
 THREATENED TEARS 
 
 Do not loose those rains thy wet 
 Eyes, my Fair, unsurely threat ; 
 Do not, Sweet, do not so ! 
 Thou canst not have a single woe, 
 But this sad and doubtful weather 
 Overcasts us both together. 
 In the aspect of those known eyes 
 My soul 's a captain weatherwise. 
 Ah me ! what presages it sees 
 In those watery Hyades. 
 
 221
 
 THE HOUSE OF SORROWS* 
 
 o 
 
 F the white purity 
 I They wrought my wedding-dress, 
 Inwoven silverly — 
 For tears, as I do guess. 
 Oh, wJiy did they with tears inweave my marriage- 
 dress ? 
 
 A girl, I did espouse 
 
 Destiny, grief, and fears ; 
 The love of Austria's house 
 And its ancestral years 
 I learned ; and my salt eyes grew erudite in tears. 
 
 Devote our tragic line — 
 One to his rebel's aim, 
 One to his ignorant brine. 
 One to the eyeless flame : 
 Who should be skilled to weep but I, O Christ's dear 
 Dame ? 
 
 [•in the opening (tanzas the Empress Elizabeth of Austria addresses 
 first Our Lady, then the ' Dark Fool ' Death, and finally the Son of 
 Sorrows, in allusion to the griefs of her own and her husband's line : the 
 shooting of Maximilian of Mexico, her sister's burning at the Paris Bazar 
 de la Charite, the drowning of the Archduke John and of the mad 
 King of Bavaria, and the tragedy of the Crown Prince Rudolph. Her 
 own assassination was the immediate occasion of these verses ; and the 
 traditional offering of her wedding-wreath to a Madonna-shrine and the 
 making of her wedding-gown into priestly vestments elucidate other 
 references in the text.] 
 
 222
 
 THE HOUSE OF SORROWS 
 
 Give one more to the fire, 
 One more for water keep : 
 
 Death, wilt thou not tire ? 
 Still Austria must thou reap ? 
 
 Can I have plummetless tears, that still thou bidd'st 
 ' Weep, weep 1 ' ? 
 
 No — thou at length with me 
 
 Too far, Dark Fool, hast gone ! 
 One costly cruelty 
 Voids thy dominion : 
 I am drained to the uttermost tear : O Rudolph, O my 
 son ! 
 
 Take this woof of sorrows, 
 Son of all Women's Tears ! 
 
 1 am not for the morrows, 
 
 I am dead with the dead years. 
 Lo, I vest Thee, Christ, with my woven tears ! 
 
 My bridal wreath take thou, 
 
 Mary ! Take Thou, O Christ, 
 My bridal garment ! Now 
 
 Is all my fate sufficed. 
 And, robed and garlanded, the victim sacrificed. 
 
 II 
 
 The Son of Weeping heard, 
 
 The gift benignly saw ; 
 The Women's Pitier heard. 
 
 223
 
 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 
 
 Together, by hid law, 
 The life-gashed heart, the assassin's healing poniard, 
 draw. 
 
 Too long that consummation 
 
 The obdurate seasons thwart ; 
 Too long were the sharp consolation 
 
 And her breast apart ; — 
 The remedy of steel has gone home to her sick heart. 
 
 Her breast, dishabited, 
 
 Revealed, her heart above, 
 A little blot of red, — 
 
 Death's reverent sign to approve 
 He had sealed up that royal tomb of martyred love. 
 
 Now, Death, if thou wouldst show 
 
 Some ruth still left in store, 
 Guide thou the armed blow 
 
 To strike one bosom more, 
 Where any blow were pity, to this it struck before ! 
 
 224
 
 INSENTIENCE 
 
 O SWEET is Love, and sweet is Lack ! 
 But is there any charm 
 When Lack from round the neck of Love 
 Drops her languid arm ? 
 
 \\^ear7, 1 no longer love, 
 
 Weary, no more lack ; 
 O for a pang, that listless Loss 
 Might wake, and, with a playmate's voice. 
 
 Call the tired Love back ! 
 
 225
 
 ENVOY 
 
 O, songs, for ended is our brief, sweet play ; 
 ■w Go, children of swift joy and tardy sorrow : 
 ■*■ And some are sung, and that was yesterday, 
 And some unsung, and that may be to-morrow. 
 
 Go forth ; and if it be o'er stony way, 
 
 Old joy can lend what newer grief must borrow : 
 And it was sweet, and that was yesterday, 
 
 And sweet is sweet, though purchased with sorrow. 
 
 Go, songs, and come not back from your far way : 
 And if men ask you why ye smile and sorrow, 
 
 Tell them ye grieve, for your hearts know To-day, 
 Tell them ye smile, for your eyes know To-morrow. 
 
 226 
 
 i
 
 J . ^.s^-
 
 NOTE 
 
 ' SISTER songs: This was first called 'Amphic7- 
 pellon : Wrought and upbrimmed for Two Sisters, 
 with an Inscription,' as may be seen in the Facsimile, 
 which shows also the Cross with which the Poet was 
 accustomed to crest his Manuscript. 
 
 « . ' (1 L ^ 
 
 WoCh/ 
 
 OAV 
 
 The original edition contained the following Preface : 
 
 ' This poem, though new in the sense of being now (1895) 
 for the first time printed, was written some four years ago, 
 about the same date as the Hound of Heaven. . . . 
 
 ' One image in the Proem was an unconscious plagiarism 
 from the beautiful image in Mr Patmore's St Valentine's Day : 
 
 O baby Spring, 
 
 That fiutter'st sudden 'neath the breast of Earth, 
 
 A month before the birth ! 
 
 Finding I could not disengage it without injury to the 
 passage in which it is embedded, I have preferred to leave 
 it, with this acknowledgenient to a Poet rich enough to lend 
 to the poor. — francis Thompson.' 
 
 Printed in England at the Anchor Press.
 
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