UlIIIIIIIIfimilKfllllimMIIIIIMIflHlIM mfTTTTT I" i I Si II COLLECTED POEMS WILLIAM WATS ON- MDCCOXCVIII- THE COLLECTED POEMS OF WILLIAM WATSON > > > > > j - ■ i j ' , , , > , > J ' > , JOHN LANE NEW YORK AND LONDON M DCCCXCIX Copyright, 1893, 1894 By Macmillan & Company Copyright, 1894 By Stone & Kimball Copyright, 1896, 1897, 1898 By John Lane Copyright, 1899 By John Lane • • • • a • • • t • * • to c • • • • * - • « «- • J * «• »«•* fe • * « • «" ■ • • c * « • • • « • • • • • * • . • * » • • • J • s • • • « * • • • •• • •■* # •'••« •• • • **• * ■•• • • • • ►• • •• • • ••• !•• • * • • • * *> «"•■••** The University Press, Cambridge, U. S. A. TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE EARL OF ROSEBERY, K.G., K.T. THESE POEMS ARE COLLECTIVELY DEDICATED IN GRATEFUL MEMORY OF THE GENEROUS APPRECIATION WITH WHICH HE HAS ALREADY DISTINGUISHED THEM ENGLISH PREFATORY In preparing this Collected Edition of his poems the Author has excluded the whole of his earliest volume, " 'The Prince's Quest " (1880); has omitted some three-fifths of his second volume, "Epigrams" (1884); and has included the greater part of the contents of all his subsequent volumes of verse, with the exception of the " Tear of Shame" here repre- sented by a small selection, and " The Eloping Angels," omitted altogether. The seven sonnets here given, from a sequence of fifteen published in June 1885 under the title of" Ver Tenebrosum," need not be taken as in each case accurately reflecting his present opinions upon events of that year, but are re- tained for the sake of such purely literary vii PREFATORY interest as they may possess for certain of his readers. In a few other poems, widely separated in date of production, and relating to matters of deeper import than that of political controversy or international affairs, he can lay claim to no obstinate consistency of view ; and if some of his readers are disposed to regret that while he has grown older his faith has not become more buoyant, he can only ask them to extend a kindly tolerance to one who, even as they, is sincere in his quest of 'Truth. • •• Vlll CONTENTS PAGE Wordsworth's grave 1 shellet's centenary . . . . . . . 13 lachrym.e mdsarum 20 to edward dowden 27 EPIGRAM 31 AUTUMN 32 WORLD-STRANGENESS 35 EPIGRAM 37 THE MOCK SELF 38 ENGLAND AND HER COLONIES 39 TO A POET 41 "WHEN BIRDS WERE SONGLESS " 42 FELICITY 43 IN LALEHAM CHURCHYARD 45 LIFE WITHOUT HEALTH 50 THE FLIGHT OF YOUTH 51 EPIGRAM . 52 " UNDER THE DARK AND PINY STEEP " ... 53 "NAY, BID ME NOT MY CARES TO LEAVE " ... 54 A PRELUDE 55 ON LANDOR'S "HELLENICS" 56 IX CONTENTS PAGB ENGLAND MY MOTHER 57 " SCENTLESS FLOW'RS I BEING THEE " ... 64 SHELLEY AND HARRIET 65 " ARE THESE ARE THESE INDEED " .... 66 THE raven's SHADOW 67 ANTONY AT ACTIUM 71 THE GLIMPSE 72 TO A SEABIRD 73 "WELL HE SLUMBERS, GREATLY SLAIN " ... 74 LUX PERDITA 75 " THE THINGS THAT ARE MORE EXCELLENT " . . 76 EPIGRAM 80 THE GREAT MISGIVING 81 TO LORD TENNYSON 83 THE KEY-BOARD 84 AFTER READING " TAMBURLAINE THE GREAT " . 86 TO A FRIEND 87 EPIGRAM 88 SONNETS FROM " VER TENEBROSUM " — THE SOUDANESE 91 THE ENGLISH DEAD 92 RESTORED ALLEGIANCE 93 GORDON 94 FOREIGN MENACE ....... 95 HOME ROOTEDNESS 96 OUR EASTERN TREASURE 97 NIGHTMARE 98 ART 99 THE LUTE-PLAYER 100 X CONTENTS PAGE beauty's metempsychosis 101 reluctant summer 102 KEATS 103 AT THE GRAVE OF CHARLES LAMB, IN EDMONTON . 104 TO AUSTIN DOBSON 105 LINES IN A FLYLEAF OF " CHRISTABEL " . . . 107 A GOLDEN HOUR 108 BYRON THE VOLUPTUARY . ... . . .110 THE FUGITIVE IDEAL Ill COLUMBUS 112 TO JAMES BROMLEY 114 THE SAINT AND THE SATYR . . . . . .117 "THY VOICE FROM INMOST DREAMLAND calls" . . 119 THE CATHEDRAL SPIRE 120 A DEDICATION 121 THE DREAM OF MAN 125 EPIGRAM • • • • 138 VITA NUOVA 139 THE FIRST SKYLARK OF SPRING 141 NIGHT ON CURBAR EDGE 145 EPIGRAM 146 ODE TO LICINIUS 147 THE PLAY OF " KING LEAR " 150 TELL ME NOT NOW 151 THE FATHER OF THE FOREST 153 EPIGRAM 164 LINES WRITTEN IN RICHMOND PARK . . . .165 THE SOVEREIGN POET 166 THE RUINED ABBEY 167 xi CONTENTS PAGE SONNET 168 ODE TO ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON . . .169 HYMN TO THE SEA 173 EPIGRAM 183 FRANCE 184 A RIDDLE OF THE THAMES 185 THE tear's MINSTRELSY 187 A STUDY IN CONTRASTS 188 TO RICHARD HOLT HUTTON 193 EPIGRAM 195 DOMINE, QUO VADIS ? 196 TO AUBREY DE YERE 202 CHRISTMAS DAY 203 TO A LADY RECOVERED FROM A DANGEROUS SICKNESS 204 A NEW NATIONAL ANTHEM 205 EPIGRAM 207 SONNET 208 "I DO NOT ASK" 209 ODE IN MAY 210 SONG 214 THE WORLD IN ARMOUR 216 TO A FRIEND 219 AN EPITAPH 220 PEACE AND WAR 221 TO ^ . . 222 SONG IN IMITATION OF THE ELIZABETHANS . . 223 EPIGRAM . 225 THE FRONTIER 226 THE LURE 227 xii CONTENTS Pagb EPIGRAM 228 THE PROTEST 229 "SINCE LIFE IS rough" 231 THE TOMB OF BURNS 232 EPIGRAM 242 SONNETS, ETC., FROM " THE TEAR OF SHAME " — TO A LADY 245 THE TIRED LION 246 THE KNELL OF CHIVALRY 247 A TRIAL OF ORTHODOXY 248 TO THE SULTAN 249 ON THE REPORTED EXPULSION FROM FRANCE OF AHMED RIZA, A DISAFFECTED SUBJECT OF THE SULTAN 250 ON A CERTAIN EUROPEAN ALLIANCE . . .251 TO OUR SOVEREIGN LADY 252 EUROPE AT THE PLAY 253 ESTRANGEMENT 255 EPIGRAM 256 THE LOST EDEN ....".... 257 EPIGRAM 259 INVENTION 260 EPIGRAM 261 AN INSCRIPTION AT WINDERMERE .... 262 SONG 264 EPIGRAM 265 ELUSION 266 EPIGRAM 267 xiii CONTENTS PAGE TOO LATE 268 THEY AND WE 270 EPIGRAM 271 THE HEIGHTS AND THE DEEPS 272 THE CAPTIVE'S DREAM 274 TO MRS. HERBERT STUDD 275 THE UNKNOWN GOD 277 TO THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH 282 THE HOPE OP THE WORLD . . . . . . . 283 AFTER DEFEAT 292 TO THE LADY KATHARINE MANNERS .... 294 JUBILEE NIGHT IN WESTMORLAND .... 296 BACH, IN THE FUGUES AND PRELUDES . . . 299 APOLOGIA 300 XIV WORDSWORTH'S GRAVE THE old rude church, with bare, bald tower, is here; Beneath its shadow high-born Rotha flows ; Rotha, remembering well who slumbers near, And with cool murmur lulling his repose. Rotha, remembering well who slumbers near. His hills, his lakes, his streams are with him yet. Surely the heart that read her own heart clear Nature forgets not soon : 'tis we forget. We that with vagrant soul his fixity Have slighted ; faithless, done his deep faith wrong Left him for poorer loves, and bowed the knee To misbegotten strange new gods of song. A WORDSWORTH'S GRAVE Yet, led by hollow ghost or beckoning elf Far from her homestead to the desert bourn, The vagrant soul returning to herself Wearily wise, must needs to him return. To him and to the powers that with him dwell : — Inflowings that divulged not Avhence thev came And that secluded spirit unknowable, The mystery we make darker with a name ; The Somewhat which we name but cannot know, Ev'n as we name a star and only see His quenchless flashings forth, which ever show And ever hide him, and which are not he. II Poet who sleepest by this wandering wave ! When thou wast born, what birth-gift hadst thou then ? To thee what wealth was that the Immortals gave, The wealth thou gavest in thy turn to men ? 2 WORDSWORTH'S GRAVE Not Milton's keen, translunar music thine ; Not Shakespeare's cloudless, boundless human view ; Not Shelley's flush of rose on peaks divine ; Nor yet the wizard twilight Coleridge knew. What hadst thou that could make so large amends For all thou hadst not and thy peers possessed, Motion and fire, swift means to radiant ends ? — Thou hadst, for weary feet, the gift of rest. From Shelley's dazzling glow or thunderous haze, From Byron's tempest-anger, tempest-mirth, Men turned to thee and found — not blast and blaze, Tumult of tottering heavens, but peace on earth. Nor peace that grows by Lethe, scentless flower, There in white languors to decline and cease ; But peace whose names are also rapture, power, Clear sight, and love : for these are parts of peace. 3 WORDSWORTH'S GRAVE III I hear it vouched the Muse is with us still ; — If less divinely frenzied than of yore, In lieu of feelings she has wondrous skill To simulate emotion felt no more. Not such the authentic Presence pure, that made This valley vocal in the great days gone ! — In his great days, while yet the spring-time played About him, and the mighty morning shone. No word-mosaic artificer, he sang A lofty song of lowly weal and dole. Right from the heart, right to the heart it sprang, Or from the soul leapt instant to the soul. He felt the charm of childhood, grace of youth, Grandeur of age, insisting to be sung. The impassioned argument was simple truth Half-wondering at its own melodious tongue. WORDSWORTH'S GRAVE Impassioned ? ay, to the song's ecstatic core ! But far removed were clangour, storm and feud For plenteous health was his, exceeding store Of joy, and an impassioned quietude. IV A hundred years ere he to manhood came, Song from celestial heights had wandered down, Put off* her robe of sunlight, dew and flame, And donned a modish dress to charm the Town. Thenceforth she but festooned the porch of things ; Apt at life's lore, incurious what life meant. Dextrous of hand, she struck her lute's few strings ; Ignobly perfect, barrenly content. Unflushed with ardour and unblanched with awe, Her lips in profitless derision curled, She saw with dull emotion — if she saw — The vision of the glory of the world. 5 WORDSWORTH'S GRAVE The human masque she watched, with dreamless eyes In whose clear shallows lurked no trembling shade : The stars, unkenned by her, might set and rise, Unmarked by her, the daisies bloom and fade. The age grew sated with her sterile wit. Herself waxed weary on her loveless throne. Men felt life's tide, the sweep and surge of it, And craved a living voice, a natural tone. For none the less, though song was but half true, The world lay common, one abounding theme. Man joyed and wept, and late was ever new, And love was sweet, life real, death no dream. In sad stern verse the rugged scholar-sage Bemoaned his toil unvalued, youth uncheered. His numbers wore the vesture of the age, But, 'neath it beating, the great heart was heard. 6 WORDSWORTH'S GRAVE From dewy pastures, uplands sweet witli thyme, A virgin breeze freshened the jaded day. It wafted Collins' lonely vesper-chime, It breathed abroad the frugal note of Gray. It fluttered here and there, nor swept in vain The dusty haunts where futile echoes dwell,— Then, in a cadence soft as summer rain, And sad from Auburn voiceless, drooped and fell. It drooped and fell, and one 'neath northern skies, With southern heart, who tilled his father's field, Found Poesy a-dying, bade her rise And touch quick Nature's hem and go forth healed. On life's broad plain the ploughman's conquering share Upturned the fallow lands of truth anew, And o'er the formal garden's trim parterre The peasant's team a ruthless furrow drew. 7 WORDSWORTH'S GRAVE Bright was his going forth, but clouds ere long Whelmed him ; in gloom his radiance set, and those Twin morning stars of the new century's song, Those morning stars that sang together, rose. In elvish speech the Dreamer told his tale Of marvellous oceans swept by fateful wings. — The Seer strayed not from earth's human pale, But the mysterious face of common things He mirrored as the moon in Rydal Mere Is mirrored, when the breathless night hangs blue : Strangely remote she seems and wondrous near, And by some nameless difference born anew. V Peace — peace — and rest ! Ah, how the lyre is loth, Or powerless now, to give what all men seek ! Either it deadens with ignoble sloth Or deafens with shrill tumult, loudly weak. 8 WORDSWORTH'S GRAVE Where is the singer whose large notes and clear Can heal and arm and plenish and sustain ? Lo, one with empty music floods the ear, And one, the heart refreshing, tires the brain. And idly tuneful, the loquacious throng Flutter and twitter, prodigal of time, And little masters make a toy of song Till grave men weary of the sound of rhyme. And some go prankt in faded antique dress, Abhorring to be hale and glad and free ; And some parade a conscious naturalness, The scholar's not the child's simplicity. Enough ; — and wisest who from words forbear. The kindly river rails not as it glides ; And suave and charitable, the winning air Chides not at all, or only him who chides. 9 WORDSWORTH'S GRAVE VI Nature ! we storm thine ear with choric notes. Thou answerest through the calm great nights and clays, " Laud me who will : not tuneless are your throats ; Yet if ye paused I should not miss the praise." We falter, half-rebuked, and sing again. We chant thy desertness and haggard gloom, Or with thy splendid wrath inflate the strain, Or touch it with thy colour and perfume. One, his melodious blood aflame for thee, Wooed with fierce lust, his hot heart world-defiled. One, with the upward eye of infancy, Looked in thy face, and felt himself thy child. Thee he approached without distrust or dread — Beheld thee throned, an awful queen, above — Climbed to thy lap and merely laid his head Against thy warm wild heart of mother-love. 10 WORDSWORTH'S GRAVE He heard that vast heart beating — thou didst press Thy child so close, and lov'dst him unaware. Thy beauty gladdened him ; yet he scarce less Had loved thee, had he never found thee fair ! For thou wast not as legendary lands To which with curious eyes and ears we roam. Nor wast thou as a fane 'mid solemn sands, Where palmers halt at evening. Thou wast home. And here, at home, still bides he ; but he sleeps; Not to be wakened even at thy word ; Though we, vague dreamers, dream he somewhere keeps An ear still open to thy voice still heard, — Thy voice, as heretofore, about him blown, For ever blown about his silence now ; Thy voice, though deeper, yet so like his own That almost, when he sang, we deemed 'twas thou ! 11 WORDSWORTH'S GRAVE VII Behind Helm Ci*ag and Silver Howe the sheen Of the retreating day is less and less. Soon will the lordlier summits, here unseen, Gather the night about their nakedness. The half-heard bleat of sheep comes from the hill. Faint sounds of childish play are in the air. The river murmurs past. All else is still. The very graves seem stiller than they were. Afar though nation be on nation hurled, And life with toil and ancient pain depressed, Here one may scarce believe the whole wide world Is not at peace, and all man's heart at rest. Rest ! 'twas the gift he gave ; and peace ! the shade He spread, for spirits fevered with the sun. To him his bounties are come back — here laid In rest, in peace, his labour nobly done. 1884-87. 12 SHELLEY'S CENTENARY SHELLEY'S CENTENARY (4th August 1S92) \\^ITHIN a narrow span of time, Three princes of the realm of rhyme, At height of youth or manhood's prime From earth took wing, To join the fellowship sublime Who, dead, yet sing. He, first, his earliest wreath who wove Of laurel grown in Latmian grove, Conquered by pain and hapless love Found calmer home, Roofed by the heaven that glows above Eternal Rome. 13 SHELLEY'S CENTENARY A fierier soul, its own fierce prey, And cumbered with more mortal clay, At Missolonghi flamed away, And left the air Reverberating to this day Its loud despair. Alike remote from Byron's scorn And Keats's magic as of morn Bursting for ever newly-born On forests old, To wake a hoary world forlorn With touch of gold, Shelley, the cloud-begot, who grew Nourished on air and sun and dew, Into that Essence whence he drew His life and lyre Was fittingly resolved anew Through wave and fire. 14 SHELLEY'S CENTENARY 'Twas like his rapid soul ! 'Twas meet Tliat he, who brooked not Time's slow feet, With passage thus abrupt and fleet Should hurry hence, Eager the Great Perhaps to greet With Why ? and Whence ? Impatient of the world's fixed way, He ne'er could suffer God's delay, But all the future in a day Would build divine, And the whole past in ruins lay, An emptied shrine. Vain vision ! but the glow, the fire, The passion of benign desire, The glorious yearning, lift him higher Than many a soul That mounts a million paces nigher Its meaner goal. 15 SHELLEY'S CENTENARY And power is his, if naught besides, In that thin ether where he rides, Above the roar of human tides To ascend afar, Lost in a storm of light that hides His dizzy car. Below, the unhasting world toils on, And here and there are victories won, Some dragon slain, some justice done, While, through the skies, A meteor rushing on the sun, He flares and dies. But, as he cleaves yon ether clear, Notes from the unattempted Sphere He scatters to the enchanted ear Of earth's dim throng, Whose dissonance doth more endear The showering song. 16 SHELLEY'S CENTENARY In other shapes than he forecast The world is moulded : his fierce blast, — His wild assault upon the Past, — These things are vain ; Revolt is transient : what must last Is that pure strain, Which seems the wandering voices blent Of every virgin element, — A sound from ocean caverns sent, — ■ An airy call From the pavilioned firmament O'erdoming all. And in this world of worldlings, where Souls rust in apathy, and ne'er A great emotion shakes the air, And life flags tame, And rare is noble impulse, rare The impassioned aim, 17 b SHELLEY'S CENTENARY "lis no mean fortune to have heard A singer who, if errors blurred His sight, had yet a spirit stirred By vast desire, And ardour fledging the swift word With plumes of fire. A creature of impetuous breath. Our torpor deadlier than death He knew not ; whatsoe'er he saith Flashes with life : He spurreth men, he quickeneth To splendid strife. And in his gusts of song he brings Wild odours shaken from strange wings, And unfamiliar whisperings From far lips blown, While all the rapturous heait of things Throbs through his own, — 18 SHELLEY'S CENTENARY His own that from the burning pyre One who had loved his wind-swept lyre Out of the sharp teeth of the fire Uinnolten drew, Beside the sea that in her ire Smote him and slew. 19 LACHRYMAL MUSARUM LACHRYMAL MUSARUM (6th October 1892) [" OW, like another's, lies the laurelled head : The life that seemed a perfect song is o'er : Carry the last great bard to his last bed. Land that he loved, thy noblest voice is mute. Land that he loved, that loved him ! nevermore Meadow of thine, smooth lawn or wild sea-shore, Gardens of odorous bloom and tremulous fruit, Or woodlands old, like Druid couches spread, The master's feet shall tread. Death's little rift hath rent the faultless lute : The singer of undying songs is dead. Lo, in this season pensive-hued and grave, While fades and falls the doomed, reluctant leaf 20 LACHRYM^ MUSARUM From withered Earth's fantastic coronal, With wandering sighs of forest and of wave Mingles the murmur of a people's grief For him whose leaf shall fade not, neither fall. He hath fared forth, beyond these suns and showers. For us, the autumn glow, the autumn flame, And soon the winter silence shall be ours : Him the eternal spring of fadeless fame Crowns with no mortal flowers. What needs his laurel our ephemeral tears, To save from visitation of decay ? Not in this temporal light alone, that bay Blooms, nor to perishable mundane ears Sings he with lips of transitory clay. Rapt though he be from us, Virgil salutes him, and Theocritus ; Catullus, mightiest-brained Lucretius, each Greets him, their brother, on the Stygian beach ; Proudly a gaunt i*ight hand doth Dante reach ; Milton and Wordsworth bid him welcome home ; 21 LACHRYM^ MUSARUM Keats, on his lips the eternal rose of youth, Doth in the name of Beauty that is Truth A kinsman's love heseech ; Coleridge, his locks aspersed with fairy foam, Calm Spenser, Chaucer suave, His equal friendship crave : And godlike spirits hail him guest, in speech Of Athens, Florence, Weimar, Stratford, Rome. He hath returned to regions whence he came. Him doth the spirit divine Of universal loveliness reclaim. All nature is his shrine. Seek him henceforward in the wind and sea, In earth's and air's emotion or repose, In every star's august serenity, And in the rapture of the flaming rose. There seek him if ye would not seek in vain, Thore, in the rhythm and music of the Whole ; Yea, and for ever in the human soul Made stronger and more beauteous by his strain. 22 LACHRYMiE MUSARUM For lo ! creation's self is one great choir, And what is nature's order but the rhyme Whereto in holiest unanimity All things with all things move unfalteringly, Infolded and communal from their prime ? Who shall expound the mystery of the lyre ? In far retreats of elemental mind Obscurely comes and goes The imperative breath of song, that as the wind Is trackless, and oblivious whence it blows. Demand of lilies wherefore they are white, Extort her crimson secret from the rose, But ask not of the Muse that she disclose The meaning of the riddle of her might : Somewhat of all things sealed and recondite, Save the enigma of herself, she knows. The master could not tell, with all his lore, Wherefore he sang, or whence the mandate sped : Ev'n as the linnet sings, so I, he said ;— Ah, rather as the imperial nightingale, 23 LACHRYM^ MUSARUM That held in trance the ancient Attic shore, And charms the ages with the notes that o'er All woodland chants immortally prevail ! And now, from our vain plaudits greatly fled, He with diviner silence dwells instead, And on no earthly sea with transient roar, Unto no earthly airs, he trims his sail, But far beyond our vision and our hail Is heard for ever and is seen no more. No more, O never now, Lord of the lofty and the tranquil brow Whereon nor snows of time Have fall'n, nor wintry rime, Shall men behold thee, sage and mage sublime. Once, in his youth obscure, The maker of this verse, which shall endure By splendour of its theme that cannot die, Beheld thee eye to eye, And touched through thee the hand Of every hero of thy race divine, Ev'n to the sire of all the laurelled line, 24 LACHRYM^E MUSARUM The sightless wanderer on the Ionian strand. With soul as healthful as the poignant brine, Wide as his skies and radiant as his seas, Starry from haunts of his Familiars nine, Glorious Mseonides. Yea, I beheld thee, and behold thee yet : Thou hast forgotten, but can I forget ? The accents of thy pure and sovereign tongue. Are they not ever goldenly impressed On memory's palimpsest ? I see the wizard locks like night that hunff, I tread the floor thy hallowing feet have trod ; I see the hands a nation's lyre that strung, The eyes that looked through life and gazed on God. The seasons change, the winds they shift and veer ; The grass of yesteryear Is dead ; the birds depart, the groves decay : Empires dissolve and peoples disappear : Song passes not away. 25 LACHRYM^E MUSARUM Captains and conquerors leave a little dust, And kings a dubious legend of their reign ; The swords of Caesars, they are less than rust : The poet doth remain. Dead is Augustus, Maro is alive ; And thou, the Mantuan of our age and clime, Like Virgil shalt thy race and tongue survive, Bequeathing no less honeyed words to time, Embalmed in amber of eternal rhyme, And rich with sweets from every Muse's hive ; While to the measure of the cosmic rune For purer ears thou shalt thy lyre attune, And heed no more the hum of idle praise In that great calm our tumults cannot reach, Master who crown'st our immelodious days With flower of perfect speech. 26 TO EDWARD DOWDEN TO EDWARD DOWDEN On receiving from him a Copy of "The Life of Shelley " THIRST, ere I slake my hunger, let me thank The giver of the feast. For feast it is, Though of ethereal, transl unary fare — His story who pre-eminently of men Seemed nourished upon starbeams and the stuff Of rainbows, and the tempest, and the foam ; Who hardly brooked on his impatient soul The fleshly trammels; whom at last the sea Gave to the fire, from whose wild arms the winds Took him, and shook him broadcast to the world. In my young days of fervid poesy He drew me to him with his strange far liffht, — He held me in a world all clouds and gleams, 27 TO EDWARD DOWDEN And vasty phantoms, where ev'n Man himself Moved like a phantom 'mid the clouds and gleams. Anon the Earth recalled me, and a voice Murmuring of dethroned divinities And dead times deathless upon sculptured urn — And Philomela's long-descended pain Flooding the night — and maidens of romance To whom asleep St. Agnes' love-dreams come — Awhile constrained me to a sweet duresse And thraldom, lapping me in high content, Soft as the bondage of white amorous arms. And then a third voice, long unheeded — held Claustral and cold, and dissonant and tame — Found me at last with ears to hear. It sang Of lowly sorrows and familiar joys, Of simple manhood, artless womanhood, And childhood fragrant as the limpid morn ; And from the homely matter nigh at hand Ascending and dilating, it disclosed Spaces and avenues, calm heights and breadths Of vision, whence I saw each blade of grass With roots that groped about eternity, 28 TO EDWARD DOWDEN And in each chop of dew upon each blade The minor of the inseparable All. The first voice; then the second, in their turns Had sung me captive. This voice sang me tree. Therefore, above all vocal sons of men, Since him whose sightless eyes saw hell and heaven, To Wordsworth be my homage, thanks, and love. Yet dear is Keats, a lucid presence, great With somewhat of a glorious soullessness. And dear, and great with an excess of soul, Shelley, the hectic flamelike rose of verse, All colour, and all odour, and all bloom, Steeped in the noonlight, glutted with the sun, But somewhat lacking root in homely earth, Lacking such human moisture as bedews His not less starward stem of song, who, rapt Not less in glowing vision, yet retained His clasp of the prehensible, retained The warm touch of the world that lies to hand, Not in vague dreams of man forgetting men, Nor in vast morrows losing the to-day ; Who trusted nature, trusted fate, nor found 29 TO EDWARD DOWDEN An Ogre, sovereign on the throne of things ; Who felt the incumhence of the unknown, yet bore Without resentment the Divine reserve ; Who suffered not his spirit to dash itself Against the crags and wavelike break in spray, But 'midst the infinite tranquillities Moved tranquil, and henceforth, by Rotha stream And Rydal's mountain-mirror, and where flows Yarrow thrice sung or Duddon to the sea, And wheresoe'er man's heart is thrilled by tones Struck from man's lyric heartstrings, shall survive. 30 EPIGRAM 'TUS human fortune's happiest height, to be A spirit melodious, lucid, poised, and whole Second in order of felicity I hold it, to have walk'd with such a soul. 31 AUTUMN AUTUMN '"PHOU burden of all songs the earth hath sung, Thou retrospect in Time's reverted eyes, Thou metaphor of everything that dies, That dies ill-starred, or dies beloved and young And therefore blest and wise, — O be less beautiful, or be less brief, Thou tragic splendour, strange, and full of fear ! In vain her pageant shall the Summer rear ? At thy mute signal, leaf by golden leaf, Crumbles the gorgeous year. Ah, ghostly as remembered mirth, the tale Of Summer's bloom, the legend of the Spring ! And thou, too, flutterest an impatient wing, Thou presence yet more fugitive and frail, Thou most unbodied thing, AUTUMN Whose very being is thy going hence, And passage and departure all thy theme ; Whose life doth still a splendid dying seem, And thou at height of thy magnificence A figment and a dream. Stilled is the virgin rapture that was June, And cold is August's panting heart of fire; And in the storm-dismantled forest-choir For thine own elegy thy winds attune Their wild and wizard lyre : And poignant grows the charm of thy decay, The pathos of thy beauty, and the sting, Thou parable of greatness vanishing ! For me, thy woods of gold and skies of grey With speech fantastic ring. For me, to dreams resigned, thei - e come and go, 'Twixt mountains draped and hooded night and morn, Elusive notes in wandering wafture borne, 33 c AUTUMN From undiscoverable lips that blow An immaterial horn ; And spectral seem thy winter-boding trees, Thy ruinous bowers and drifted foliage wet- O Past and Future in sad bridal met, O voice of everything that perishes, And soul of all regret ! 34 WORLD-STRANGENESS WORLD-STRANGENESS CTRANGE the world about me lies, Never yet familiar grown — Still disturbs me with surprise, Haunts me like a face half known. In this house with starry dome, Floored with gemlike plains and seas, Shall I never feel at home, Never wholly be at ease ? On from room to room I stray, Yet my Host can ne'er espy, And I know not to this day Whether guest or captive 1. 35 WORLD-STRANGENESS So, between the starry dome And the floor of plains and seas, I have never felt at home, Never wholly been at ease. 36 EPIGRAM '"THE statue — Buonarotti said — doth wait, Thrall'd in the block, for me to emancipate. The poem — saith the poet — wanders free Till I betray it to captivity. 37 THE MOCK SELF THE MOCK SELF Tj^EW friends are mine, though many wights there be Who, meeting oft a phantasm that makes claim To be myself, and hath my face and name, And whose thin fraud I wink at privily, Account this light impostor very me. What boots it undeceive them, and proclaim Myself myself, and whelm this cheat with shame ? I care not, so he leave my true self free, Impose not on me also ; but alas ! I too, at fault, bewildered, sometimes take Him for myself, and far from mine own sight, Torpid, indifferent, doth mine own self pass ; And yet anon leaps suddenly awake, And spurns the gibbering mime into the night. ENGLAND AND HER COLONIES ENGLAND AND HER COLONIES QUE stands, a thousand-wintered tree, By countless morns impearled ; Her broad roots coil beneath the sea, Her branches sweep the world ; Her seeds, by careless winds conveyed, Clothe the remotest strand With forests from her scatterings made, New nations fostered in her shade, And linking land with land. O ye by wandering tempest sown 'Neath every alien star, Forget not whence the breath was blown That wafted you afar ! 39 ENGLAND AND HER COLONIES For ye are still her ancient seed On younger soil let fall — Children of Britain's island-breed, To whom the Mother in her need Perchance may one day call. 40 TO A POET TO A POET HPIME, the extortioner, from richest beauty Takes heavy toll and wrings rapacious duty. Austere of feature if thou carve thy rhyme, Perchance 'twill pay the lesser tax to Time. 41 "WHEN BIRDS WERE SONGLESS V\7^HEN birds were songless on the bough I heard thee sing. The world was full of winter, thou Wert full of spring. To-day the world's heart feels anew The vernal thrill, And thine beneath the rueful yew Is wintry chill. 42 FELICITY FELICITY A SQUALID, hideous town, where streams run black With vomit of a hundred roaring mills, — Hither occasion calls me ; and ev'n here, All in the sable reek that wantonly Defames the sunlight and deflowers the morn, One may at least surmise the sky still blue. Ev'n here, the myriad slaves of the machine Deem life a boon ; and here, in days far sped, I overheard a kind-eyed girl relate To her companions, how a favouring chance By some few shillings weekly had increased The earnings of her household, and she said : " So now we are happy, having all we wished," — Felicity indeed ! though more it lay In wanting little than in winning all. 43 FELICITY Felicity indeed ! Across the years To me her tones come back, rebuking ; me, Spreader of toils to snare the wandering Joy No guile may capture and no force surprise — Only by them that never wooed her, won. O curst with wide desires and spacious dreams, Too cunningly do ye accumulate Appliances and means of happiness, E'er to be happy ! Lavish hosts, ye make Elaborate preparation to receive A shy and simple guest, who, warned of all The ceremony and circumstance wherewith Ye mean to entertain her, will not come. 44 IN LALEHAM CHURCHYARD IN LALEHAM CHURCHYARD* (18th August 1890) "T^WAS at this season, year by year, The singer who lies songless here Was wont to woo a less austere, Less deep repose, Where Rotha to Winandermere Unresting flows, — Flows through a land where torrents call To far-off torrents as they fall, And mountains in their cloudy pall Keep ghostly state, And Nature makes majestical Man's lowliest fate. The burial-place of Matthew Arnold. 45 IN LALEHAM CHURCHYARD There, 'mid the August glow, still came He of the twice-illustrious name, The loud impertinence of fame Not loth to flee — Not loth with brooks and fells to claim Fraternity. Linked with his happy youthful lot, Is Loughrigg, then, at last forgot ? Nor silent peak nor dalesman's cot Looks on his grave. Lulled by the Thames he sleeps, and not By Rotha's wave. 'Tis fittest thus ! for though with skill He sang of beck and tarn and ghyll, The deep, authentic mountain-thrill Ne'er shook his page ! Somewhat of worldling mingled still With bard and sage. 46 IN LALEHAM CHURCHYARD And 'twere less meet for him to lie Guarded by summits lone and high That traffic with the eternal sky And hear, unawed, The everlasting fingers ply The loom of God, Than, in this hamlet of the plain, A less sublime repose to gain, Where Nature, genial and urbane, To man defers, Yielding to us the right to reign, Which yet is hers. And nigh to where his bones abide, The Thames with its unruffled tide Seems like his genius typified, — Its strength, its grace, Its lucid gleam, its sober pride, Its tranquil pace. 47 IN LALEHAM CHURCHYARD But ah ! not his the eventual fate Which cloth the journeying wave await- Doomed to resign its limpid state And quickly grow Turbid as passion, dark as hate, And wide as woe. Rather, it may be, over-much He shunned the common stain and smutch, From soil ure of ignoble touch Too grandly free, Too loftily secure in such' Cold purity. But he preserved from chance control The fortress of his 'stablisht soul ; In all things sought to see the Whole Brooked no disguise ; And set his heart upon the goal, Not on the prize. 48 IN LALEHAM CHURCHYARD With those Elect he shall survive Who seem not to compete or strive, Yet with the foremost still arrive, Prevailing still : Spirits with whom the stars connive To work their will. And ye, the baffled many, who, Dejected, from afar oft' view The easily victorious feAV Of calm renown, — Have ye not your sad glory too, And mournful crown ? Great is the facile conqueror; Yet haply he, who, wounded sore, Breathless, unhorsed, all covered o'er With blood and sweat, Sinks foiled, but fighting evermore, Is greater yet. 49 LIFE WITHOUT HEALTH LIFE WITHOUT HEALTH TOEHOLD life builded as a goodly house And grown a mansion ruinous With winter blowing through its crumbling walls ! The master paceth up and down his halls, And in the empty hours Can hear the tottering of his towers And tremor of their bases underground. And oft he starts and looks around At creaking of a distant door Or echo of his footfall on the floor, Thinking it may be one whom he awaits And hath for many days awaited, Coming to lead him through the mouldering gates Out somewhere, from his home dilapidated. 50 THE FLIGHT OF YOUTH THE FLIGHT OF YOUTH VOUTH ! ere thou be flown away, Surely one last boon to-day Thou'lt bestow — One last light of rapture give, Rich and lordly fugitive ! Ere thou go. What, thou canst not ? What, all spent ? All thy spells of ravishment Pow'rless now ? Gone thy magic out of date ? Gone, all gone that made thee great ? — Follow thou ! 51 EPIGRAM ^HE Poet gathers fruit from every tree, Yea, grapes from thorns and figs from thistles he. Pluck'd by his hand, the basest weed that grows Towers to a lily, reddens to a rose. 52 "UNDER THE DARK AND PINY STEEP" TNDER the dark and piny steep We watched the storm crash by : We saw the bright brand leap and leap Out of the shattered sky. The elements were minist'ring To make one mortal blest ; For, peal by peal, you did but cling The closer to his breast. 53 "NAY, BID ME NOT" "VTAY, bid me not my caves to leave. Who cannot from their shadow flee. I do but win a short reprieve, 'Scaping to pleasure and to thee. I may, at best, a moment's grace, And grant of liberty, obtain ; Respited for a little space, To go back into bonds again. 54 A PRELUDE A PRELUDE rPHE mighty poets from their flowing store Dispense like casual alms the careless ore ; Through throngs of men their lonely way they go, Let fall their costly thoughts, nor seem to know. — Not mine the rich and showering hand, that strews The facile largess of a stintless Muse. A fitful presence, seldom tarrying long, Capriciously she touches me to song — ■ Then leaves me to lament her flight in vain, And wonder will she ever come again. 55 ON LANDOR'S "HELLENICS ON LANDOR'S "HELLENICS" /^OME hither, who grow clo}'ed to surfeiting With lyric draughts o'ersweet, from rills that rise On Hybla not Parnassus mountain : come With beakers rinsed of the dulcifluous wave Hither, and see a magic miracle Of happiest science, the bland Attic skies True-mirrored by an English well ; — no stream Whose heaven-belying surface makes the stars Reel, with its restless idiosyncrasy ; But well unstirred, save when at times it takes Tribute of lovers' eyelids, and at times Bubbles with laughter of some sprite below. 56 ENGLAND MY MOTHER ENGLAND MY MOTHER "PNGLAND my mother, Wardress of waters, Builder of peoples, Maker of men, — Hast thou yet leisure Left for the muses ? Heed'st thou the songsmith Forging the rhyme ? Deafened with tumults, How canst thou hearken ? Strident is faction, Demos is loud. 57 ENGLAND MY MOTHER Lazarus, hungry, Menaces Dives ; Labour the giant Chafes in his hold. Yet do the songsmiths Quit not their forges ; Still on life's anvil Forge they the rhyme. Still the rapt faces Glow from the furnace : Breath of the smithy Scorches their brows. Yea, and thou hear'st them ? So shall the hammers Fashion not vainly Verses of gold. 58 ENGLAND MY MOTHER II Lo, with the ancient Roots of man's nature Twines the eternal Passion of song. Ever Love fans it, Ever Life feeds it ; Time cannot age it, Death cannot slay. Deep in the world-heart Stand its foundations, Tangled with all things, Twin-made with all. Nay, what is Nature's Self, but an endless Strife toward music, Euphony, rhyme ? 59 ENGLAND MY MOTHER Trees in their blooming, Tides in their flowing, Stars in their circling, Tremble with song. God on His throne is Eldest of poets : Unto His measures Moveth the Whole. Ill Therefore deride not Speech of the muses, England my mother, Maker of men. Nations are mortal, Fragile is greatness ■ Fortune may fly thee, Song shall not fly. 60 ENGLAND MY MOTHER Song the all-girdling, Song cannot perish : Men shall make music, Man shall give ear. Not while the choric Chant of creation Floweth from all things, Poured without pause, Cease we to echo Faintly the descant Whereto for ever Dances the world. IV So let the songsmith Proffer his rhyme-gift, England my mother, Maker of men. 61 ENGLAND MY MOTHER Grey grows thy count' nance, Full of the ages ; Time on thy forehead Sits like a dream : Song is the potion All things renewing, Youth's one elixir, Fountain of morn. Thou, at the world-loom Weaving thy future, Fitly may'st temper Toil with delight. Deemest thou, labour Only is earnest ? Grave is all beauty, Solemn is joy. 62 ENGLAND MY MOTHER Song is no bauble — Slight not the songsmith, England my mother, Maker of men. 63 "SCENTLESS FLOW'RS I BRING THEE" SCENTLESS flow'rs I bring thee— yet In thy bosom be they set ; In thy bosom each one grows Fragrant beyond any rose. Sweet enough were she who could, In thy heart's sweet neighbourhood, Some redundant sweetness thus Borrow from that overplus. 64 SHELLEY AND HARRIET SHELLEY AND HARRIET A STAR look'd down from heaven and loved a flower Grown in earth's garden — loved it for an hour. Let eyes that trace his orbit in the spheres Refuse not, to a ruin'd rosebud, tears. 65 "AND THESE— ARE THESE INDEED" AND these — are these indeed the end. This grinning skull, this heavy loam ? Do all green ways whereby we wend Lead but to yon ignoble home ? Ah well ! thine eyes invite to bliss ; Thy lips are hives of summer still. I ask not other worlds while this Proffers me all the sweets I will. 66 THE RAVEN'S SHADOW THE RAVEN'S SHADOW ^EABIRD, elemental sprite, Moulded of the sun and spray — Raven, dreaiy flake of night Drifting in the eye of day — What in common have ye two, Meeting 'twixt the blue and blue ? Thou to eastward earnest The keen savour of the foam,— Thou dost bear unto the west Fragrance from thy woody home, Where perchance a house is thine Odorous of the oozy pine. 67 THE RAVEN'S SHADOW Eastward thee thy proper cares, Things of mighty moment, call ; Thee to westward thine affairs Summon, weighty matters all : I, where land and sea contest, Watch you eastward, watch you west, Till, in snares of fancy caught, Mystically changed ye seem, And the bird becomes a thought, And the thought becomes a dream, And the dream, outspread on high, Lords it o'er the abject sky. Surely I have known before Phantoms of the shapes ye be — Haunters of another shore 'Leaguered by another sea. There my wanderings night and morn Reconcile me to the bourn. 68 THE RAVEN'S SHADOW There the bird of happy wings Wafts the ocean-news I crave ; Rumours of an isle he brings Gemlike on the golden wave : But the baleful beak and plume Scatter immelodious gloom. Though the flow'rs be faultless made, Perfectly to live and die- Though the bright clouds bloom and fade Flow'rlike 'midst a meadowy sky — Where this raven roams forlorn Veins of midnight flaw the morn. He not less will croak and croak As he ever caws and caws, Till the starry dance be broke, Till the sphery paean pause, And the universal chime Falter out of tune and time. 69 THE RAVEN'S SHADOW Coils the labyrinthine sea Duteous to the lunar will, But some discord stealthily Vexes the world-ditty still, And the bird that caws and caws Clasps creation with his claws. 70 ANTONY AT ACTIUM ANTONY AT ACTIUM TE holds a dubious balance :— yet that scale, Whose freight the world is, surely shall prevail ? No ; Cleopatra droppeth into this One counterpoising orient sultry kiss. 71 THE GLIMPSE THE GLIMPSE TUST for a day you crossed my life's dull track, Put my ignobler dreams to sudden shame, Went your bright way, and left me to fall back On my own world of poorer deed and aim ; To fall back on my meaner world, and feel Like one who, dwelling 'mid some smoke- dimmed town, — In a brief pause of labour's sullen wheel, — 'Scaped from the street's dead dust and factory's frown, — In stainless daylight saw the pure seas roll, Saw mountains pillaring the perfect sky : Then journeyed home, to carry in his soul The torment of the difference till he die. 72 TO A SEABIKI) TO A SEABIRD T^AIN would I have thee barter fates with me,— Lone loiterer where the shells like jewels be, Hung on the fringe and frayed hem of the sea. But no, — 'twere cruel, wild-wing' d Bliss ! to thee. 73 "WELL HE SLUMBERS, GREATLY SLAIN T^[/"ELL he slumbers, greatly slain, Who in splendid battle dies ; Deep his sleep in midmost main Pillowed upon pearl who lies. Ease, of all good gifts the best, War and wave at last decree : Love alone denies us rest, Crueller than sword or sea. 74 LUX PERDITA LUX PERDITA ^HINE were the weak, slight hands That might have taken this strong soul, and bent Its stubborn substance to thy soft intent, And bound it unresisting, with such bands As not the arm of envious heaven had rent. Thine were the calming eyes That round my pinnace could have stilled the sea, And drawn thy voyager home, and bid him be Pure with their pureness, with their wisdom wise, Merged in their light, and greatly lost in thee. But thou — thou passed'st on, With whiteness clothed of dedicated days, Cold, like a star ; and me in alien ways Thou leftest following life's chance lure, where shone The wandering gleam that beckons and betrays. 75 "THINGS THAT ARE MORE EXCELLENT "THE THINGS THAT ARE MORE EXCELLENT " AS we wax older on this earth, Till many a toy that charmed us seems Emptied of beauty, stripped of worth, And mean as dust and dead as dreams, — For gauds that perished, shows that passed, Some recompense the Fates have sent : Thrice lovelier shine the things that last, The things that are more excellent. Tired of the Senate's barren brawl, An hour with silence we prefer, Where statelier rise the woods than all Yon towers of talk at Westminster. 76 "THINGS THAT ARE MORE EXCELLENT" Let this man prate and that man plot, On fame or place or title bent : The votes of veering crowds are not The things that are more excellent. Shall we perturb and vex our soul For "wrongs" which no true freedom mar, Which no man's upright walk control, And from no guiltless deed debar? What odds though tonguesters heal, or leave Unhealed, the grievance they invent ? To things, not phantoms, let us cleave — The things that are more excellent. Nought nobler is, than to be free : The stars of heaven are free because In amplitude of liberty Their joy is to obey the laws. From servitude to freedom's name Free thou thy mind in bondage pent ; Depose the fetich, and proclaim The things that are more excellent. 77 "THINGS THAT ARE MORE EXCELLENT" And in appropriate dust be hurled That dull, punctilious god, whom they That call their tiny clan the world. Serve and obsequiously obey : Who con their ritual of Routine, With minds to one dead likeness blent, And never ev'n in dreams have seen The things that are more excellent. To dress, to call, to dine, to break No canon of the social code, The little laws that lacqueys make, The futile decalogue of Mode, — How many a soul for these things lives, With pious passion, grave intent ! While Nature careless-handed gives The things that are more excellent. To hug the wealth ye cannot use, And lack the riches all may gain, — O blind and wanting wit to choose, Who house the chaff and burn the grain ! 78 "THINGS THAT ARE MORE EXCELLENT And still doth life with starry towers Lure to the bright, divine ascent ! — Be yours the things ye would : be ours The things that are more excellent. The grace of friendship — mind and heart Linked with their fellow heart and mind The gains of science, gifts of art ; The sense of oneness with our kind ; The thirst to know and understand — A large and liberal discontent : These are the goods in life's rich hand, The things that are more excellent. In faultless rhythm the ocean rolls, A rapturous silence thrills the skies ; And on this earth are lovely souls, That softly look with aidful eyes. Though dark, O God, Thy course and track, I think Thou must at least have meant That nought which lives should wholly lack The things that are more excellent. 79 EPIGRAM FN youth the artist voweth lover's vows To Art, in manhood maketh her his spouse. Well if her charms yet hold for him such joy As when he craved some boon and she was coy ! 80 THE GREAT MISGIVING THE GREAT MISGIVING "~VTOT ours/' say some, "the thought of death to dread ; Asking no heaven, we fear no fabled hell : Life is a feast, and we have banqueted — Shall not the worms as well ? " The after-silence, when the feast is o'er, And void the places where the minstrels stood, Differs in nought from what hath been before, And is nor ill nor good." Ah, but the Apparition — the dumb sign — The beckoning finger bidding me forego The fellowship, the converse, and the wine, The songs, the festal glow ! 81 F THE GREAT MISGIVING And ah, to know not, while with friends I sit, And while the purple joy is passed about, Whether 'tis ampler day divinelier lit Or homeless night without ; And whether, stepping forth, my soul shall see New prospects, or fall sheer — a blinded thing ! There is, O grave, thy hourly victory, And there, O death, thy sting. 82 TO LORD TENNYSON TO LORD TENNYSON (With a Volume of Verse) ]\ TASTER and mage, our prince of song, whom Time In this your autumn mellow and serene. Crowns ever with fresh laurels, not less green Than garlands dewy from your verdurous prime ; Heir of the riches of the whole world's rhyme, Dow Yd with the Attic grace, the Mantuan mien, With Arno's depth and Avon's golden sheen ; Singer to whom the singing ages climb, Convergent ; — if the youngest of the choir May snatch a flying splendour from your name, Making his page illustrious, and aspire For one rich moment your regard to claim, Suffer him at your feet to lay his lyre And touch the skirts and fringes of your fame. THE KEY-BOARD THE KEY-BOARD J^IVE-AND-THIRTY black slaves, Half-a-hundred white, All their duty but to sing For their Queen's delight, Now with throats of thunder, Now with dulcet lips, While she rules them royally With her finger-tips ! When she quits her palace, All the slaves are dumb- Dumb with dolour till the Queen Back to Court is come : 84 THE KEY-BOARD Dumb the throats of thunder, Dumb the dulcet lips, Lacking all the sovereignty Of her finger-tips. Dusky slaves and pallid, Ebon slaves and white, When the Queen was on her throne How you sang to-night ! Ah, the throats of thunder ! Ah, the dulcet lips ! Ah, the gracious tyrannies Of her finger-tips ! Silent, silent, silent, All your voices now ; Was it then her life alone Did your life endow ? Waken, throats of thunder ! Waken, dulcet lips ! Touched to immortality By her finger-tips, 85 "TAMBURLAINE THE GREAT" AFTER READING "TAMBURLAINE THE GREAT" X^OUR Marlowe's page I close, my Shakespeare's ope. How welcome — after gong and cymbal's din — The continuity, the long slow slope And vast curves of the gradual violin ! 86 TO A FRIEND TO A FRIEND Chafing at enforced Idleness from interrupted health QOON may the edict lapse, that on you lays This dire compulsion of infertile days, This hardest penal toil, reluctant rest ! Meanwhile I count you eminently blest, Happy from labours heretofore well done, Happy in tasks auspiciously begun. For they are blest that have not much to rue — That have not oft mis-heard the prompter's cue, Stammered and stumbled and the wrong parts played And life a Tragedy of Errors made. 87 EPIGRAM T^O keep in sight Perfection, and adore The vision, is the artist's best delight ; His bitterest pang, that he can ne'er do more Than keep her long'd-for loveliness in sight. 88 SONNETS FROM "VER TENEBROSUM" The eight sonnets here following are from a series of fifteen, arising out of events of March and April, 1885, and originally published in June of that year. SONNETS FROM «VER TENEBROSUM " THE SOUDANESE T^HEY wrong'd not us, nor sought 'gainst us to wage The bitter battle. On their God they cried For succour, deeming justice to abide In heaven, if banish'd from earth's vicinage. And when they rose with a gall'd lion's rage, We, on the captor's, keeper's, tamer's side, We, with the alien tyranny allied, We bade them back to their Egyptian cage. Scarce knew they who we were ! A wind of blight From the mysterious far north-west we came. Our greatness now their veriest babes have learn'd, Where, in wild desert homes, by day, by night, Thousands that weep their warriors unreturn'tl, O England, O my country , curse thy name ! 91 SONNETS FROM "VER TENEBROSUM " THE ENGLISH DEAD ^j_IVE honour to our heroes fall'n, how ill Soe'er the cause that bade them forth to die. Honour to him, the untimely struck, whom high In place, more high in hope, 'twas fate's harsh will With tedious pain unsplendidly to kill. Honour to him, doom'd splendidly to die, Child of the city whose foster-child am I, Who, hotly leading up the ensanguin'd hill His charging thousand, fell without a word- Fell, but shall fall not from our memory. Also for them let honour's voice be heard Who nameless sleep, while dull time covereth With no illustrious shade of laurel tree, But with the poppy alone, their deeds and death. 92 SONNETS FROM "VER TENEBROSUM" RESTORED ALLEGIANCE P)ARK is thy trespass, deep be thy remorse, O England ! Fittingly thine own feet bleed, Submissive to the purblind guides that lead Thy weary steps along this rugged course. Yet . . . when I glance abroad, and track the source More selfish far, of other nations' deed, And mark their tortuous craft, their jealous greed, Their serpent-wisdom or mere soulless force, Homeward returns my vagrant fealty, Crying, " O England, shouldst thou one day fall, Shatter'd in ruins by some Titan foe, Justice were thenceforth weaker throughout all The world, and Truth less passionately free, And God the poorer for thine overthrow." 93 SONNETS FROM "VER TENEBROSUM" GORDON ARAB, Egyptian, English — by the sword Cloven, or pierced with spears, or bullet-mown — In equal fate they sleep ; their dust is grown A portion of the fiery sands abhorred. And thou, what hast thou, hero, for reward, Thou, England's glory and her shame ? O'er- thrown Thou liest, unburied, or with grave unknown As his to whom on Nebo's height the Lord Showed all the land of Gilead, unto Dan ; Judah sea-fringed ; Manasseh and Ephraim ; And Jericho palmy, to where Zoar lay ; And in a valley of Moab buried him, Over against Beth-Peor, but no man Knows of his sepulchre unto this day. 94 SONNETS FROM "VER TENEBROSUM" FOREIGN MENACE T MARVEL that this land, whereof I claim The glory of sonship— for it was erewhile A glory to be sprung of Britain's isle, Though now it well-nigh more resembles shame — I marvel that this land with heart so tame Can brook the northern insolence and guile. But most it angers me, to think how vile Art thou, how base, from whom the insult came, Unwieldy laggard, many an age behind Thy sister Powers, in brain and conscience both ; In recognition of man's widening mind And flexile adaptation to its growth : Brute bulk, that bearest on thy back, half loth, One wretched man, most pitied of mankind. 95 SONNETS FROM "VER TENEBROSUM HOME-ROOTEDNESS [" CANNOT boast myself cosmopolite ; I own to "insularity/' although 'Tis fall'n from fashion, as full well I know. For somehow, being a plain and simple wight, I am skin-deep a child of the new light, But chiefly am mere Englishman below, Of island-fostering ; and can hate a foe, And trust my kin before the Muscovite. Whom shall I trust if not my kin ? And whom Account so near in natural bonds as these Born of my mother England's mighty womb, Nursed on my mother England's mighty knees, And lull'd as I was lull'd in glory and gloom With cradle-song of her protecting seas ? 96 SONNETS FROM "VER TENEBROSUM " OUR EASTERN TREASURE TN cobwebb'd corners dusty and dim I hear A thin voice pipingly revived of late, Which saith our India is a cumbrous weight, An idle decoration, bought too dear. The wiser world contemns not gorgeous gear; Just pride is no mean factor in a State ; The sense of greatness keeps a nation great ; And mighty they who mighty can appear. It may be that if hands of greed could steal From England's grasp the envied orient prize, This tide of gold would flood her still as now : But were she the same England, made to feel A brightness gone from out those starry eyes, A splendour from that constellated brow ? 97 SONNETS FROM "VER TENEBROSUM NIGHTMARE (Written during apparent Imminence of War) TN a false dream I saw the Foe prevail. The war was ended ; the last smoke had rolled Away : and we, erewhile the strong and bold, Stood broken, humbled, withered, weak and pale, And moan'd, "Our greatness is become a tale To tell our children's babes when we are old. They shall put by their playthings to be told How England once, before the years of bale, Throned above trembling, puissant, grandiose, calm, Held Asia's richest jewel in her palm ; And with unnumbered isles barbaric, she The broad hem of her glistering robe impearl'd ; Then, when she wound her arms about the world, And had for vassal the obsequious sea." 98 ART ART T^HE thousand painful steps at last are trod, At last the temple's difficult door we win ; But perfect on his pedestal, the god Freezes us hopeless when we enter in. 99 THE LUTE-PLAYER THE LUTE- PLAYER QHE was a lady great and splendid, I was a minstrel in her halls. A warrior like a prince attended Stayed his steed by the castle walls. Far had he fared to gaze upon her. " O rest thee now, Sir Knight/' she said. The warrior wooed, the warrior won her, In time of snowdrops they were wed. I made sweet music in his honour, And longed to strike him dead. *& v I passed at midnight from her portal : Throughout the world till death I rove : Ah, let me make this lute immortal With rapture of my hate and love ! 100 BEAUTY'S METEMPSYCHOSIS BEAUTY'S METEMPSYCHOSIS ^HAT beauty such as thine Should die indeed, Were ordinance too wantonly malign ! No wit may reconcile so cold a creed With beauty such as thine. From wave and star and flower Some effluence rare Was lent thee, a divine but transient dower : Thou yield'st it back from eyes and lips and hair To wave and star and flower. Shouldst thou to-morrow die, Thou still shalt be Found in the rose and met in all the sky : And from the ocean's heart shalt sing to me, Shouldst thou to-morrow die. 101 RELUCTANT SUMMER RELUCTANT SUMMER T)ELUCTANT Summer ! once, a maid Full easy of access, In many a bee-frequented shade Thou didst thy lover bless. Divinely unreproved I played, Then, with each liberal tress — And art thou grown at last afraid Of some too close caress ? Or deem'st that if thou shouldst abide My passion might decay ? Thou leav'st me pining and denied, Coyly thou say'st me nay. Ev'n as I woo thee to my side, Thou, importuned to stay, Like Orpheus' half-recovered bride Ebb'st from my arms away. 102 KEATS KEATS TXE dwelt with the bright gods of elder time, On earth and in their cloudy haunts above. He loved them : and in recompense sublime, The gods, alas ! gave him their fatal love. 103 AT THE GRAVE OF CHARLES LAMB AT THE GRAVE OF CHARLES LAMB, IN EDMONTON "VTOT here, O teeming City, was it meet Thy lover, thy most faithful, should repose, But where the multitudinous life-tide flows Whose ocean-murmur was to him more sweet Than melody of birds at morn, or bleat Of flocks in Spring-time, there should Earth enclose His earth, amid thy thronging joys and woes, There, 'neath the music of thy million feet. In love of thee this lover knew no peer. Thine eastern or thy western fane had made Fit habitation for his noble shade. Mother of mightier far, of none more dear, Not here, in rustic exile, O not here, Thy Elia like an alien should be laid ! 104 TO AUSTIN DOBSON TO AUSTIN DOBSON T7"ES ! urban is your Muse, and owns An empire based on London stones ; Yet flow'rs, as mountain violets sweet. Spring from the pavement 'neath her feet. Of wilder birth this Muse of mine, Hill-cradled, and baptized with brine ; And 'tis for her a sweet despair To watch that courtly step and air ! Yet surely she, without reproof, Greeting may send from realms aloof, And even claim a tie in blood, And dare to deem it sisterhood. 105 TO AUSTIN DOBSON For well we know, those Maidens be All daughters of Mnemosyne ; And 'neath the unifying sun, Many the songs — but Song is one. 106 LINES IN A FLYLEAF OF "CHRISTABEL LINES IN A FLYLEAF OF "CHRISTABEL" TN HOSPITABLY hast thou entertained, O Poet, us the bidden to thy board, Whom in mid-feast, and while our thousand mouths Are one laudation of the festal cheer, Thou from thy table dost dismiss, unfilled. Yet loudlier thee than many a lavish host We praise, and oftener thy repast half-served Than many a stintless banquet, prodigally Through satiate hours prolonged ; nor praise less well Because with tongues thou hast not cloyed, and lips That mourn the parsimony of affluent souls, And mix the lamentation with the laud. 107 A GOLDEN HOUR A GOLDEN HOUR A BECKONING spirit of gladness seemed afloat, That lightly danced in laughing air before us : The earth was all in tune, and you a note Of Nature's happy chorus. 'Twas like a vernal morn, yet overhead The leafless boughs across the lane were knitting The ghost of some forgotten Spring, we said, O'er Winter's world comes flitting. Or was it Spring herself, that, gone astray, Beyond the alien frontier chose to tarry? Or but some bold outrider of the May, Some April-emissary ? 108 A GOLDEN HOUR The apparition faded on the air, Capricious and incalculable comer. — Wilt thou too pass, and leave my chill days bare, And fall'n my phantom Summer ? 109 BYRON THE VOLUPTUARY BYRON THE VOLUPTUARY HPOO avid of earth's bliss, he was of those Whom Delight flies because they give her chase. Only the odour of her wild hair blows Back in their faces hungering for her face. 110 THE FUGITIVE IDEAL THE FUGITIVE IDEAL AS some most pure and noble face, Seen in the thronged and hurrying street, Sheds o'er the world a sudden grace, A flying odour sweet, Then, passing, leaves the cheated sense Baulked with a phantom excellence ; So, on our souls the visions rise Of that fair life we never led : They flash a splendour past our eyes, We start, and they are fled : They pass, and leave us Avith blank gaze, Resigned to our ignoble days. Ill COLUMBUS COLUMBUS T^ROM his adventurous prime He dreamed the dream sublime Over his wandering youth It hung, a beckoning star. At last the vision fled., And left him in its stead The scarce sublimer truth, The world he found afar. The scattered isles that stand Warding the mightier land Yielded their maidenhood To his imperious prow. 112 COLUMBUS The mainland within call Lay vast and virginal : In its blue porch he stood : No more did fate allow. No more ! but ah, how much, To be the first to touch The veriest azure hem Of that majestic robe ! Lord of the lordly sea, Earth's mightiest sailor he : Great Captain among them, The captors of the globe. When shall the world forget Thy glory and our debt, Indomitable soul, Immortal Genoese ? Not while the shrewd salt gale Whines amid shroud and sail, Above the rhythmic roll And thunder of the seas. 113 H TO JAMES BROMLEY TO JAMES BROMLEY With "Words wort h's Grave" TpRE vandal lords with lust of gold accurst Deface each hallowed hillside we revere — Ere cities in their million-throated thirst Menace each sacred mere — Let us give thanks because one nook hath been Unflooded yet by desecration's wave, The little churchyard in the valley green That holds our Wordsworth's grave. 'Twas there I plucked these elegiac blooms, There where he rests 'mid comrades fit and few, And thence I bring this growth of classic tombs, An offering, friend, to you — 114 TO JAMES BROMLEY You who have loved like me his simple themes, Loved his sincere large accent nobly plain, And loved the land whose mountains and whose streams Are lovelier for his strain. It may be that his manly chant, beside More dainty numbers, seems a rustic tune ; It may be, thought has broadened since he died Upon the century's noon ; It may be that we can no longer share The faith which from his fathers he received ; It may be that our doom is to despair Whei-e he with joy believed ; — Enough that there is none since risen who sings A song so gotten of the immediate soul, So instant from the vital fount of things Which is our source and goal ; 115 TO JAMES BROMLEY And though at touch of later hands there float More artful tones than from his lyre he drew, Ages may pass ere trills another note So sweet, so great, so true. 116 THE SAINT AND THE SATYR THE SAINT AND THE SATYR (Mediaeval Legend) Q AINT ANTHONY the eremite He wandered in the wold, And there he saw a hoofed wight That blew his hands for cold. " What dost thou here in misery. That better far wert dead ? " The eremite Saint Anthony Unto the Satyr said. " Lorn in the wold/' the thing replied, " I sit and make my moan, For all the gods I loved have died, And I am left alone. 117 THE SAINT AND THE SATYR " Silent in Paphos Venus sleeps, And Jove on Ida mute ; And every living creature weeps Pan and his perished flute. " The Faun, his laughing heart is broke ; The nymph, her fountain fails ; And driven from out the hollow oak The Hamadryad wails. " A God more beautiful than mine Hath conquered mine, they say. — Ah, to that fair young God of thine, For me I pray thee pray ! " 118 "THY VOICE FROM INMOST DREAMLAND 1 'T'HY voice from inmost dreamland calls The wastes of sleep thou makest fair; Bright o'er the ridge of darkness falls The cataract of thy hair. The morn renews its golden birth : Thou with the vanquished night dost fade ; And leav'st the ponderable earth Less real than thy shade. 119 THE CATHEDRAL SPIRE THE CATHEDRAL SPIRE TT soars like hearts of hapless men who dare To sue for gifts the gods refuse to allot ; Who climb for ever toward they know not where, Baffled for ever by they know not what. 120 A DEDICATION A DEDICATION (To London, my Hostess) /^jITY that waitest to be sung, — For whom no hand To mighty strains the lyre hath strung In all this land, Though mightier theme the mightiest ones Sang not of old, The thrice three sisters' godlike sons With lips of gold, — Till greater voice thy greatness sing In loftier times, Suffer an alien muse to bring Her votive rhymes. 121 A DEDICATION Yes, alien in thy midst am I, Not of thy brood ; The nursling of a norland sky Of rougher mood : To me, thy tarrying guest, to me, 'Mid thy loud hum, Strayed visions of the moor or sea Tormenting come. Above the thunder of the wheels That hurry by, From lapping of lone waves there steals A far-sent sigh ; And many a dream-reared mountain crest My feet have trod, There where thy Minster in the West Gropes toward God. Yet, from thy presence if I go, By woodlands deep Or ocean-fringes, thou, I know, Wilt haunt my sleep ; Thy restless tides of life will foam, Still, in my sight ; 122 A DEDICATION Thy imperturbable dark dome Will crown my night. O sea of living waves that roll On golden sands, Or break on tragic reef and shoal 'Mid fatal lands ; O forest wrought of living leaves, Some filled with Spring, Where joy life's festal raiment weaves And all birds sing, — Some trampled in the miry ways, Or whirled along By fury of tempestuous days, — Take thou my song ! For thou hast scorned not heretofore The gifts of rhyme I dropped, half faltering, at thy door, City sublime ; 123 A DEDICATION And though 'tis true I am but guest Within thy gate. Unto thy hands I owe the best Awards of fate. Imperial hostess ! thanks from me To thee belong : O living forest, living sea, Take thou my song ! 124 THE DREAM OF MAN THE DREAM OF MAN HPO the eye and the ear of the Dreamer this Dream out of darkness flew, Through the horn or the ivory portal, but he wist not which of the two. It was the Human Spirit, of all men's souls the Soul, Man the unwearied climber, that climbed to the unknown goal. And up the steps of the ages, the difficult steep ascent, Man the unwearied climber pauseless and dauntless went. jEons rolled behind him with thunder of far retreat, And still as he strove he conquered and laid his foes at his feet. Inimical powers of nature, tempest and flood and fire, 125 THE DREAM OF MAN The spleen of fickle seasons that loved to baulk his desire, The breath of hostile climates, the ravage of blight and dearth, The old unrest that vexes the heart of the moody earth, The genii swift and radiant sabreing heaven with flame, He, with a keener weapon, the sword of his wit, overcame. Disease and her ravening offspring, pain with the thousand teeth, He drave into night primeval, the nethermost worlds beneath, Till the Lord of Death, the undying, ev'n Asrael the King, No more with Furies for heralds came armed with scourge and sting, But gentle of voice and of visage, by calm Age ushered and led, A guest, serenely featured, entering, woke no dread. And, as the rolling aeons retreated with pomp of sound, 126 THE DREAM OF MAN Man's Spirit, grown too lordly for this mean orb to bound, By arts in his youth undreamed of his terrene fetters broke, With enterprise ethereal spurning the natal yoke, And, stung with divine ambition, and fired with a glorious greed, He annexed the stars and the planets and peopled them with his seed. Then said he, " The infinite Scripture I have read and interpreted clear, And searching all worlds I have found not my sovereign or my peer. In what room of the palace of nature resides the invisible God ? For all her doors I have opened, and all her floors I have trod. If greater than I be her tenant, let him answer my challenging call : Till then I admit no rival, but crown myself master of all." 127 THE DREAM OF MAN And forth as that word went bruited, by Man unto Man were raised Fanes of devout self-homage, where he who praised was the praised ; And from vast unto vast of creation the new evangel ran, And an odour of world-wide incense went up from Man unto Man ; Until, on a solemn feast-day, when the world's usurping lord At a million impious altars his own proud image adored, God spake as He stept from His ambush : " O great in thine own conceit, I will show thee thy source, how humble, thy goal, for a god how unmeet." Thereat, by the word of the Maker the Spirit of Man was led To a mighty peak of vision, where God to His creature said : 128 THE DREAM OF MAN " Look eastward toward time's sunrise." And, age upon age untold, The Spirit of Man saw clearly the Past as a chart out-rolled, — Beheld his base beginnings in the depths of time, and his strife With beasts and crawling horrors for leave to live, when life Meant but to slay and to procreate, to feed and to sleep, among Mere mouths, voracities boundless, blind lusts, desires without tongue, And ferocities vast, fulfilling their being's malignant law, While nature was one hunger, and one hate, all fangs and maw. With that, for a single moment, abashed at his own descent, In humbleness Man's Spirit at the feet of the Maker bent ; 1 2.9 i THE DREAM OF MAN But, swifter than light, he recovered the stature and pose of his pride, And, " Think not thus to shame me with my mean birth/' he cried. " This is my loftiest greatness, to have been born so low ; Greater than Thou the ungrowing am I that for ever grow." And God forbore to rebuke him, but answered brief and stern, Bidding him toward time's sunset his vision west- ward turn ; And the Spirit of Man obeying beheld as a chart out-rolled The likeness and form of the Future, age upon age untold ; Beheld his own meridian, and beheld his dark decline, His secular fall to nadir from summits o*" light divine, Till at last, amid worlds exhausted, and bankrupt of force and fire, 'Twas his, in a torrent of darkness, like a sputtering lamp to expire. 130 THE DREAM OF MAN Then a war of shame and anger did the realm of his soul divide ; "'Tis false, 'tis a lying vision/' in the face of his God he cried. " Thou thinkest to daunt me with shadows ; not such as Thou feign'st, my doom : From glory to rise unto glory is mine, who have risen from gloom. I doubt if Thou knew'st at my making how near to Thy throne I should climb, O'er the mountain slopes of the ages and the conquered peaks of time. Nor shall I look backward nor rest me till the uttermost heights I have trod, And am equalled with Thee or above Thee, the mate or the master of God." Ev'n thus Man turned from the Maker, with thundered defiance wild, And God with a terrible silence reproved the speech of His child. 131 THE DREAM OF MAN And Man returned to his labours., and stiffened the neck of his will ; And the aeons still went rolling, and his power was crescent still. But yet there remained to conquer one foe, and the greatest — although Despoiled of his ancient terrors, at heart, as of old, a foe — Unmaker of all, and renewer, who winnows the world with his wing, The Lord of Death, the undying, ev'n Asrael the King. And lo, Man mustered his forces the war of wars to wage, And with storm and thunder of onset did the foe of foes engage, And the Lord of Death, the undying, was beset and harried sore, In his immemorial fastness at night's aboriginal core. And during years a thousand man leaguered his enemy's hold, 132 THE DREAM OF MAN While nature was one deep tremor, and the heart of the world waxed cold, Till the phantom battlements wavered, and the ghostly fortress fell, And Man with shadowy fetters bound fast great Asrael. So, to each star in the heavens, the exultant word was blown, The annunciation tremendous, Death is overthrown ! And Space in her ultimate borders, prolonging the jubilant tone, With hollow ingeminations, sighed, Death is over- thrown ! And God in His house of silence, where He dwelleth aloof, alone, Paused in His tasks to hearken : Death is overthrown ! Then a solemn and high thanksgiving by Man unto Man was sung, In his temples of self-adoration, with his own multi- tudinous tongue ; 133 THE DREAM OF MAN And he said to his Soul : " Rejoice thou, for thy last great foe lies bound, Ev'n Asrael the Unmaker, unmade, disarmed, discrowned." And behold, his Soul rejoiced not, the breath of whose being was strife, For life with nothing to vanquish seemed but the shadow of life. No goal invited and promised and divinely provoca- tive shone ; And Fear having fled, her sister, blest Hope, in her train was gone ; And the coping and crown of achievement was hell than defeat more dire — The torment of all-things-compassed, the plague of nought-to-desire ; And Man the invincible queller, man Avith his foot on his foes, In boundless satiety hungered, restless from utter repose, 134 THE DREAM OF MAN Victor of nature, victor of the prince of the powers of the air, By mighty weariness vanquished, and crowned with august despair. Then, at his dreadful zenith, he cried unto God : " O Thou Whom of old in my days of striving methought 1 needed not, — now In this my abject glory, my hopeless and helpless might, Hearken and cheer and succour ! " and God from His lonely height, From eternity's passionless summits, on suppliant Man looked down, And his brow waxed human with pity, belying its awful crown. " Thy richest possession," He answered, " blest Hope, will I restore, And the infinite wealth of weakness which was thy strength of yore ; 135 THE DREAM OF MAN And I will arouse from slumber, in his hold where bound he lies, Thine enemy most benefic ; — O Asrael, hear and rise ! And a sound like the heart of nature in sunder cloven and torn, Announced, to the ear universal, undying Death new-born. Sublime he rose in his fetters, and shook the chains aside Ev'n as some mortal sleeper 'mid forests in autumn- tide Rises and shakes off lightly the leaves that lightly fell On his limbs and his hair unheeded while as yet he slumbered well. And Deity paused and hearkened, then turned to the undivine, Saying, " O Man, My creature, thy lot was more blest than Mine. 1 36 THE DREAM OF MAN I taste not delight of seeking, nor the boon of longing know. There is but one joy transcendent, and I hoard it not but bestow. I hoard it not nor have tasted, but freely I gave it to thee — The joy of most glorious striving, which dieth in victory." Thus, to the Soul of the Dreamer, this Dream out of darkness flew, Through the horn or the ivory portal, but he wist not which of the two. EPIGRAM T^OILING and yearning, 'tis man's doom to see No perfect creature fashion'd of his hands. Insulted by a flower's immaculacy, And mock'd at by the flawless stars he stands. 138 VITA NUOVA VITA NUOVA T ONG hath she slept, forgetful of delight : At last, at last, the enchanted princess, Earth, Claimed with a kiss by Spring the adventurer, In slumber knows the destined lips, and thrilled Through all the deeps of her unageing heart With passionate necessity of joy, Wakens, and yields her loveliness to love. O ancient streams, O far-descended woods Full of the fluttering of melodious souls ; O hills and valleys that adorn yourselves In solemn jubilation ; winds and clouds, Ocean and land in stormy nuptials clasped, And all exuberant creatures that acclaim The Earth's divine renewal : lo, I too 139 VITA NUOVA With yours would mingle somewhat of glad song. I too have come through wintry terrors,— yea, Through tempest and through cataclysm of soul Have come, and am delivered. Me the Spring, Me also, dimly with new life hath touched, And with regenerate hope, the salt of life ; And I would dedicate these thankful tears To whatsoever Power beneficent, Veiled though his countenance, undivulged his thought, Hath led me from the haunted darkness forth Into the gracious air and vernal morn, And suffers me to know my spirit a note Of this great chorus, one with bird and stream And voiceful mountain, — nay, a string, how jarred And all but broken ! of that lyre of life Whereon himself, the master harp-player, Resolving all its mortal dissonance To one immortal and most perfect strain, Harps without pause, building with song the world. 18th March 1893. 140 THE FIRST SKYLARK OF SPRING THE FIRST SKYLARK OF SPRING nPWO worlds hast thou to dwell in, Sweet,- The virginal, untroubled sky, And this vext region at my feet. — Alas, but one have I ! To all my songs there clings the shade, The dulling shade, of mundane care. They amid mortal mists are made, — Thine, in immortal air. My heart is dashed with griefs and fears ; My song comes fluttering, and is gone. O high above the home of tears, Eternal Joy, sing on ! 141 THE FIRST SKYLARK OF SPRING Not loftiest bard, of mightiest mind, Shall ever chant a note so pure, Till he can cast this earth behind And breathe in heaven secure. We sing of Life, with stormy breath That shakes the lute's distempered string We sing of Love, and loveless Death Takes up the song we sing. And born in toils of Fate's control, Insurgent from the womb, we strive With proud, unmanumitted soul To burst the golden gyve. Thy spirit knows nor bounds nor bars ; On thee no shreds of thraldom hang : Not more enlarged, the morning stars Their great Te Deum sang. 142 THE FIRST SKYLARK OF SPRING Rut I am fettered to the sod, And but forget my bonds an hour ; In amplitude of dreams a god, A slave in dearth of power. And fruitless knowledge clouds my soul, And fretful ignorance irks it more. Thou sing'st as if thou knew'st the whole, And lightly held'st thy lore ! Somewhat as thou, Man once could sing, In porches of the lucent morn, Ere he had felt his lack of wing, Or cursed his iron bourn. The springtime bubbled in his throat, The sweet sky seemed not far above, And young and lovesome came the note ; — Ah, thine is Youth and Love ! 143 THE FIRST SKYLARK OF SPRING Thou sing'st of what he knew of old, And dreamlike from afar recalls ; In flashes of forgotten gold An orient glory falls. And as he listens, one by one Life's utmost splendours blaze more nigh ; Less inaccessible the sun, Less alien grows the sky. For thou art native to the spheres, And of the courts of heaven art free, And earnest to his temporal ears News from eternity ; And lead'st him to the dizzy verge, And lur'st him o'er the dazzling line, Where mortal and immortal merge, And human dies divine. 144 NIGHT ON CURBAR EDGE NIGHT ON CURBAR EDGE AJO echo of man's life pursues my ears ; Nothing disputes this Desolation's reign ; Change comes not, this dread temple to profane, Where time by aeons reckons, not by years. Its patient form one crag, sole stranded, rears, Type of whate'er is destined to remain While yon still host encamped on night's waste plain Keeps armed watch, a million quivering spears. Hushed are the wild and wing'd lives of the moor ; The sleeping sheep nestle 'neath ruined wall, Or unhewn stones in random concourse hurled : Solitude, sleepless, listens at Fate's door ; And there is built and 'stablisht over all Tremendous silence, older than the world. 145 k EPIGRAM TF Nature be a phantasm, as thou say'st, A splendid fiction and prodigious dream, To reach the real and true I'll make no haste, More than content with worlds that oidy seem. 146 ODE TO LI CI N I US ODE TO LICINIUS (Horace II. x.) f ICTNIUS, wouldst thou wisely steer The pinnace of thy soul, Not always trust her without fear Where deep-sea billows roll ; Nor, to the sheltered beach too near, Risk shipwreck on the shoal. Who sees in fortune's golden mean All his desires comprised, Midway the cot and court between Hath well his life devised ; For riches, hath not envied been, Nor, for their lack, despised. 147 ODE TO LICIN1US Most rocks the pine that soars afar, When leaves are tempest-whirled. Direst the crash when turrets are In dusty ruin hurled. The thunder loveth best to scar The bright brows of the world. The steadfast mind, that to the end Is fortune's victor still, Hath yet a fear, though Fate befriend A hope, though all seem ill. Jove can at will the winter send, Or call the spring at will. Full oft the darkest day may be Of morrows bright the sire. His bow not everlastingly Apollo bends in ire. At times the silent Muses he Wakes with his dulcet lyre. 148 ODE TO LICINIUS When life's straits roar and hem thee sore, Be bold ; naught else avails. But when thy canvas swells before Too proudly prospering gales, For once be wise with coward's lore, And timely reef thy sails. 149 THE PLAY OF "KING LEAR" THE PLAY OF "KING LEAR" TTERE love the slain with Love the slayer lies ; Deep drown' d are both in the same sunless pool. Up from its depths that mirror thundering skies Bubbles the wan mirth of the mirthless Fool. 1.50 TELL ME NOT NOW TELL ME NOT NOW HPELL me not now, if love for love Thou canst return, — Now while around us and above Day's flambeaux burn. Not in clear noon, with speech as clear, Thy heart avow, For every gossip wind to hear ; Tell me not now ! Tell me not now the tidings sweet, The news divine ; A little longer at thy feet Leave me to pine. 151 TELL ME NOT NOW I would not have the gadding bird Hear from his bough ; Nay, though I famish for a word, Tell me not now ! But when deep trances of delight All Nature seal, When round the world the arms of Night Caressing steal, When rose to dreaming rose says, "Dear, Dearest," — and when Heaven sighs her secret in earth's ear, Ah, tell me then ! 152 THE FATHER OF THE FOREST THE FATHER OF THE FOREST ^LD emperor Yew, fantastic sire, Girt with thy guard of dotard kings,— What ages hast thou seen retire Into the dusk of alien things ? What mighty news hath stormed thy shade, Of armies perished, realms unmade ? Already wast thou great and wise, And solemn with exceeding eld, On that proud morn when England's eyes, Wet with tempestuous joy, beheld Round her rough coasts the thundering main Strewn with the ruined dream of Spain. 153 THE FATHER OF THE FOREST Hardly thou count'st them long ago, The warring faiths, the wavering land, The sanguine sky's delirious glow, And Cranmer's scorched, uplifted hand. Wailed not the woods their task of shame, Doomed to provide the insensate flame ? Mourned not the rumouring winds, when she, The sweet queen of a tragic hour, Crowned with her snow-white memory The crimson legend of the Tower ? Or when a thousand witcheries lay Felled with one stroke, at Fotheringay ? Ah, thou hast heard the iron tread And clang of many an armoured age, And well recall'st the famous dead, Captains or counsellors brave or sage, Kings that on kings their myriads hurled, Ladies whose smile embroiled the world. 154 THE FATHER OF THE FOREST Rememberest thou the perfect knight, The soldier, courtier, bard in one, Sidney, that pensive Hesper-light O'er Chivalry's departed sun ? Knew'st thou the virtue, sweetness, lore, Whose nobly hapless name was More ? The roystering prince, that afterward Belied his madcap youth, and proved A greatly simple warrior lord Such as our warrior fathers loved — Lives he not still ? for Shakespeare sings The last of our adventurer kings. His battles o'er, he takes his ease, Glory put by, and sceptred toil. Round him the carven centuries Like forest branches arch and coil. In that dim fane, he is not sure Who lost or won at Azincour ! 155 THE FATHER OF THE FOREST Roofed by the mother minster vast That guards Augustine's rugged throne, The darling of a knightly Past Sleeps in his bed of sculptured stone, And flings, o'er many a warlike tale, The shadow of his dusky mail. The monarch who, albeit his crown Graced an august and sapient head, Rode roughshod to a stained renown O'er Wallace and Llewellyn dead, And perished in the hostile land, With restless heart and ruthless hand ; Or that disastrous king on whom Fate, like a tempest, early fell, And the dark secret of whose doom The Keep of Pomfret kept full well Or him that with half careless words On Becket drew the dastard swords ; 156 THE FATHER OF THE FOREST Or Eleanor's undaunted son, That, starred with idle glory, came Bearing from leaguered Ascalon The barren splendour of his fame, And, vanquished by an unknown bow, Lies vainly great at Fontevraud ; Or him, the footprints of whose power Made mightier whom he overthrew ; A man built like a mountain-tower, A fortress of heroic thew ; The Conqueror, in our soil who set This stem of Kinghood flowering yet ;— These, or the living fame of these, Perhaps thou minglest — who shall say ?- With thrice remoter memories, And phantoms of the mistier day, Long ere the tanner's daughter's son From Harold's hands this realm had won. 157 THE FATHER OF THE FOREST What years are thine, not mine to guess ! The stars look youthful, thou being by ; Youthful the sun's glad-heartedness ; Witless of time the unageing sky ! And these dim-groping roots around So deep a human Past are wound. That, musing in thy shade, for me The tidings scarce would strangely fall Of fair-haired despots of the sea Scaling our eastern island-wall, From their long ships of norland pine, Their "surf-deer," driven o'er wilds of brine. Nay, hid by thee from Summer's gaze That seeks in vain this couch of loam, I should behold, without amaze, Camped on yon down the hosts of Rome, Nor start though English woodlands heard The self-same mandatory word 158 THE FATHER OF THE FOREST As by the Cataracts of the Nile Marshalled the legions long ago, Or where the lakes are one blue smile Neath pageants of Helvetian snow, Or 'mid the Syrian sands that lie Sick of the day's great tearless eye, Or on barbaric plains afar, Where, under Asia's fevering ray, The long lines of imperial war O'er Tigris passed, and with dismay In fanged and iron deserts found Embattled Persia closing round, And 'mid their eagles watched on high The vultures gathering for a feast, Till, from the quivers of the sky, The gorgeous star-flight of the East Flamed, and the bow of darkness bent O'er Julian dying in his tent. 159 THE FATHER OF THE FOREST II Was it the wind befooling me With ancient echoes, as I lay ? Was it the antic fantasy Whose elvish mockeries cheat the day ? Surely a hollow murmur stole From wizard bough and ghostly hole : " Who prates to me of arms and kings, Here in these courts of old repose ? Thy babble is of transient things, Broils, and the dust of foolish blows. Thy sounding annals are at best The witness of a world's unrest. " Goodly the ostents are to thee, And pomps of Time : to me more sweet The vigils of Eternity, And Silence patient at my feet ; And dreams beyond the deadeniug range And dull monotonies of Change. 160 THE FATHER OF THE FOREST " Often an air comes idling by With news of cities and of men. I hear a multitudinous sigh, And lapse into my soul again. Shall her great noons and sunsets be Blurred with thine infelicity ? " Now from these veins the strength of old, The warmth and lust of life depart ; Full of mortality, behold The cavern that was once my heart ! Me, with blind arm, in season due, Let the aerial woodman hew. " For not though mightiest mortals fall, The starry chariot hangs delayed. His axle is uncooled, nor shall The thunder of His wheels be stayed. A changeless pace His coursers keep, And halt not at the wells of sleep. 161 L THE FATHER OF THE FOREST « The South shall bless, the East shall blight, The red rose of the Dawn shall blow ; The million-lilied stream of Night Wide in ethereal meadows flow ; And Autumn mourn ; and everything Dance to the wild pipe of the Spring. " With oceans heedless round her feet, And the indifferent heavens ahove, Earth shall the ancient tale repeat Of wars and tears, and death and love ; And, wise from all the foolish Past, Shall peradventure hail at last " The advent of that morn divine When nations may as forests grow, Wherein the oak hates not the pine, Nor beeches wish the cedars woe, But all, in their unlikeness, blend Confederate to one golden end — 162 THE FATHER OF THE FOREST " Beauty : the Vision whereunto, In joy, with pantings, from afar, Through sound and odour, form and hue, And mind and clay, and worm and star- Now touching goal, now backward hurled- Toils the indomitable world." 163 EPIGRAM \ fOMENTOUS to himself as I to me Hath each man been that ever woman bore ; Once, in a lightning-flash of sympathy, I felt this truth, an instant, and no more. 164 LINES WRITTEN IN RICHMOND PARK LINES WRITTEN IN RICHMOND PARK T ADY, were you but here ! The Autumn flames away, And pensive in the antlered shade I stray. The Autumn flames away, his end is near. I linger where deposed and fall'n he lies, Prankt in his last poor tattered braveries, And think what brightness would enhance the Day, Lady, were you but here. Though hushed the woodlands, though sedate the skies, Though dank the leaves and sere, The stored sunlight in your hair and eyes Would vernalise November, and renew the aged yeai', Lady ! were you but here. 165 THE SOVEREIGN POET THE SOVEREIGN POET J"E sits above the clang and dust of Time, With the world's secret trembling on his lip. He asks not converse nor companionship In the cold starlight where thou canst not climb. The undelivered tidings in his breast Suffer him not to rest. He sees afar the immemorable throng, And binds the scattered ages with a song. The glorious riddle of his rhythmic breath, His might, his spell, we know not what they be : We only feel, whate'er he uttereth, This savours not of death, This hath a relish of eternity. 166 THE RUINED ABBEY THE RUINED ABBEY J7 1 LOWER - FONDLED, clasp'd in ivy's close caress, It seems allied with Nature, yet apart : — Of wood's and wave's insensate loveliness The glad, sad, tranquil, passionate, human heart. 67 SONNET T THINK you never were of earthly frame, O truant from some charmed world unknown ! A fairy empress, you forsook your throne, Fled your inviolate court, and hither came ; Donned mortal vesture ; wore a woman's name Like a mere woman, loved ; and so are grown At last a little human, save alone For the wild elvish heart not Love could tame. And one day 1 believe you will return To your far isle amid the enchanted sea, — There, in your realm, perhaps remember me, Perhaps forget : but I shall never learn ! I, loveless dust within a dreamless urn, Dead to your beauty's immortality. 168 ODE TO ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON ODE TO ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON TN that grave shade august That round your Eton clings, To you the centuries must Be visible corporate things, And the high Past appear Affably real and near, For all its grandiose airs, caught from the mien of Kings. The new age stands as yet Half built against the sky, Open to every threat Of storms that clamour by : Scaffolding veils the walls, And dim dust floats and falls, As, moving to and fro, their tasks the masons ply. 169 ODE TO ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON But changeless and complete, Rise unperturbed and vast, Above our din and heat, The turrets of the Past, Mute as that city asleep, Lulled with enchantments deep, Far in Arabian dreamland built where all things last. Who loves not to explore That palace of Old Time, Awed by the spires that soar In ghostly dusk sublime, And gorgeous-windowed halls, And leagues of pictured walls, And dungeons that remember many a crimson crime ? Yet, in those phantom towers Not thine, not mine, to dwell, Rapt from the living hours By some rich lotus-spell ; 170 ODE TO ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON And if our lute obey A mode of yesterday, 'Tis that we deem 'twill prove to-morrow's mode as well. This neighbouring joy and woe— This present sky and sea — These men and things we know, Whose touch we would not flee- To us, O friend, shall long Yield aliment of song : Life as I see it lived is great enough for me. In high relief against That reverend silence set, Wherein your days are fenced From the world's peevish fret, There breaks on old Earth's ears The thunder of new years, Rousing from ancient dreams the Muse's anchoret. 171 ODE TO ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON Well if the coming time, With loud and strident tongue, Hush not the sound of rhyme, Drown not the song half sung, Ev'n as a dissonant age Choked with polemic rage The starriest voice that e'er on English ears hath rung, And bade her seer a while Pause and put by the bard, Till this tormented isle, With feuds and factions jarred, Some leisure might regain To hear the long-pent strain Re-risen from storm and fire, immortal and un- marred. 172 HYMN TO THE SEA HYMN TO THE SEA /TYRANT, O regal in bounty, a subtle and delicate largess ; Grant an ethereal alms, out of the wealth of thy soul : Suffer a tarrying minstrel, who finds, not fashions his numbers, — Who, from the commune of air, cages the volatile song, — Here to capture and prison some fugitive breath of thy descant, Thine and his own as thy roar lisped on the lips of a shell, 173 HYMN TO THE SEA Now while the vernal impulsion makes lyrical all that hath language, While, through the veins of the Earth, riots the ichor of Spring, While, with throes, with raptures, with loosing of bonds, with unsealings, — Arrowy pangs of delight, piercing the core of the world, — - Tremors and coy unfoldings, reluctances, sweet agitations, — Youth, irrepressibly fair, wakes like a wondering rose. II Lover whose vehement kisses on lips irresponsive are squandered, Lover that wooest in vain Earth's imperturbable heart ; Athlete mightily frustrate, who pittest thy thews against legions, Locked with fantastical hosts, bodiless arms of the sky ; 174 HYMN TO THE SEA Sea that breakest for ever, that breakest and never art broken, Like unto thine, from of old, springeth the spirit of man, — Nature's wooer and fighter, whose years are a suit and a wrestling, All their hours, from his birth, hot with desire and with fray ; Amorist agonist man, that, immortally pining and striving, Snatches the glory of life only from love and from war ; Man that, rejoicing in conflict, like thee when pre- cipitate tempest, Charge after thundering charge, clangs on thy resonant mail, Seemeth so easy to shatter, and proveth so hard to be cloven ; Man whom the gods, in his pain, curse with a soul that endures ; Man whose deeds, to the doer, come back as thine own exhalations 175 HYMN TO THE SEA Into thy bosom return, weepings of mountain and vale ; Man with the cosmic fortunes and starry vicissitudes tangled, Chained to the wheel of the world, blind with the dust of its speed, Even as thou, O giant, whom trailed in the wake of her conquests Night's sweet despot draws, bound to her ivory car ; Man with inviolate caverns, impregnable holds in his nature, Depths no storm can pierce, pierced with a shaft of the sun : Man that is galled with his confines, and burdened yet more with his vastness, Born too great for his ends, never at peace with his goal ; Man whom Fate, his victor, magnanimous, clement in triumph, Holds as a captive king, mewed in a palace divine : 176 HYMN TO THE SEA Wide its leagues of pleasance, and ample of purview its windows ; Airily falls, in its courts, laughter of fountains at play ; Nought, when the harpers are harping, untimely reminds him of durance ; None, as he sits at the feast, whisper Captivity's name ; But, would he parley with Silence, withdraw for awhile unattended, Forth to the beckoning world 'scape for an hour and be free, Lo, his adventurous fancy coercing at once and provoking, Rise the unscalable walls, built with a word at the prime ; Lo, immobile as statues, with pitiless faces of iron, Armed at each obstinate gate, stand the im- passable guards. 177 m HYMN TO THE SEA III Miser whose coffered recesses the spoils of eternity cumber, Spendthrift foaming thy soul wildly in fury away, — We, self-amorous mortals, our own multitudinous image Seeking in all we behold, seek it and find it in thee : Seek it and find it when o'er us the exquisite fabric of Silence Perilous-turreted hangs, trembles and dulcetly falls ; When the aerial armies engage amid orgies of music, Braying of arrogant brass, whimper of querulous reeds ; When, at his banquet, the Summer is purple and drowsed with repletion ; When, to his anchorite board, taciturn Winter repairs ; 178 HYMN TO THE SEA When by the tempest are scattered magnificent ashes of Autumn ; When, upon orchard and lane, breaks the white foam of the Spring : When, in extravagant revel, the Dawn, a bacchante upleaping, Spills, on the tresses of Night, vintages golden and red ; When, as a token at parting, munificent Day, for remembrance, Gives, unto men that forget, Ophirs of fabulous ore ; When, invincibly rushing, in luminous palpitant deluge, Hot from the summits of Life, poured is the lava of noon ; When, as yonder, thy mistress, at height of her mutable glories, Wise from the magical East, comes like a sorceress pale. Ah, she comes, she arises, — impassive, emotionless, bloodless, 179 HYMN TO THE SEA Wasted and ashen of cheek, zoning her ruins with pearl. Once she was warm, she was joyous, desire in her pulses abounding : Surely thou lovedst her well, then, in her con- quering youth ! Surely not all unimpassioned, at sound of thy rough serenading, She, from the balconied night, unto her melodist leaned, — Leaned unto thee, her bondsman, who keepest to-day her commandments, All for the sake of old love, dead at thy heart though it lie. IV Yea, it is we, light perverts, that waver, and shift our allegiance ; We, whom insurgence of blood dooms to be barren and waste ; 180 HYMN TO THE SEA We, unto Nature imputing our frailties, our fever and tumult ; We, that with dust of our strife sully the hue of her peace. Thou, with punctual service, fulfillest thy task, being constant ; Thine but to ponder the Law, labour and greatly obey : Wherefore, with leapings of spirit, thou chantest the chant of the faithful, Chantest aloud at thy toil, cleansing the Earth of her stain ; Leagued in antiphonal chorus with stars and the populous Systems, Following these as their feet dance to the rhyme of the Suns ; Thou thyself but a billow, a ripple, a dropof thatOcean, Which, labyrinthine of arm, folding us meshed in its coil, Shall, as now, with elations, august exultations and ardours, Pour, in unfaltering tide, all its unanimous waves, 181 HYMN TO THE SEA When, from this threshold of being, these steps of the Presence, this precinct, Into the matrix of Life darkly divinely resumed, Man and his littleness perish, erased like an error and cancelled, Man and his greatness survive, lost in the great- ness of God. 182 EPIGRAM 1~N mid whirl of the dance of Time ye start, Start at the cold touch of Eternity, And cast your cloaks about you, and depai't. — The minstrels pause not in their minstrelsy. 183 FRANCE FRANCE 25th June 18.Q4* T IGHT-HEARTED heroine of tragic story ! Nation whom storm on storm of ruining fate Unruined leaves, — nay, fairer, more elate, Hungrier for action, more athirst for glory ! World-witching queen, from fiery floods and gory Rising eternally regenerate, Clothed with great deeds and crowned with dreams more great Spacious as Fancy's boundless territory ! Little thou lov'st our island, and perchance Thou heed'st as little her reluctant praise ; Yet let her, in these dark and bodeful days, Sinking old hatreds 'neath the sundering brine, Immortal and indomitable France, Marry her tears, her alien tears, to thine. * The day after the murder of Carnot. 184 A RIDDLE OF THE THAMES A RIDDLE OF THE THAMES AT windows that from Westminster Look southward to the Lollard's Tower, She sat, my lovely friend. A blur Of gilded mist, — ('twas morn's first hour,)- Made vague the world : and in the gleam Shivered the half-awakened stream. Through tinted vapour looming large, Ambiguous shapes obscurely rode. She gazed where many a laden barge Like some dim-moving saurian showed. And 'midst them, lo ! two swans appeared, And proudly up theriver steered. 185 A RIDDLE OF THE THAMES Two stately swans ! What did they there ? Whence came they ? Whither would they go ? Think of them, — things so faultless fair, — 'Mid the black shipping down below ! On through the rose and gold they passed, And melted in the morn at last. Ah, can it be, that they had come, Where Thames in sullied glory flows, Fugitive rebels, tired of some Secluded lake's ornate repose, Eager to taste the life that pours Its muddier wave 'twixt mightier shores ? We ne'er shall know : our wonderment No barren certitude shall mar. They left behind them, as they went, A dream than knowledge ampler far ; And from our world they sailed away Into some visionary day. 186 THE YEAR'S MINSTRELSY THE YEAR'S MINSTRELSY QPRING, the low prelude of a lordlier song : Summer, a music without hint of death : Autumn, a cadence lingeringly long : Winter, a pause ; — the Minstrel- Year takes breath. 187 A STUDY IN CONTRASTS A STUDY IN CONTRASTS T)Y cliff and chine, and hollow-nestling wood Thrilled with the poignant savour of the sea, All in the crisp light of a wintry morn, We walked, my friend and I, preceded still By one whose silken and voluminous suit, His courtly ruff, snow-pure 'mid golden tan, His grandly feathered legs slenderly strong, The broad and flowing billow of his breast, His delicate ears and superfine long nose, With that last triumph, his distinguished tail, In their collective glory spoke his race The flower of Collie aristocracy. Yet, from his traits, how absent that reserve, 188 A STUDY IN CONTRASTS That stillness on a base of power, which marks, In men and mastiffs, the selectly sprung ! For after all, his high-life attributes, His trick of doing nothing with an air, His salon manners and society smile, Were but skin-deep, factitious, and you saw The bustling despot of the mountain flock, And pastoral dog-of-all-work, underlie The fashionable modern lady's pet, — Industrial impulses bereft of scope, Duty and discipline denied an aim, Ancestral energy and strenuousness In graceful trifling frittered all away. Witness the depth of his concern and zeal About minutest issues : shall we take This path or that ? — it matters not a straw — But just a moment unresolved we stand, And all his personality, from ears To tip of tail, is interrogative ; And when from pure indifference we decide. How he vociferates ! how he bounds ahead ! With what enthusiasm he ratifies, 189 A STUDY IN CONTRASTS Applauds, acclaims our choice 'twixt right and left. As though some hoary problem over which The world had puckered immemorial brows, Were solved at last, and all life launched anew ! These and a thousand tricks and ways and traits I noted as of Demos at their root, And foreign to the staid, conservative, Came-over-with-the-Conqueror type of mind. And then, his nature, how impressionable, How quickly moved to Collie mirth or woe, Elated or dejected at a word ! And how unlike your genuine Vere de Vere's Frigid, indifferent, half-ignoring glance At everything outside the sacred pale Of thing's De Veres have sanctioned from the Flood, The unweariable curiosity And universal open-mindedness Of that all-testing, all-inquisitive nose ! 190 A STUDY IN CONTRASTS II So, to my friend's house, back we strolled ; and there — We loitering in the garden — from her post Of purview at a window, languidly A great Angora watched his Collieship, And throned in monumental calm, surveyed His effervescence, volatility, Clamour on slight occasion, fussiness, Herself immobile, imperturbable, Like one whose vision seeks the Immanent Behind these symbols and appearances, The face within this transitory mask. And as her eyes with indolent regard Viewed his upbubblings of ebullient life, She seemed the Orient Spirit incarnate, lost In contemplation of the Western Soul ! Ev'n so, methought, the genius of the East, Reposeful, patient, undemonstrative, Luxurious, enigmatically sage, 19l" A STUDY IN CONTRASTS Dispassionately cruel; might look down On all the fever of the Occident ; — The brooding mother of the unfilial world, Recumbent on her own antiquity, Aloof from our mutations and unrest, Alien to our achievements and desires, Too proud alike for protest or assent When new thoughts thunder at her massy door ;- Another brain dreaming another dream, Another heart recalling other loves, Too grey and grave for our adventurous hopes, For our precipitate pleasures too august, And in majestic taciturnity Refraining her illimitable scorn. 192 TO RICHARD HOLT HUTTON TO RICHARD HOLT HUTTON ~V"ES, I have had my griefs ; and yet I think that when I shake off life's annoy, I shall, in my last hour, forget All things that were not joy. Have I not watched the starry throngs Dance, and the soul of April break in bud ? Have I not taken Schubert's songs Into my brain and blood ? I have seen the morn one laugh of gold ; I have known a mind that was a match for Fate ; I have wondered what the heavens can hold Than simplest love more great. 193 N TO RICHARD HOLT HUTTON And not uncrowned with honours ran My days, and not without a boast shall end ! For I was Shakespeare's countryman ; And wert thou not my friend ? 194 EPIGRAM THE beasts in field are glad, and have not wit To know why leapt their hearts when springtime shone. Man looks at his own bliss, considers it, Weighs it with curious fingers ; and 'tis gone. 195 DOMINE, QUO VADIS? DOMINE, QUO VADIS? A Legend of the Early Church T^ARKENING the azure roof of Nero's world, From smouldering Rome the smoke of ruin curled ; And the fierce populace went clamouring — "These Christian dogs, 'tis they have done this thing!" So to the wild wolf Hate were sacrificed The panting, huddled flock whose crime was Christ. Now Peter lodged in Rome, and rose each morn Looking to be ere night in sunder torn By those blind hands that with inebriate zeal Burned the strong Saints, or broke them on the wheel, Or flung them to the lions to make mirth For dames that ruled the lords that ruled the earth. 196 DOMINE, QUO VADIS? And unto him, their towering rocky hold. Repaired those sheep of the Good Shepherd's told In whose white fleece as yet no blood or foam Bare witness to the ravening fangs of Rome. " More light, more cheap," they cried, w we hold our lives Than chaff the flail or dust the whirlwind drives : As chaff they are winnowed and as dust are blown ; Nay, they are nought ; but priceless is thine own. Not in yon streaming shambles must thou die ; We counsel, we entreat, we charge thee, fly ! " And Peter answered : " Nay, my place is here ; Through the dread storm, this ship of Christ I steer. Blind is the tempest, deaf the roaring tide, And I, His pilot, at the helm abide." Then one stood forth, the flashing of whose soul Enrayed his presence like an aureole. Eager he spake ; his fellows, ere they heard, Caught from his eyes the swift and leaping word. " Let us, His vines, be in the wine-press trod, And poured a beverage for the lips of God ; 197 DOMINE, QUO VADIS? Or, ground as wheat of His eternal field, Bread for His table let our bodies yield. Behold, the Church hath other use for thee Thy safety is her own, and thou must flee. Ours be the glory at her call to die, But quick and whole God needs His great ally." And Peter said : " Do lords of spear and shield Thus leave their hosts uncaptained on the field, And from some mount of prospect watch afar The havoc of the hurricane of war ? Yet, if He wills it. . . . Nay, my task is plain, — To serve, and to endure, and to remain. But weak I stand, and I beseech you all Urge me no more, lest at a touch I fall." There knelt a noble youth at Peter's feet, And like a viol's strings his voice was sweet. A suppliant angel might have pleaded so, Crowned with the splendour of some starry woe. He said : " My sire and brethren yesterday The heathen did with ghastly torments slay. ' 198 DOMINE, QUO VADIS? Fain, like a worm, beneath their feet they trod. Their souls went up like incense unto God. An offering richer yet, can Heaven require ? live, and be my brethren and my sire." And Peter answered : " Son, there is small need That thou exhort me to the easier deed. Rather I would that thou and these had lent Strength to uphold, not shatter, my intent. Already my resolve is shaken sore. 1 pray thee, if thou love me, say no more." And even as he spake, he went apart, Somewhat to hide the brimming of his heart, Wherein a voice came flitting to and fro, That now said " Tarry ! " and anon said " Go ! " And louder every moment, " Go ! " it cried, And " Tarry ! " to a whisper sank, and died. And as a leaf when summer is o'erpast Hano-s trembling ere it fall in some chance blast, So hung his trembling purpose and fell dead ; And he arose, and hurried forth, and fled, 199 DOMINE, QUO VADIS? Darkness conniving, through the Capuan Gate, From all that heaven of love, that hell of hate, To the Campania glimmering wide and still, And strove to think he did his Master's will. But spectral eyes and mocking tongues pursued, And with vague hands he fought a phantom brood. Doubts, like a swarm of gnats, o'erhung his flight, And " Lord," he prayed, " have I not done aright ? Can I not, living, more avail for Thee Than Avhelmed in yon red storm of agony ? The tempest, it shall pass, and I remain. Not from its fiery sickle saved in vain. Are there no seeds to sow, no desert lands Waiting the tillage of these eager hands, That I should beastlike 'neath the butcher fall, More fruitlessly than oxen from the stall ? Is earth so easeful, is men's hate so sweet, Are thorns so welcome unto sleepless feet, Have death and heaven so feeble lures, that I, Choosing to live, should win rebuke thereby ? 200 DOMINE, QUO VADIS? Not mine the dread of pain, the lust of bliss ! Master who judgest, have I done amiss?" Lo, on the darkness brake a wandering ray : A vision flashed along the Appian Way. Divinely in the pagan night it shone — A mournful Face — a Figure hurrying on — Though haggard and dishevelled, frail and worn, A King, of David's lineage, crowned with thorn. "Lord, whither farest?" Peter, wondering, cried. " To Rome," said Christ, " to be re-crucified." Into the night the vision ebbed like breath ; And Peter turned, and rushed on Rome and death. 201 TO AUBREY DE VERE TO AUBREY DE VERE "DOET, whose grave and strenuous lyre is still For Truth and Duty strung; whose art eschews The lighter graces of the softer Muse, Disdainful of mere craftsman's idle skill : Yours is a soul from visionary hill Watching and hearkening for ethereal news, Looking beyond life's storms and death's cold dews To habitations of the eternal will. Not mine your mystic creed ; not mine, in prayer And worship, at the ensanguined Cross to kneel ; But when I mark your faith how pure and fair, How based on love, on passion for man's weal, My mind, half envying what it cannot share, Reveres the i*everence which it cannot feel. 202 CHRISTMAS DAY CHRISTMAS DAY THE morn broke bright : the thronging people wore Their best ; but in the general face I saw No touch of veneration or of awe. Christ's natal day ? 'Twas merely one day more On which the mart agreed to close its door ; A lounging-time by usage and by law Sanctioned ; nor recked they, beyond this, one straw Of any meaning which for man it bore ! Fated among time's fallen leaves to stray, We breathe an air that savours of the tomb, Heavy with dissolution and decay ; Waiting; till some new world-emotion rise, And with the shattering might of the simoom Sweep clean this dying Past that never dies. 203 TO A LADY TO A LADY RECOVERED FROM A DANGEROUS SICKNESS T IFE plucks thee back as by the golden hair — Life, who had feigned to let thee go but now. Wealthy is Death already, and can spare Ev'n such a prey as thou. 204 A NEW NATIONAL ANTHEM A NEW NATIONAL ANTHEM /T^.OD save our ancient land, God bless our noble land, God save this land ! Yea, from war's pangs and fears, Plague's tooth and famine's tears, Ev'n unto latest years God save this land ! God bless our reigning I'ace ! Truth, honour, wisdom, grace, Guide their right hand ! Yet, though Ave love their sway, England is more than they : God bless their realm, we pray, God save our land ! 205 A NEW NATIONAL ANTHEM Too long the gulf betwixt This man and that man fixt Yawns yet unspanned. Too long, that some may rest, Tired millions toil unblest. God lift our lowliest, God save this land ! God save our ancient land, God bless our noble land, God save our land ! Earth's empires wax and wane, Man's might is mown as grain : God's arm our arm sustain ! God save our land ! 206 EPIGRAM T^O Art we go as to a well, athirst, And see our shadow 'gainst its mimic skies, But in its depth must plunge and be immersed To clasp the naiad Truth where low she lies. 207 SONNET SONNET THINK the immortal servants of mankind, Who, from their graves, watch by how slow degrees The World-Soul greatens with the centuries, Mourn most Man's barren levity of mind, The ear to no grave harmonies inclined, The witless thirst for false wit's worthless lees, The laugh mistimed in tragic presences, The eye to all majestic meanings blind. O prophets, martyrs, savioms, ye were great, All truth being great to you : ye deemed Man more Than a dull jest, God's ennui to amuse : The world, for you, held purport : Life ye wore Proudly, as Kings their solemn robes of state ; And humbly, as the mightiest monarchs use. 208 "I DO NOT ASK" T DO not ask to have my fill Of wine, or love, or fame. I do not, for a little ill, Against the gods exclaim. One boon of Fortune I implore, With one petition kneel : At least caress me not, before Thou break vie on thy wheel. 209 ODE IN MAY ODE IN MAY [" ET me go forth, and share The overflowing Sun With one wise friend, or one Better than wise, being fair, Where the pewit wheels and dips On heights of bracken and ling, And Earth, unto her leaflet tips, Tingles with the Spring. What is so sweet and dear As a prosperous morn in May, The confident prime of the day, And the dauntless youth of the year, 210 ODE IN MAY When nothing that asks for bliss, Asking aright, is denied, And half of the world a bridegroom is, And half of the world a bride ? The Song of Mingling flows, Grave, ceremonial, pure, As once, from lips that endure, The cosmic descant rose, When the temporal lord of life, Going his golden way, Had taken a wondrous maid to wife That long had said him nay. For of old the Sun, our sire, Came wooing the mother of men, Earth, that was virginal then, Vestal fire to his fire. Silent her bosom and coy, But the strong god sued and pressed ; And born of their starry nuptial joy Are all that drink of her breast. 211 ODE IN MAY And the triumph of him that begot, And the travail of her that bore, Behold, they are evermore As warp and weft in our lot. We are children of splendour and fame, Of shuddering, also, and tears. Magnificent out of the dust we came, And abject from the Spheres. O bright irresistible lord, We are fruit of Earth's womb, each one, And fruit of thy loins, O Sun, Whence first was the seed outpoured. To thee as our Father we bow, Forbidden thy Father to see, Who is older and greater than thou, as thou Art greater and older than we. Thou art but as a word of his speech, Thou art but as a wave of his hand ; Thou art brief as a glitter of sand 'Twixt tide and tide on his beach ; 212 ODE IN MAY Thou art less than a spark of his fire, Or a moment's mood of his soul : Thou art lost in the notes on the lips of his choir That chant the chant of the Whole. 213 SONG SONG Z"iH, like a queen's her happy tread, And like a queen's her golden head ! But oh, at last, when all is said, Her woman's heart for me ! We wandered where the river "-learned 'Neath oaks that mused and pines that dreamed. A wild thing of the woods she seemed, So proud, and pure, and free ! All heaven drew nigh to hear her sing, When from her lips her soul took wing ; The oaks forgot their pondering, The pines their reverie. 214 SONG And oh, her happy queenly tread, And oh, her queenly golden head ! But oh, her heart, when all is said, Her woman's heart for me ! 215 THE WORLD IN ARMOUR THE WORLD IN ARMOUR TNDER this shade of crimson wings abhorred That never wholly leaves the sky serene, — While Vengeance sleeps a sleep so light, between Dominions that acclaim Thee overlord, — Sadly the blast of Thy tremendous word, Whate'er its mystic purport may have been, Echoes across the ages, Nazarene : A T ot to bring peace Mine errand, but a sword. For lo, Thy world uprises and lies down In armour, and its Peace is War, in all Save the great death that weaves War's dreadful crown ; War unennobled by heroic pain, War where none triumph, none sublimely fall, War that sits smiling, with the eyes of Cain. 216 THE WORLD IN ARMOUR II When London's Plague, that day by day enrolled His thousands dead, nor deigned his rage to abate Till grass was green in silent Bishopsgate, Had come and passed like thunder, — still, 'tis told, The monster, driven to earth, in hovels old And haunts obscure, though dormant, lingered late, Till the dread Fire, one roaring wave of fate, Rose, and swept clean his last retreat and hold. In Europe live the di-egs of Plague to-day, Dregs of full many an ancient Plague and dire, Old wrongs, old lies of ages blind and cruel. What if alone the world-war's world-wide fire Can purge the ambushed pestilence away ? Yet woe to him that idly lights the fuel ! 2V THE WORLD IN ARMOUR III A moment's fantasy, the vision came Of Europe dipped in fiery death, and so Mounting re-born, with vestal limbs aglow, Splendid and fragrant from her bath of flame. It fleeted ; and a phantom without name, Sightless, dismembered, terrible, said : " Lo, / am that ravished Europe men shall know After the morn of blood and night of shame." The spectre passed, and I beheld alone The Europe of the present, as she stands, Powerless from terror of her own vast power, Neath novel stars, beside a brink unknown ; And round her the sad Kings, with sleepless hands, Piling the fagots, hour by doomful hour. 218 TO A FRIEND TO A FRIEND Uniting Antiquarian Tastes with Progressive Politics rPRUE lover of the Past, who dost not scorn To give good heed to what the Future saith, — Drinking the air of two worlds at a breath, Thou livest not alone in thoughts outworn, But ever helpest the new time be born, Though with a sigh for the old order's death ; As clouds that crown the night that perisheth Aid in the high solemnities of morn. Guests of the ages, at To-morrow's door Why shrink we ? The long track behind us lies, The lamps gleam and the music throbs before, Bidding us enter : and I count him wise, Who loves so well Man's noble memories He needs must love Man's nobler hopes yet more. 219 AN EPITAPH AN EPITAPH XTIS friends he loved. His fellest earthly foes- Cats — I helieve he did but fei^n to hate. My hand will miss the insinuated nose, Mine eyes the tail that wagg'd contempt at Fate. 220 PEACE AND WAR PEACE AND WAR ^HE sleek sea, gorged and sated, basking lies ; The cruel creature fawns and blinks and purrs ; And almost we forget what fangs are hers, And trust for once her emerald-golden eyes ; Though haply on the morrow she shall rise And summon her infernal ministers, And charge her everlasting barriers, With wild white fingers snatching at the skies. So, betwixt Peace and War, man's life is cast ; Yet hath he dreamed of perfect Peace at last Shepherding all the nations ev'n as sheep. The inconstant, moody ocean shall as soon, At the cold dictates of the bloodless moon, Swear an eternity of halcyon sleep. yyi TO TO T^ORGET not, brother singer ! that though Prose Can never be too truthful or too wise, Song is not Truth, not Wisdom, but the rose Upon Truth's lips, the light in Wisdom's eyes. 222 IMITATION OF THE ELIZABETHANS SONG IN IMITATION OF THE ELIZABETHANS SWEETEST sweets that time hath rifled, Live anew on lyric tongue — Tresses with which Paris trilled, Lips to Antony's that clung. These surrender not their rose, Nor their golden puissance those. Vain the envious loam that covers Her of Egypt, her of Troy : Helen's, Cleopatra's lovers Still desire them, still enjoy. Fate but stole what Song restored Vain the aspic, vain the cord. 223 IMITATION OF THE ELIZABETHANS Idly clanged the sullen portal, Idly the sepulchral door : Fame the mighty, Love the immortal, These than foolish dust are more : Nor may captive Death refuse Homage to the conquering Muse. 224 EPIGRAM ~E\)R metaphors of man we search the skies, And find our allegory in all the air. We gaze on Nature with Narcissus-eyes, Enamour' d of our shadow everywhere. 225 THE FRONTIER THE FRONTIER AT the hushed brink of twilight, — when, as though Some solemn journeying phantom paused to lay An ominous finger on the awestruck day, Earth holds her breath till that great presence go, — A moment comes of visionary glow, Pendulous 'twixt the gold hour and the grey, Lovelier than these, more eloquent than they Of memory, foresight, and life's ebb and flow. So have I known, in some fair woman's face, While viewless yet was Time's more gross imprint, The first, faint, hesitant, elusive hint Of that invasion of the vandal years Seem deeper beauty than youth's cloudless grace, Wake subtler dreams, and touch me nigh to tears. 226 THE LURE THE LURE /^JOME hither and behold them, Sweet- The fairy prow that o'er me rides, And white sails of a lagging Fleet On idle tides. Come hither and behold them, Sweet — The lustrous gloom, the vivid shade, The throats of love that burn and beat And shake the glade. Come, for the hearts of all things pine, And all the paths desire thy feet, And all this beauty asks for thine, As I do, Sweet ! 227 EPIGRAM |~ OVE, like a bird, hath perch'd upon a spray For thee and me to hearken what he sings. Contented, he forgets to fly away ; But hush ! . . . remind not Eros of his wings. 228 THE PROTEST THE PROTEST 13 ID me no more to other eyes With wandering worship fare, And weave my numbers garland-wise To crown another's hair. On me no more a mandate lay Thou wouldst not have me to obey ! Bid me no more to leave unkissed That rose-wreathed porch of pearl. Shall I, where'er the winds may list, Give them my life to whirl ? Perchance too late thou wilt be fain Thy exile to recall — in vain. 229 THE PROTEST Bid me no more from thee depart. For in thy voice to-day I hear the tremor of thy heart Entreating me to stay ; I hear . . . nay, silence tells it best, O yielded lips, O captive breast ! 230 "SINCE LIFE IS ROUGH a INCE Life is rough, Sing smoothly, O Bard. Enough, enough, To have found Life hard ! No record Art keeps Of her travail and throes. There is toil on the steeps ; On the summits, repose. 23\ THE TOMB OF BURNS THE TOMB OF BURNS \ VTHAT woos the world to yonder shrine ? What sacred clay, what dust divine ? Was this some Master faultless-fine, In whom we praise The cunning of the jewelled line And carven phrase ? A searcher of our source and goal, A reader of God's secret scroll ? A Shakespeare, flashing o'er the whole Of man's domain The splendour of his cloudless soul And perfect brain ? 232 THE TOMB OF BURNS Some Keats, to Grecian gods allied, Clasping all Beauty as his bride ? Some Shelley, soaring dim-descried Above Time's throng, And heavenward hurling wild and wide His spear of song ? A lonely Wordsworth, from the crowd Half hid in light, half veiled in cloud ? A sphere-born Milton cold and proud, In hallowing dews Dipt, and with gorgeous ritual vowed Unto the Muse ? Nay, none of these, — and little skilled On heavenly heights to sing and build ! Thine, thine, O Earth, whose fields he tilled, And thine alone, Was he whose fiery heart lies stilled 'Neath yonder stone. 233 THE TOMB OF BURNS He came when poets had forgot How rich and strange the human lot ; How warm the tints of Life ; how hot Are Love and Hate ; And what makes Truth divine, and what Makes Manhood great. A ghostly troop, in pale amaze They melted 'neath that living gaze, — His in whose spirit's gusty blaze We seem to hear The crackling of their phantom bays Sapless and sear ! For, 'mid an age of dust and dearth, Once more had bloomed immortal worth. There, in the strong, splenetic North, The Spring began. A mighty mother had brought forth A mighty man. 234 THE TOMB OF BURNS No mystic torch through Time he bore, No virgin veil from Life he tore ; His soul no bright insignia wore Of starry birth ; He saw what all men see — no more — In heaven and earth : But as, when thunder crashes nigh, All darkness opes one flaming eye, And the world leaps against the sky, — So fiery-clear Did the old truths that we pass by To him appeal*. How could he 'scape the doom of such As feel the airiest phantom-touch Keenlier than others feel the clutch Of iron powers, — Who die of having lived so much In their large hours ? 235 THE TOMB OF BURNS He erred, he sinned : and if there be Who, from his hapless frailties free, Rich in the poorer virtues, see His faults alone, — To such, O Lord of Charity, Be mercy shown ! Singly he faced the bigot brood, The meanly wise, the feebly good ; He pelted them with pearl, with mud ; He fought them well, — But ah, the stupid million stood, And he— he fell ! All bright and glorious at the start, 'Twas his ignobly to depart, Slain by his own too affluent heart, Too generous blood ; And blindly, having lost Life's chart, To meet Death's flood. 236 THE TOMB OF BURNS So closes the fantastic fray, The duel of the spirit and clay ! So come bewildering disarray And blurring gloom, The irremediable day And final doom. So passes, all confusedly As lights that hurry, shapes that flee About some brink we dimly see, The trivial, great, Squalid, majestic tragedy Of human fate. Not ours to gauge the more or less, The will's defect, the blood's excess, The earthy humours that oppress The radiant mind. His greatness, not his littleness, Concerns mankind. 237 THE TOMB OF BURNS A dreamer of the common dreams, A fisher in familiar streams, He chased the transitory gleams That all pursue ; But on his lips the eternal themes Again were new. With shattering ire or withering mirth He smote each worthless claim to worth. The barren fig-tree cumbering Earth He would not spare. Through ancient lies of proudest birth He drove his share. To him the Powers that formed him brave, Yet weak to breast the fatal wave, A mighty gift of Hatred gave, — A gift above All other gifts benefic, save The gift of Love. 238 THE TOMB OF BURNS He saAv 'tis meet that Man possess The will to curse as well as bless, To pity — and be pitiless, To make, and mar ; The fierceness that from tenderness Is never far. And so his fierce and tender strain Lives, and his idlest words remain To flout oblivion, that in vain Strives to destroy One lightest record of his pain Or of his joy. And though thrice statelier names decay, His own can wither not away While plighted lass and lad shall stray Among the broom, Where evening touches glen and brae With rosy gloom ; 239 THE TOMB OF BURNS While Hope and Love with Youth abide While Age sits at the ingleside ; While yet there have not wholly died The heroic fires. The patriot passion, and the pride In noble sires ; While, with the conquering Teuton breed Whose fair estate of speech and deed Heritors north and south of Tweed Alike may claim, The dimly mingled Celtic seed Flowers like a flame ; While nations see in holy trance That vision of the world's advance Which glorified his countenance When from afar He hailed the Hope that shot o'er France Its crimson star ; 240 THE TOMB OF BURNS While, plumed for flight, the Soul deplores The cage that foils the wing that soars ; And while, through adamantine doors In dreams Hung wide, We hear resound, on mortal shores, The immortal tide. 241 EPIGRAM T FOLLOW Beauty ; of her train am I : Beauty whose voice is earth and sea and air ; Who servethj and her hands for all things ply ; Who reigneth, and her throne is everywhere. 242 SONNETS, Etc., FROM "THE YEAR OF SHAME" Three of the following sonnets appeared also in the Author s pamphlet, " The Purple East." FROM "THE YEAR OF SHAME" TO A LADY T^AUGHTER of Ireland,— nay, 'twere better said, Daughter of Ireland's beauty, Ireland's grace, Child of her charm, of her romance ; whose face Is legendary with her glories fled ! The shadow of her living griefs and dead I pray you to put by a little space, And mourn with me an ancient Orient race Outcast and doomed and disinherited. Though Wrong be strong, though thrones be built on crimes, To know you, Lady, is to doubt no more That in the world are mightier powers than these ; That heaven, the ocean, gains on earth, the shore ; And that deformity and hate are Time's, And love and loveliness Eternity's. 245 FROM "THE YEAR OF SHAME" THE TIRED LION ^PEAK once again, with that great note of thine, Hero withdrawn from Senates and their sound Unto thy home by Cambria's northern bound, Not always, not in all things, was it mine Speak once again, and wake a world supine. To follow where thou led'st : but who hath found Another man so shod with fire, so crowned With thunder, and so armed with wrath divine ? Lift up thy voice once more ! The nation's heart Is cold as Anatolia's mountains snows. Oh, from these alien paths of base repose Call back thy England, ere thou too depart — Ere, on some secret mission, thou too start With silent footsteps, whither no man knows. 246 FROM "THE YEAR OF SHAME" THE KNELL OF CHIVALRY r\ VANISHED morn of crimson and of gold, youth of roselight and romance, wherein 1 read of paynim and of paladin, And Beauty snatched from ogre's dungeoned hold ! Ever the recreant would in dust be rolled, Ever the true knight in the joust would win, Ever the scaly shape of monstrous Sin At last lie vanquished, fold on writhing fold. Was it all false, that world of princely deeds. The splendid quest, the good fight ringing clear ? Yonder the Dragon ramps with fiery gorge, Yonder the victim faints and gasps and bleeds ; But in his merry England our St. George Sleeps a base sleep beside his idle spear. 247 FROM "THE YEAR OF SHAME" A TRIAL OF ORTHODOXY T^HE clinging children at their mother's knee Slain ; and the sire and kindred one by one Flayed or hewn piecemeal ; and things nameless done, Not to be told : while imperturbably The nations gaze, where Neva to the sea, Where Seine and Rhine, Tiber and Danube run, And where great armies glitter in the sun, And great kings rule, and man is boasted free ! What wonder if yon torn and naked throng Should doubt a Heaven that seems to wink and nod, And having moaned at noontide, " Lord, how long ? " Should cry, "Where hidest Thou ? " at evenfall, At midnight, " Is He deaf and blind, our God ? " And ere day dawn, " Is He indeed at all ? " 248 FROM "THE YEAR OF SHAME TO THE SULTAN /^ALIPH, I did thee wrong. I hailed thee late " Abdul the Damned," and would recall my word. It merged thee with the unillustrious herd Who crowd the approaches to the infernal gate — Spirits gregarious, equal in their state As is the innumerable ocean bird, Gannet or gull, whose wandering plaint is heard On Ailsa or Iona desolate. For, in a world where cruel deeds abound, The merely damned are legion : with such souls Is not each hollow and cranny of Tophet crammed ? Thou with the brightest of Hell's aureoles Dost shine supreme, incomparably crowned, Immortally, beyond all mortals, damned. 249 FROM "THE YEAR OF SHAME ON THE REPORTED EXPULSION FROM FRANCE OF AHMED RIZA, A Disaffected Subject of the Sultan \YTHEN, from supreme disaster, France uprose, Shook her great wings and faced the world anew, Who, if not we, rejoiced at heart to view Her proud resilience after mightiest woes ? When 'neath the anarch's knife we saw the close Of Carnot's day, amid her weepings who Wept if not we, for the just man and true That masked his strength in most urbane repose ? And now again we mourn, but not with her, Nay, not with her, though for her ! — mourn to see A tyrant, Hell's most perfect minister, A man-fiend, sun him in her countenance ; And Freedom, whose impassioned name was France, Lie soiled and desecrate by France the Free. 250 FROM "THE YEAR OF SHAME ON A CERTAIN EUROPEAN ALLIANCE T^HE Hercules of nations, shaggy-browed, Enormous-limbed, supreme on Steppe and plain Dwelt without consort, in his narrow brain Nursing wide dreams he might not dream aloud ; Till him the radiant western Venus vowed (So strange is love !) she pined for : and these twain Were wedded — Neptune, with his nereid-train, Gracing the pageant of their nuptials proud. Perfect in amorous arts, through eyes and ears She fans her giant's not too fierce desire. " How long, O Venus ? What impassioned years, What ages of such rapture, ere thou tire ? " Thus the lewd gods : thus Mars and all his peers, Gazing profane, at fault 'twixt mirth and ire. 251 FROM "THE YEAR OF SHAME" TO OUR SOVEREIGN LADY /^UEEN, that from Spring to Autumn of Thy reign Hast taught Thy people how 'tis queenlier far Than any golden pomp of peace or war, Simply to be a woman without stain ! Queen whom we love, Who lovest us again ! We pray that yonder, by Thy wild Braemar, The lord of many legions, the White Czar, At this red horn - , hath tarried not in vain. We dream that from Thy words, perhaps Thy tears, Ev'n in the King's inscrutable heart, shall grow Harvest of succour, weal, and gentler days ! So shall Thy lofty name to latest years Still loftier sound, and ever sweetlier blow The rose of Thy imperishable praise. 252 FROM "THE YEAR OF SHAME" EUROPE AT THE PLAY f\ LANGUID audience, met to see The last act of the tragedy On that terrific stage afar, Where burning towns the footlights are, — O listless Europe, day by day Callously sitting out the play ! So sat, with loveless count'nance cold, Round the arena, Rome of old. Pain, and the ebb of life's red tide, So, with a calm regard, she eyed, Her gorgeous vesture, million-pearled, Splashed with the blood of half the world. High was her glory's noon : as yet She had not dreamed her sun could set ! 253 FROM "THE YEAR OF SHAME" As yet she had not dreamed how soon Shadows should vex her glory's noon. Another's pangs she counted nought ; Of human hearts she took no thought ; But God, at nightfall, in her ear Thundered His thought exceeding clear. Perchance in tempest and in blight, On Europe, too, shall fall the night ! She sees the victim overborne, By worse than ravening lions torn. She sees, she hears, with soul unstirred, And lifts no hand, and speaks no word, But vaunts a brow like theirs who deem Men's wrongs a phrase, men's rights a dream. Yet haply she shall learn, too late, In some blind hurricane of Fate, How flerily alive the things She held as fool's imaginings. And, though circuitous and obscure, The feet of Nemesis how sure. 254 ESTRANGEMENT ESTRANGEMENT QO, without overt breach; we fall apart; Tacitly sunder — neither you nor I Conscious of one intelligible Why, And both, from severance, winning equal smart. So, with resigned and acquiescent heart, Whene'er your name on some chance lip may lie, I seem to see an alien shade pass by, A spirit wherein I have no lot or part. Thus may a captive, in some fortress grim, From casual speech betwixt his warders, learn That June on her triumphal progress goes Through arched and bannered woodlands ; while for him She is a legend emptied of concern, And idle is the rumour of the rose. 255 EPIGRAM '"FHE gods man makes he breaks ; proclaims them each Immortal, and himself outlives them all ; But whom he set not up he cannot reach To shake His cloud-dark sun-bright pedestal. 256 THE LOST EDEN THE LOST EDEN T>UT yesterday was Man from Eden driven. His dream, wherein he dreamed himself the first Of creatures, fashioned for eternity — This was the Eden that he shared with Eve. Eve, the adventurous soul within his soul ! The sleepless, the unslaked ! She showed him where Amidst his pleasance hung the bough whose fruit Is disenchantment and the perishing Of many glorious errors. And he saw His paradise how narrow : and he saw, — He, who had well-nigh deemed the world itself Of less significance and majesty Than his own part and business in it ! — how Little that part, and in how great a world. 257 R THE LOST EDEN And an imperative world-thirst drave him forth, And the gold gates of Eden clanged behind. Never shall he return : for he hath sent His spirit abroad among the infinitudes, And may no more to the ancient pales recall The travelled feet. But oftentimes he feels The intolerable vastness bow him down, The awful homeless spaces scare his soul ; And half-regretful he remembers then His Eden lost, as some grey mariner May think of the far fields where he was bred, And woody ways unbreathed-on by the sea, Though more familiar now the ocean-paths Gleam, and the stars his fathers never knew. 258 EPIGRAM /^iNWARD the chariot of the Untarrying moves ; Nor day divulges him nor night conceals ; Thou hear'st the echo of unreturning hooves And thunder of irrevocable wheels. 259 INVENTION INVENTION ENVY not the Lark his song divine, Nor thee, O Maid, thy beauty's faultless mould. Perhaps the chief felicity is mine, Who hearken and behold. The joy of the Artificer Unknown Whose genius could devise the Lark and thee — This, or a kindred rapture, let me own, I covet ceaselessly ! 260 EPIGRAM T PLUCK'D this flower, O brighter flower, for thee There where the river dies into the sea. To kiss it the wild west wind hath made free : Kiss it thyself and give it back to me. 261 AN INSCRIPTION AT WINDERMERE AN INSCRIPTION AT WINDERMERE /^J.UEST of this fair abode, before thee rise No summits vast, that icilv remote Cannot forcret their own magnificence Or once put off their kinghood ; but withal A confraternity of stateliest brows, As Alp or Atlas noble, in port and mien ; Old majesties, that on their secular seats Enthroned, are yet of affable access And easy audience, not too great for praise, Not arrogantly aloof from thy concerns, Not vaunting their indifference to thy fate, Nor so august as to contemn thy love. Do homage to these suavely eminent ; But privy to their bosoms wouldst thou be, There is a vale, whose seaward parted lips 262 AN INSCRIPTION AT WINDERMERE Murmur eternally some halt-divulged Reluctant secret, where thou may'st o'erhear The mountains interchange their confidences, Peak with his federate peak, that think aloud Their broad and lucid thoughts, in liberal day : Thither repair alone : the mountain heart Not two may enter ; thence returning, tell What thou hast heard ; and 'mid the immortal friends Of mortals, the selectest fellowship Of poets divine, place shall be found for thee. 263 SONG SONG APRIL, April, Laugh thy girlish laughter ; Then, the moment after, Weep thy girlish tears ! April, that mine eai - s Like a lover greetest, If I tell thee, sweetest, All my hopes and fears, April, April, Laugh thy golden laughter, But, the moment after, Weep thy golden tears ! 26'4 EPIGRAM AH, vain, thrice vain in the end, thy hate and rage, And the shrill tempest of thy clamorous page. True poets but transcendent lovers be, And one great love-confession poesy. 265 ELUSION ELUSION T^^HERE shall I find thee, Joy? by what great marge With the strong seas exulting ? on what peaks Rapt ? or astray within what forest bourn, Thy light hands parting the resilient boughs ? Hast thou no answer ? . . . Ah, in mine own breast Except unsought thou spring, though I go forth And tease the waves for news of thee, and make Importunate inquisition of the woods If thou didst pass that way, I shall but find The brief print of thy footfall on sere leaves And the salt brink, and woo thy touch in vain. 266 EPIGRAM FMMURED in sense, with fivefold bonds confined, Rest we content if whispers from the stars In waftings of the incalculable wind Come blown at midnight through our prison-bars. 267 TOO LATE TOO LATE '"TOO late to say farewell, To turn, and fall asunder, and forget, And take up the dropped life of yesterday ! So ancient, so far-off, is yesterday, To the last hour ere I had kissed thy cheek ! Too late to say farewell. Too late to say farewell. Can aught remain hereafter as of old ? A touch, a tone hath changed the heaven and earth, And in a hand-clasp all begins anew. Somewhat of me is thine, of thee is mine. Too late to say farewell. 268 TOO LATE Too late to say farewell. We are not May-day masquers, thou and I ! We have lived deep life, we have drunk of tragic springs. Tis for light hearts to take light leave of love, But ah, for me, for thee, too late, dear Spirit ! Too late to say farewell. 269 THEY AND WE THEY AND WE VVTITH stormy joy, from height on height. The thundering torrents leap. The mountain tops, with still delight, Their great inaction keep. Man only, irked by calm, and rent; By each emotion's throes, Neither in passion finds content, Nor finds it in repose. 270 EPIGRAM 'THINK not thy wisdom can illume away The ancient tanglement of night and day. Enough, to acknowledge both, and both revere They see not clearliest who see all things clear. 271 THE HEIGHTS AND THE DEEPS THE HEIGHTS AND THE DEEPS T^HIS is the summit, wild and lone. Westward the Cumbrian mountains stand. Let me look eastward on mine own Ancestral land. O sing me songs, O tell me tales, Of yonder valleys at my feet ! She was a daughter of these dales, A daughter sweet. Oft did she speak of homesteads there, And faces that her childhood knew. She speaks no more ; and scarce I dare To deem it true, 272 THE HEIGHTS AND THE DEEPS That somehow she can still behold Sunlight and moonlight, earth and sea, Which were among the gifts untold She gave to me. 273 THE CAPTIVE'S DREAM THE CAPTIVES DREAM T^ROM birth we have his captives been For freedom, vain to strive ! This is our chamber : windows five Look forth on his demesne ; And each to its own several hue Translates the outward scene. We cannot once the landscape view Save with the painted panes between. Ah, if there be indeed Beyond one darksome door a secret stair, That, winding to the battlements, shall lead Hence to pure light, free air ! This is the master hope, or the supreme despair. 274 TO MRS. HERBERT STUDD TO MRS. HERBERT STUDD AMID the billowing leagues of Sarum Plain I read the heroic songs, which he, the bard * Of your own house and lineage, lovingly Hath fashioned, out of Ireland's deeds and dreams, And her far glories, and her ancient tears. The sheep-bells tinkled in the fold. Hard by, A whimpering pewit's desultory wing Made loneliness more manifestly lone. Friend, would you judge your poets, try them thus : Read them where rolls the moorland, or the main ! Not light is then their ordeal, so to stand Mr. Aubrey de Vere. 275 TO MRS. HERBERT STUDD Neighboured by these large natural Presences ; Nor transitory their honour, who, like him, No inch of spiritual stature lose, Measured against the eternal amplitudes, And tested by the clear and healthful sky. 276 THE UNKNOWN GOD THE UNKNOWN GOD \VTHEN, overarched by gorgeous night, I wave my trivial self away ; When all I was to all men's sight Shares the erasure of the day ; Then do I cast my cumbering load, Then do I gain a sense of God. Not him that with fantastic boasts A sombre people dreamed they knew ; The mere barbaric God of Hosts That edged their sword and braced their thew A God they pitted 'gainst a swarm Of neighbour Gods less vast of arm ; 277 THE UNKNOWN GOD A God like some imperious king, Wroth, were his realm not duly awed ; A God for ever heai-kening Unto his self-commanded laud ; A God for ever jealous grown Of carven wood and graven stone ; A God whose ghost, in arch and aisle, Yet haunts his temple — and his tomb ; But follows in a little while Odin and Zeus to equal doom ; A God of kindred seed and line ; Man's giant shadow, hailed divine. O streaming worlds, O crowded sky, O Life, and mine own soul's abyss, Myself am scarce so small that I Should bow to Deity like this ! This my Begetter ? This was what Man in his violent youth begot. 278 THE UNKNOWN GOD The God I know of, 1 shall ne'er Know, though he dwells exceeding nigh. Raise thou the stone and find me there, Cleave thou the wood and there am I. Yea, in my flesh his spirit doth flow, Too neai-, too far, for me to know. Whate'er my deeds, I am not sure That I can pleasure him or vex : I that must use a speech so poor It narrows the Supreme with sex. Notes he the good or ill in man ? To hope he cares is all I can. I hope — with fear. For did I trust This vision granted me at birth, The sire of heaven would seem less just Than many a faulty son of earth. And so he seems indeed ! But then, I trust it not, this bounded ken. 279 THE UNKNOWN GOD And dreaming much, I never dare To dream that in my prisoned soul The flutter of a trembling prayer Can move the Mind that is the Whole. Though kneeling nations watch and yearn, Does the primordial purpose turn ? Best by remembering God, say some, We keep our high imperial lot. Fortune, I fear, hath oftenest come When we forgot — when Ave forgot ! A lovelier faith their happier crown, But history laughs and weeps it down ! Know they not well, how seven times seven, Wronging our mighty arms with rust, We dared not do the work of heaven Lest heaven should hurl us in the dust ? The work of heaven ! 'Tis waiting still The sanction of the heavenly will. 280 THE UNKNOWN GOD Unmeet to be profaned by praise Is lie whose coils the world enfold ; The God on whom I ever gaze, The God I never once behold : Above the cloud, beneath the clod : The Unknown God, the Unknown God. 281 TO THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH TO THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH In Answer to his Sonnet " On Reading f The Purple East FDLE the churlish leagues 'twixt you and me, Singer most rich in charm, most rich in grace ! What though I cannot see you face to face ? Allow my boast, that one in blood are we ! One by that secret consanguinity Which binds the children of melodious race, And knows not the fortuities of place, And cold interposition of the sea. You are my noble kinsman in the lyre : Forgive the kinsman's freedom that I use, Adventuring these imperfect thanks, who late, Singing a nation's woe, in wonder and ire, — Against me half the wise and all the great, — Sang not alone, for with me was your muse. 282 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD THE HOPE OF THE WORLD T.TIGHER than heaven they sit, Life and her consort Law ; And One whose countenance lit In mine more perfect awe, I fain had deemed their peer, Beside them throned above : Ev'n him who casts out fear, Unconquerable Love. Ah, 'twas on earth alone that I his beauty saw. ii On earth, in homes of men, In hearts that crave and die. 283 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD Dwells he not also, then, With Godhead, throned on high ? This and but this I know : His face I see not there : Here find I him below, Nor find him otherwhere : Born of an aching world, Pain's bridegroom, Death's ally. in Did Heaven vouchsafe some sign That through all Nature's frame Boundless ascent benign Is everywhere her aim, Such as man hopes it here, Where he from beasts hath risen,— Then might I read full clear, Ev'n in my sensual prison, That Life and Law and Love are one svmphonious name. 284 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD IV Such sign hath Heaven yet lent ? Nay, on this earth, are we So sure 'tis real ascent And inmost gain we see ? Gainst Evil striving still, Some spoils of war we wrest : Not to discover 111 Were haply state as blest. We vaunt, o'er doubtful foes, a dubious victory. In cave and bosky dene Of old there crept and ran The gibbering form obscene That was and was not man. With fairer covering clad The desert beasts went by; 285 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD The couchant lion had More speculative eye, And goodlier speech the birds, than we when we began. VI A nattering dream were this — That Earth, from primal bloom, With pangs of prescient bliss Divined us in her womb ; That fostering powers have made Our fate their secret care, And wooed us, grade by grade, Up winding stair on stair : But not for golden fancies iron truths make room. VII Rather, some random throw Of heedless Nature's die 'Twould seem, that from so low Hath lifted man so high. 286 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD Through untold aeons vast She let him lurk and cower : 'Twould seem he climbed at last In mere fortuitous hour, Child of a thousand chances 'neath the indifferent sky. VIII A soul so long deferred In his blind brain be bore, It might have slept unstirred Ten million noontides more. Yea, round him Darkness might Till now her folds have drawn, O'er that enormous night So casual came the dawn, Such hues of hap and hazard Man's Emergence wore ! IX If, then, our rise from gloom Hath this capricious air, What ground is mine to assume An upward process there, 287 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD In yonder worlds that shine From alien tracts of sky ? Nor ground to assume is mine Nor warrant to deny. Equal, my source of hope, my reason for despair. x And though within me here Hope lingers unsubdued, 'Tis because airiest cheer Suffices for her food ! As some adventurous flower, On savage crag-side grown, Seems nourished hour by hour From its wild self alone, So lives inveterate Hope, on her own hardihood. XI She tells me, whispering low : " Wherefore and whence thou wast, Thou shalt behold and know When the great bridge is crossed. 288 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD For not in mockery He Thy gift of wondering gave, Nor bade thine answer be The blank stare of the grave. Thou shalt behold and know ; and find again thy lost." XII With rapt eyes fixed afar, She tells me : " Throughout Space, Godward each peopled star Runs with thy Earth a race. Wouldst have the goal so nigh, The course so smooth a field, That Triumph should thereby One half its glory yield ? And can Life's pyramid soar all apex and no base ?" xm She saith : " Old dragons lie In bowers of pleasance curled ; And dost thou ask me why ? It is a Wizard's world ! 289 t THE HOPE OF THE WORLD Enchanted princes these, Who yet their scales shall cast, And through his sorceries Die into kings at last. Ambushed in Winter's heart the rose of June is furled." XIV Such are the tales she tells : Who trusts, the happier he : But nought of virtue dwells In that felicity ! I think the harder feat Were his who should withstand A voice so passing sweet, And so pi'ofuse a hand. — Hope, I forego the wealth thou fling'st abroad so free ! xv Carry thy largesse hence, ! I 290 Light Giver ! Let me learn THE HOPE OF THE WORLD To abjure the opulence I have done nought to earn ; And on this world no more To cast ignoble slight, Counting it but the door Of other worlds more bright. Here, where I fail or conquer, here is my concern : XVI Here, where perhaps alone I conquer or I fail. Here, o'er the dark Deep blown, I ask no perfumed gale ; I ask the unpampering breath That fits me to endure Chance, and victorious Death, Life, and my doom obscure, Who know not whence I am sped, nor to what port I sail. 291 AFTER DEFEAT AFTER DEFEAT* "DRAY, what chorus this ? At the tragedy's end, what chorus ? Surely bewails it the brave, the unhappily starred, the abandoned Sole unto fate, by yonder invincible kin of the vanquished ? Surely salutes it the fallen, not mocks the pro- tagonist prostrate ? Hark. " Make merry. Ye dreamed that a monster sickened : behold him Rise, new-fanged. Make merry. A hero troubled and shamed you. * Written at the close of the Grseco- Turkish, War. 292 AFTER DEFEAT Jousting in desperate lists, he is trodden of giants in armour. Mighty is Night. Make merry. The Dawn for a season is frustrate." Thus, after all these ages, a paean, a loud jubilation, Mounts, from peoples bemused, to a heaven refrain- ing its thunder. 293 TO THE LADY KATHARINE MANNERS TO THE LADY KATHARINE MANNERS (With a Volume of the Author's Poems) lake and fell the loud rains beat, QN And August closes rough and rude. 'Twas Summer's whim, to counterfeit The wilder hours her hours prelude. And soon — pathetic last device Of greatness dead and puissance flown !- She passes to her couch with thrice The pomp of coming to her throne. But while, by mountain and by mere, Summer and you are hovering yet, A vagrant Muse entreats your ear : Forgive her ; and not quite forget ! 294 TO THE LADY KATHARINE MANNERS I would that nobler songs than these Her hands might proffer to your hands. I would their notes were as the sea's ; I know their faults are as the sands. At least she prompts no vulgar strain ; At least are noble themes her choice ; Nor hath she oped her lips in vain, For you take pleasure in her voice. And she hath known the mountain-spell ; The sky-enchantment hath she known. It was her vow that she would dwell With greatest things, or dwell alone. And various though her mundane lot, She counts herself benignly starred, — All her vicissitudes forgot In your regard. Windermere, August 1897. 295 JUBILEE NIGHT IN WESTMORLAND JUBILEE NIGHT IN WESTMORLAND T^H ROUGH that majestic and sonorous day, When London was one gaze on her own joy, I walked where yet is silence undeflowered, In the lone places of the fells and meres ; And afterward ascended, night being come, To where, high on a salient coign of crag, Fuel was heaped as on some altar old Whose immemorial priests propitiated With unrecorded rites forgotten gods. Darkly along the ridge the village folk Had gathered, waiting till the unborn fire Should, from its durance in the mother pine, Leap ; and anon was given the signal : thrice A mimic meteor hissed aloft, and fell All jewels, while the wondering hound that couched 296 JUBILEE NIGHT IN WESTMORLAND Beside me lifted up his head and bayed At the strange portent, with a voice that called Far echoes forth, out of the hollow vales. Then the piled timber blazed against the clouds, Roaring, and oft, a monstrous madcap, shook Hilarious sides, and showered ephemeral gold. And one by one the mountain peaks forswore Their vowed impassiveness, the mountain peaks Confessed emotion, and I saw these kings Doing perfervid homage to a Queen. Long watched I, and at last to the sweet dale Went down, with thoughts of two great women, thoughts Of two great women who have i - uled this land ; Of her that mirrored a fantastic age, The impei'ious, vehement, abounding Spirit, Mightily made, but gusty as those winds, Her wild allies that broke the spell of Spain ; And her who sways, how silently ! a world Dwarfing the glorious Tudor' s queenliest dreams ; Who, to her well-nigh more than mortal task, Hath brought the strength-in-sweetness that prevails, 297 JUBILEE NIGHT IN WESTMORLAND The regal will that royally can yield : Mistress of many peoples, heritress Of many thrones, wardress of many seas ; But destined, more melodiously than thus, To be hei'eafter and for ever hailed, When our imperial legend shall have fired The lips of sage and poet, and when these Shall, to an undispersing audience, sound No sceptred name so winningly august As Thine, my Queen, Victoria the Beloved ! 298 BACH, IN THE FUGUES AND PRELUDES BACH, IN THE FUGUES AND PRELUDES (CONTENTEDLY with strictest strands confined, Sports in the sun that oceanic mind : To leap their bourn these waves did never long, Or roll against the stars their rockbound song. 299 APOLOGIA APOLOGIA rPHUS much I know : what dues soe'er be mine, Of fame or of oblivion, Time the just, Punctiliously assessing, shall award. This have I doubted never ; this is sure. But one meanwhile shall chide me, — one shall curl Superior lips, — because my handiwork, The issue of my solitary toil, The harvest of my spirit, even these My numbers, are not something, good or ill, Other than I have ever striven, in years Lit by a conscious and a patient aim, With hopes and with despairs, to fashion them ; Or, it may be, because I have full oft 300 APOLOGIA In singers' selves found me a theme of song, Holding these also to be very part Of Nature's greatness, and accounting not Their descants least heroical of deeds; Or, yet again, because I bring nought new, Save as each noontide or each Spring is new, Into an old and iterative world, And can but proffer unto whoso will A cool and nowise turbid cup, from wells Our fathers digged; and have not thought it shame To tread in nobler footprints than mine own, And travel by the light of purer eyes. Ev'n such offences am I charged withal, Till, breaking silence, I am moved to cry, What would ye, then, my masters ? Is the Muse Fall'n to a thing of Mode, that must each year Supplant her derelict self of yester-year ? Or do the mighty voices of old days At last so tedious grow, that one whose lips Inherit some far echo of their tones — 301 APOLOGIA How far, how faint, none better knoAvs than he Who hath been nourished on their utterance — can But irk the ears of such as care no more The accent of dead greatness to recall ? If, with an ape's ambition, I rehearse Their gestures, trick me in their stolen robes, The sorry mime of their nobility, Dishonouring whom I vainly emulate, The poor imposture soon shall shrink revealed In the ill grace with which their gems bestar An abject brow ; but if I be indeed Their true descendant, as the veriest hind May yet be sprung of kings, their lineaments Will out, the signature of ancestry Leap unobscured, and somewhat of themselves In me, their lowly scion, live once more. With grateful, not vainglorious joy, I dreamed It did so live ; and ev'n such pride was mine As is next neighbour to humility. For he that claims high lineage yet may feel How thinned in the transmission is become 302 APOLOGIA The ancient blood he boasts ; how slight he stands In the great shade of his majestic sires. But it was mine endeavour so to sing As if these lofty ones a moment stooped From their still spheres, and undisdainful graced My note with audience, nor incurious heard Whether, degenerate irredeemably, The faltering minstrel shamed his starry kin. And though I be to these but as a knoll About the feet of the high mountains, scarce Remarked at all save when a valley cloud Holds the high mountains hidden, and the knoll Against the cloud shows briefly eminent ; Yet ev'n as they, I too, with constant heart, And with no light or careless ministry, Have served what seemed the Voice ; and mi- profane, Have dedicated to melodious ends All of myself that least ignoble was. For though of faulty and of erring walk, I have not suffered aught in me of frail 303 APOLOGIA To blur my song ; I have not paid the world The evil and the insolent courtesy Of offering it my baseness for a gift. And unto such as think all Art is cold, All music unimpassioned, if it breathe An ardour not of Eros' lips, and glow With fire not caught from Aphrodite's breast, Be it enough to say, that in Man's life Is room for great emotions unbegot Of dalliance and embracement, unbegot Ev'n of the purer nuptials of the soul ; And one not pale of blood, to human touch Not tardily responsive, yet may know A deeper transport and a mightier thrill Than comes of commerce with mortality, When, rapt from all relation with his kind, All temporal and immediate circumstance, In silence, in the visionary mood That, flashing light on the dark deep, perceives Order beyond this coil and errancy, Isled from the fretful hour he stands alone And hears the eternal movement, and beholds 304 APOLOGIA Above him and around and at his feet, In million-billowed consentaneousness, The flowing, flowing, flowing of the world. Such moments, are they not the peaks of life ? Enough for me, if on these pages fall The shadow of the summits, and an air Not dim from human hearth-fires sometimes blow. THE END 105 u University of California SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388 Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed. rtEC'D LD-URl JAN ? 1999 t PLEA5E DO NOT REMOVE THIS BOOK CARD* 1 ^tj^RARYdfc 1° o lo = IMS e s & Mill % CO en ^whitcho^ University Research Library i i /} O f\J VO \*~r-J\ RY FACILITY 7 6 s > c H I O 3) iirti i Un