Transcriber’s Note:

New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.

PRELUDES.

Frontispiece.

# PRELUDES.

BY
A. C. THOMPSON.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS AND ORNAMENTS BY
ELIZABETH THOMPSON.
HENRY S. KING & CO.,
65, CORNHILL, AND 12, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON,
1875.
(All rights reserved.)
TO
MY FATHER AND MOTHER.
PRELUDES.
1

## IN EARLY SPRING.

L’océan connu, l’âme reste à sonder.
Victor Hugo.
O Spring, I know thee! Seek for sweet surprise
In the young children’s eyes.
But I have learnt the years, and know the yet
Leaf-folded violet.
Mine ear, awake to silence, can foretell
The cuckoo’s fitful bell.
I wander in a grey time that encloses
June and the wild hedge-roses.
A year’s procession of the flowers doth pass
My feet, along the grass.
And all you sweet birds silent yet, I know
The notes that stir you so,
Your songs yet half devised in the dim dear
Beginnings of the year.
In these young days you meditate your part;
I have it all by heart.
2I know the secrets of the seeds of flowers
Hidden, and warm with showers,
And how, in kindling Spring, the cuckoo shall
Alter his interval.
But not a flower or song I ponder is
My own, but memory’s.
I shall be silent in those days desired
Before a world inspired.
O dear brown birds, compose your old song-phrases,
Earth, thy familiar daisies.
The poet mused upon the dusky height,
Between the stars towards night,
His purpose in his heart. I watched, a space,
The meaning of his face;
There was the secret, fled from earth and skies,
Hid in his grey young eyes.
My heart and all the Summer wait his choice,
And wonder for his voice.
Who shall foretell his songs, and who aspire
But to divine his lyre?
Sweet earth, we know thy dimmest mysteries,
But he is lord of his.
3

## PARTED.

Come vedi, ancor non m’ abbandona.
Dante.
Farewell to one now silenced quite,
Sent out of hearing, out of sight,—
My friend of friends, whom I shall miss.
He is not banished, though, for this,—
Nor he, nor sadness, nor delight.
Though I shall walk with him no more,
A low voice sounds upon the shore.
He must not watch my resting-place
But who shall drive a mournful face
From the sad winds about my door?
I shall not hear his voice complain,
But who shall stop the patient rain?
His tears must not disturb my heart,
But who shall change the years, and part
The world from every thought of pain?
4Although my life is left so dim,
The morning crowns the mountain-brim;
Joy is not gone from summer skies,
Nor innocence from children’s eyes,
And all these things are part of him.
He is not banished, for the showers
Yet wake this green warm earth of ours.
How can the summer but be sweet?
I shall not have him at my feet,
And yet my feet are on the flowers.
5

## TO A POET.

Thou who singest through the earth,
All the earth’s wild creatures fly thee.
Everywhere thou marrest mirth.
Dumbly they defy thee.
There is something they deny thee.
Pines thy fallen nature ever
For the unfallen Nature sweet.
But she shuns thy long endeavour,
Though her flowers and wheat
Throng and press thy pausing feet.
Though thou tame a bird to love thee,
Press thy face to grass and flowers,
All these things reserve above thee
Secrets in the bowers,
Secrets in the sun and showers.
6Sing thy sorrow, sing thy gladness.
In thy songs must wind and tree
Bear the fictions of thy sadness,
Thy humanity.
For their truth is not for thee.
Wait, and many a secret nest,
Many a hoarded winter-store
Will be hidden on thy breast.
Things thou longest for
Will not fear or shun thee more.
Thou shalt intimately lie
In the roots of flowers that thrust
Upwards from thee to the sky,
With no more distrust,
When they blossom from thy dust.
Silent labours of the rain
Shall be near thee, reconciled;
Little lives of leaves and grain,
All things shy and wild
Tell thee secrets, quiet child.
7Earth, set free from thy fair fancies
And the art thou shalt resign,
Will bring forth her rue and pansies
Unto more divine
Thoughts than any thoughts of thine.
Nought will fear thee, humbled creature.
There will lie thy mortal burden
Pressed unto the heart of Nature,
Songless in a garden,
With a long embrace of pardon.
Then the truth all creatures tell,
And His will whom thou entreatest,
Shall absorb thee; there shall dwell
Silence, the completest
Of thy poems, last, and sweetest.
8

## SONG OF THE SPRING TO THE SUMMER.
THE POET SINGS TO HER POET.

I miei desiri
Che ti menavano.
Dante.
O poet of the time to be,
My conqueror, I began for thee.
Enter into thy poet’s pain,
And take the riches of the rain,
And make the perfect year for me.
Thou unto whom my lyre shall fall,
Whene’er thou comest, hear my call.
Oh, keep the promise of my lays,
Take the sweet parable of my days;
I trust thee with the aim of all.
And if thy thoughts unfold from me,
Know that I too have hints of thee,
Dim hopes that come across my mind,
In the rare days of warmer wind,
And tones of summer in the sea.
9And I have set thy paths, I guide
Thy blossoms on the wild hill-side.
And I, thy bygone poet, share
The flowers that throng thy feet, where’er
I led thy feet before I died.
10

## TO THE BELOVED.

A qui j’ai dit: “Toujours!” et qui m’a dit: “Partout!”
Victor Hugo.
Oh, not more subtly silence strays
Amongst the winds, between the voices,
Mingling alike with pensive lays,
And with the music that rejoices,
Than thou art present in my days.
My silence, life returns to thee
In all the pauses of her breath.
Hush back to rest the melody
That out of thee awakeneth;
And thou, wake ever, wake for me.
Full, full is life in hidden places,
For thou art silence unto me.
Full, full is thought in endless spaces.
Full is my life. A silent sea
Lies round all shores with long embraces.
11Thou art like silence all unvexed
Though wild words part my soul from thee.
Thou art like silence unperplexed,
A secret and a mystery
Between one footfall and the next.
Most dear pause in a mellow lay!
Thou art inwoven with every air.
With thee the wildest tempests play,
And snatches of thee everywhere
Make little heavens throughout a day.
Darkness and solitude shine, for me.
For life’s fair outward part are rife
The silver noises; let them be.
It is the very soul of life
Listens for thee, listens for thee.
O pause between the sobs of cares!
O thought within all thought that is;
Trance between laughters unawares!
Thou art the form of melodies,
And thou the ecstasy of prayers.
12

## MEDITATION.

Rorate Cœli desuper, et nubes pluant Justum.
Aperiatur Terra, et germinet Salvatorem.
No sudden thing of glory and fear
Was the Lord’s coming; but the dear
Slow Nature’s days followed each other
To form the Saviour from his Mother
—One of the children of the year.
The earth, the rain, received the trust,
—The sun and dews, to frame the Just.
He drew his daily life from these,
Obedient to his own decrees,
Who makes man from the fertile dust.
Sweet summer and the winter wild,
These brought him forth, the Undefiled.
The happy Springs renewed again
His daily bread, the golden grain,
The food and raiment of the Child.
13

## TO THE BELOVED DEAD.
A LAMENT.

Beloved, thou art like a tune that idle fingers
Play on a window-pane.
The time is there, the form of music lingers;
But O thou sweetest strain,
Where is thy soul? Thou liest i’ the wind and rain.
Even as to him who plays that idle air,
It seems a melody,
For his own soul is full of it, so, my Fair,
Dead, thou dost live in me,
And all this lonely soul is full of thee.
Thou song of songs!—not music as before
Unto the outward ear;
My spirit sings thee inly evermore,
Thy falls with tear on tear.
I fail for thee, thou art too sweet, too dear.
14Thou silent song, thou ever voiceless rhyme,
Is there no pulse to move thee,
At windy dawn, with a wild heart beating time,
And falling tears above thee,
O music stifled from the ears that love thee?
Oh, for a strain of thee from outer air!
Soul wearies soul, I find.
Of thee, thee, thee, I am mournfully aware,
—Contained in one poor mind,
Who wert in tune and time to every wind.
Poor grave, poor lost belovèd! but I burn
For some more vast To be.
As he that played that bootless tune may turn
And strike it on a lyre triumphantly,
I wait some future, all one lyre for thee.
15

## SONNET.

Your own fair youth, you care so little for it,
Smiling towards Heaven, you would not stay the advances
Of time and change upon your happiest fancies.
I keep your golden hour, and will restore it.
If ever, in time to come, you would explore it—
Your old self whose thoughts went like last year’s pansies,
Look unto me; no mirror keeps its glances;
In my unfailing praises now I store it.
To keep all joys of yours from Time’s estranging,
I shall be then a treasury where your gay
Happy and pensive past for ever is.
I shall be then a garden charmed from changing,
In which your June has never passed away.
Walk there awhile among my memories.
16

## IN AUTUMN.

In ramo più non può foglia tenersi.
Lorenzo de’Medici.
Alors je te plaindrai, pauvre âme.
Victor Hugo.
The leaves are many under my feet,
And drift one way.
Their scent of death is weary and sweet.
A flight of them is in the grey
Where sky and forest meet.
The low winds moan for dead sweet years;
The birds sing all for pain,
Of a common thing, to weary ears,—
Only a summer’s fate of rain,
And a woman’s fate of tears.
I walk to love and life alone
Over these mournful places,
Across the summer overthrown,
The dead joys of these silent faces,
To claim my own.
17I know his heart has beat to bright
Sweet loves gone by.
I know the leaves that die to-night
Once budded to the sky,
And I shall die to his delight.
O leaves, so quietly ending now,
You have heard cuckoos sing.
And I will grow upon my bough
If only for a Spring,
And fall when the rain is on my brow.
O tell me, tell me ere you die,
Is it worth the pain?
You bloomed so fair, you waved so high;
Now that the sad days wane,
Are you repenting where you lie?
I lie amongst you, and I kiss
Your fragrance mouldering.
O dead delights, is it such bliss,
That tuneful Spring?
Is love so sweet, that comes to this?
18O dying blisses of the year,
I hear the young lamb bleat,
The clamouring birds i’ the copse I hear,
I hear the waving wheat,
Together laid on a dead-leaf bier.
Kiss me again as I kiss you;
Kiss me again;
For all your tuneful nights of dew,
In this your time of rain,
For all your kisses when Spring was new.
You will not, broken hearts; let be.
I pass across your death
To a golden summer you shall not see,
And in your dying breath
There is no benison for me.
There is an Autumn yet to wane,
There are leaves yet to fall,
Which when I kiss, may kiss again,
And, pitied, pity me all for all,
And love me in mist and rain.
19

## A LETTER FROM A GIRL TO HER OWN OLD AGE.

Lete vedrai.
Dante.
Listen, and when thy hand this paper presses,
O time-worn woman, think of her who blesses
What thy thin fingers touch, with her caresses.
O mother, for a weight of years do break thee!
O daughter, for slow time must yet awake thee,
And from the changes of my heart must make thee.
O fainting traveller, morn is grey in heaven.
Dost thou remember how the clouds were driven?
And are they calm about the fall of even?
Pause near the ending of thy long migration,
For this one sudden hour of desolation
Appeals to one hour of thy meditation.
20Suffer, O silent one, that I remind thee
Of the great hills that storm the sky behind thee,
Of the wild winds of power that have resigned thee.
Know that the mournful plain where thou must wander,
Is but a grey and silent world, but ponder
The misty mountains of the morning yonder.
Listen; the mountain winds with rain were fretting,
And sudden gleams the mountain-tops besetting.
I cannot let thee fade to death, forgetting.
What part of this wild heart of mine I know not
Will follow with thee where the great winds blow not,
And where the young flowers of the mountain grow not.
Yet let my letter with thy lost thoughts in it
Tell what the way was when thou didst begin it,
And win with thee the goal when thou shalt win it.
Oh, in some hour of thine my thoughts shall guide thee.
Suddenly, though time, darkness, silence hide thee,
This wind from thy lost country flits beside thee;
21Telling thee: all thy memories moved the maiden,
With thy regrets was morning over-shaden,
With sorrow thou hast left, her life was laden.
But whither shall my thoughts turn to pursue thee?
Life changes, and the years and days renew thee.
Oh, Nature brings my straying heart unto thee.
Her winds will join us, with their constant kisses
Upon the evening as the morning tresses,
Her summers breathe the same unchanging blisses.
And we, so altered in our shifting phases,
Track one another ’mid the many mazes
By the eternal child-breath of the daisies.
I have not writ this letter of divining
To make a glory of thy silent pining.
A triumph of thy mute and strange declining.
Only one youth, and the bright life was shrouded.
Only one morning, and the day was clouded.
And one old age with all regrets is crowded.
22Oh, hush; oh, hush! Thy tears my words are steeping.
Oh, hush, hush, hush! So full, the fount of weeping?
Poor eyes, so quickly moved, so near to sleeping?
Pardon the girl; such strange desires beset her.
Poor woman, lay aside the mournful letter
That breaks thy heart; the one that wrote, forget her.
The one that now thy faded features guesses,
With filial fingers thy grey hair caresses,
With morning tears thy mournful twilight blesses.
23

## SONG.

As the inhastening tide doth roll,
Dear and desired, upon the whole
Long shining strand, and floods the caves,
Your love comes filling with happy waves
The open sea-shore of my soul.
But inland from the seaward spaces,
None knows, not even you, the places
Brimmed, at your coming, out of sight,
—The little solitudes of delight
This tide constrains in dim embraces.
You see the happy shore, wave-rimmed,
But know not of the quiet dimmed
Rivers your coming floods and fills,
The little pools ’mid happier hills,
My silent rivulets, over-brimmed.
24What, I have secrets from you? Yes.
But O my Sea, your love doth press
And reach in further than you know,
And fills all these; and when you go,
There’s loneliness in loneliness.
25

## PYGMALION.
THE POET TO HIS POETRY.

There is no body without its spirit or genius.—Emerson.
Thou art to live; I am watching thee.
I have laid my patient chisel away,
And watch thee somewhat wearily.
How do I know what the mouth will say?
How do I know what the eyes will be,
—What they must be? for I suppose
The brows I made (white brows so blind),
The lovely eyelids that I chose,
Lending my hand to my inner mind,
One certain colour must enclose.
I know not what the voice will sing.
I only made the quiet breast,
And white throat with much labouring.
I only wrought and thought my best,
And lo, a new voice shall out-ring.
26God knows, and knew it, fast locked in
By my own hand, who knew it not.
Have I not made the little chin,
This face and dear mouth, and begot
The voice that needs must tune within?
I am blind, I am deaf, who wrought them so,
Who loved them so. This growing one
Hath her own future there. Ah, woe!
I hardly guess what I have done.
More is gone from me than I know.
I claim the unguessed mysteries
Which make this cold white figure warm.
My life! Child, did I not devise
In dreams thy dreams, carving thy form
—Thy secrets, when I made thine eyes?
God knows. I chiselled each cold limb
With loyal pain. He has given my mind
Less light than my true hand; but dim
Is life. I wait all I shall find,
And all that I shall know, in Him.
27

## BUILDERS OF RUINS.

We build with strength the deep tower-wall
That shall be shattered thus and thus.
And fair and great are court and hall,
But how fair—this is not for us,
Who dimly feel the want of all.
We know, we know how all too bright
All hues of ours though dimmed through tears,
And how the marble gleams too white;—
We speak in unknown tongues, the years
Interpret everything aright,
And crown with weeds our pride of towers,
And warm our marble through with sun,
And break our pavements through with flowers
With an Amen when all is done,
Knowing these perfect things of ours.
28O days, we ponder, left alone,
Like children in their lonely hour,
And in our secrets keep your own,
As seeds the colour of the flower.
To-day they are not all unknown,
The stars that ’twixt the rise and fall,
Like relic-seers, shall one by one
Stand musing o’er our empty hall;
And setting moons shall brood upon
The frescoes of our inward wall.
And when some midsummer shall be,
Hither will come some little one
(Dusty with bloom of flowers is he),
Sit on a ruin i’ the late long sun,
And think, one foot upon his knee.
And where they wrought, these lives of ours,
So many-worded, many-souled,
A North-west wind will take the towers,
And dark with colour, sunny and cold,
Will range alone among the flowers.
29And here or there, at our desire,
The little clamorous owl shall sit
Through her still time; and we aspire
To make a law (and know not it)
Unto the life of a wild briar.
We have a perfect purpose, dear,
Though from our consciousness ’tis hidden.
Thou, time to come, shalt make it clear,
Undoing our work; we are children chidden
With pity, and smiles of many a year.
Who shall allot the praise, and guess
What part is yours and what is ours?—
O years that certainly will bless
Our flowers with fruits, our seeds with flowers,
With ruin all our perfectness.
Be patient, Time, of our delays,
Too happy hopes, and wasted fears,
Our faithful ways, our wilful ways.
Solace our labours, O our seers
The seasons, and our bards the days;
30And make our pause and silence brim
With the shrill children’s play, and sweets
Of those pathetic flowers and dim,
Of those eternal flowers my Keats
Dying felt growing over him.
31

## SONNET.

Senza te son nulla.
Petrarca.
I touched the heart that loved me as a player
Touches a lyre; content with my poor skill
No touch save mine knew my beloved (and still
I thought at times: Is there no sweet lost air
Old loves could wake in him, I cannot share?);
Oh, he alone, alone could so fulfil
My thoughts in sound to the measure of my will.
He is dead, and silence takes me unaware.
The songs I knew not he resumes, set free
From my constraining love, alas for me!
His part in our tune goes with him; my part
Is locked in me for ever; I stand as mute
As one with full strong music in his heart
Whose fingers stray upon a shattered lute.
32

## SONG OF THE DAY TO THE NIGHT.
THE POET SINGS TO HIS POET.

From dawn to dusk, and from dusk to dawn,
We two are sundered always, sweet.
A few stars shake o’er the rocky lawn
And the cold sea-shore when we meet.
The twilight comes with thy shadowy feet.
We are not day and night, my Fair,
But one. It is an hour of hours.
And thoughts that are not otherwere
Are thought here ’mid the blown sea-flowers,
This meeting and this dusk of ours.
Delight has taken Pain to her heart,
And there is dusk and stars for these.
Oh, linger, linger! They would not part;
And the wild wind comes from over-seas
With a new song to the olive trees.
33And when we meet by the sounding pine
Sleep draws near to his dreamless brother.
And when thy sweet eyes answer mine,
Peace nestles close to her mournful mother,
And Hope and Weariness kiss each other.
34

## “SOEUR MONIQUE.”
A RONDEAU BY COUPERIN.

Quiet form of silent nun,
What has given you to my inward eyes?
What has marked you, unknown one,
In the throngs of centuries
That mine ears do listen through?
This old master’s melody
That expresses you,
This admired simplicity,
Tender, with a serious wit,
And two words, the name of it,
“Soeur Monique.”
And if sad the music is,
It is sad with mysteries
Of a small immortal thing
That the passing ages sing,—
Simple music making mirth
35Of the dying and the birth
Of the people of the earth.
No, not sad; we are beguiled,
Sad with living as we are;
Ours the sorrow, outpouring
Sad self on a selfless thing,
As our eyes and hearts are mild
With our sympathy for Spring,
With a pity sweet and wild
For the innocent and far,
With our sadness in a star,
Or our sadness in a child.
But two words, and this sweet air.
Soeur Monique,
Had he more, who set you there?
Was his music-dream of you
Of some perfect nun he knew,
Or of some ideal, as true?
And I see you where you stand
With your life held in your hand
36As a rosary of days.
And your thoughts in calm arrays,
And your innocent prayers are told
On your rosary of days.
And the young days and the old
With their quiet prayers did meet
When the chaplet was complete.
Did it vex you, the surmise
Of this wind of words, this storm of cries,
Though you kept the silence so
In the storms of long ago,
And you keep it, like a star?
—Of the evils triumphing,
Strong, for all your perfect conquering,
Silenced conqueror that you are?
And I wonder at your peace, I wonder.
Would it trouble you to know,
O sweet soul, the world and sin
By your calm feet trodden under
Long ago,
Living now, mighty to win?
And your feet are vanished like the snow.
37Vanished; but the poet, he
In whose dream your face appears,
He who ranges unknown years
With your music in his heart,
Speaks to you familiarly
Where you keep apart,
And invents you as you were.
And your picture, oh, my nun,
Is a strangely easy one,
For the holy weed you wear,
For your hidden eyes and hidden hair,
And in picturing you I may
Scarcely go astray.
Oh, the vague reality!
The mysterious certainty!
Oh, strange truth of these my guesses
In the wide thought-wildernesses!
—Truth of one divined of many flowers;
Of one raindrop in the showers
Of the long ago swift rain;
Of one tear of many tears
In some world-renownéd pain;
38Of one daisy ’mid the centuries of sun;
Of a little living nun
In the garden of the years.
Yes, I am not far astray;
But I guess you as might one
Pausing when young March is grey.
In a violet-peopled day;
All his thoughts go out to places that he knew,
To his child-home in the sun,
To the fields of his regret,
To one place i’ the innocent March air,
By one olive, and invent
The familiar form and scent
Safely; a white violet
Certainly is there.
Soeur Monique, remember me.
’Tis not in the past alone
I am picturing you to be;
But my little friend, my own,
In my moment, pray for me.
39For another dream is mine,
And another dream is true,
Sweeter even,
Of the little ones that shine
Lost within the light divine,—
Of some meekest flower, or you,
In the fields of Heaven.
40

## SONNET.

Questo ne’ patti nostri, Amor, non era.
Lorenzo de’ Medici.
My heart shall be thy garden. Come, my own,
Into thy garden; thine be happy hours
Among my fairest thoughts, my tallest flowers,
From root to crowning petal, thine alone.
Thine is the place from where the seeds are sown
Up to the sky enclosed, with all its showers.
But ah, the birds, the birds! Who shall build bowers
To keep these thine? O friend, the birds have flown.
For as these come and go, and quit our pine
To follow the sweet season, or, new-comers,
Sing one song only from our alder-trees,
My heart has thoughts, which, though thine eyes hold mine,
Flit to the silent world and other summers,
With wings that dip beyond the silver seas.
41

## A TRYST THAT FAILED.

Ce pauvre temps passé!
Alfred de Musset.
It was a time of wind and sun,
Morning day, and the Winter done,
Morning life, and the Spring begun.
It was a place so dreamy and brown,
Pensive with sheep-bells under the down,
Scent-dreamy, wild, with a windy crown.
You were coming, out of the Spring,
Out of the sun-dream wandering,
Out of the wind-joy hastening.
I did not see you, sweet; a flight
Of sea-birds only, pearly and white,
With a sudden shadow fled into the light.
42I never heard your call, my Fair;
O music up in the flickering air!
O voice my ears so ill could spare!
And the wild, wild call my soul begot,
The long wild call, I know not what,—
We met not then, for it reached you not,
And never again. But our hearts did greet.
Whatever path misled your feet,
Voices so true could not but meet.
Though we have strayed from that place of heather,
Your cry and mine speed on together
Above the Spring and the Summer weather.
Among the stars and in the blue,
What words could never my call may do,
—Speak my love and loss of you.
43

## SONNET.
THOUGHTS IN SEPARATION.

Plus loin que nos douleurs,
Plus loin que nos murmures.
Victor Hugo.
We never meet; yet we meet day by day
Upon those hills of life, dim and immense,
The good we love, and sleep, our innocence.
O hills of life, high hills! And higher than they.
Our guardian spirits meet at prayer and play.
Beyond pain, joy, and hope, and long suspense,
Above the summits of our souls, far hence,
An angel meets an angel on the way.
Beyond all good I ever believed of thee
Or thou of me, these always love and live.
And though I fail of thy ideal of me,
My angel falls not short; they greet each other;
Who knows, they may exchange the kiss we give,
Thou to thy crucifix, I to my mother.
44

## REGRETS.

Amor, che a nullo amato amar perdona.
Dante.
As when the seaward ebbing tide doth pour
Out by the low sand spaces,
The parting waves slip back to clasp the shore
With lingering embraces;
So in the tide of life that carries me
From where thy true heart dwells,
Waves of my thoughts and memories turn to thee
With lessening farewells;
Waving of hands; dreams, when the day forgets;
A care half lost in cares;
The saddest of my verses; dim regrets;
Thy name among my prayers.
I would the day might come, so waited for,
So patiently besought,
45When I, returning, should fill up once more
Thy desolated thought;
And fill thy loneliness that lies apart
In still, persistent pain.
Shall I content thee, O thou broken heart,
As the tide comes again,
And brims the little sea-shore lakes, and sets
Seaweeds afloat, and fills
The silent pools, rivers and rivulets
Among the inland hills?
46

## SONG.

My Fair, no beauty of thine will last,
Save in my love’s eternity.
Thy smiles, that light thee fitfully,
Are lost for ever—their moment past—
Except the few thou givest to me.
Thy sweet words vanish day by day,
As all breath of mortality;
Thy laughter, done, must cease to be.
And all thy dear tones pass away,
Except the few that sing to me.
Hide then within my heart, oh, hide
All thou art loth should go from thee.
Be kinder to thyself and me.
My cupfull from this river’s tide
Shall never reach the long sad sea.
47

## SONNET.
IN FEBRUARY.

Rich meanings of the prophet-Spring adorn,
Unseen, this colourless sky of folded showers,
And folded winds; no blossom in the bowers.
A poet’s face asleep is this grey morn.
Now in the midst of the old world forlorn
A mystic child is set in these still hours.
I keep this time, even before the flowers,
Sacred to all the young and the unborn;
To all the miles and miles of unsprung wheat,
And to the Spring waiting beyond the portal,
And to the future of my own young art,
And, among all these things, to you, my sweet,
My friend, to your calm face and the immortal
Child tarrying all your life-time in your heart.
48

## SAN LORENZO GIUSTINIANI’S MOTHER.

And we the shadows of the dream.
Shelley.
I had not seen my son’s dear face
(He chose the cloister by God’s grace)
Since it had come to full flower-time.
I hardly guessed at its perfect prime,
That folded flower of his dear face.
Mine eyes were veiled by mists of tears
When on a day in many years
One of his order came. I thrilled
Facing, I thought, that face fulfilled.
I doubted, for my mists of tears.
His blessing be with me for ever!
My hope and doubt were hard to sever.
—That altered face, those holy weeds.
I filled his wallet and kissed his beads.
And lost his echoing feet for ever.
49If to my son my alms were given
I know not, and I wait for Heaven.
He did not plead for child of mine,
But for another Child divine,
And unto Him it was surely given.
There is one alone who cannot change;
Dreams are we, shadows, visions strange;
And all I give is given to one.
I might mistake my dearest son,
But never the Son who cannot change.
50

## THE POETS.
FIRST VOICE: THE ALPS. SECOND VOICE: THE ANGEL.

Oh, for the hidden songs of showers,
And symphonies of seas!
Oh, for the secrets of a whispering wild of flowers,
And guess’d accords of the harper-wind i’ the trees,
And the warm summer-bees.
For us the springs are old,
And summer after summer cold.
For us the eagles scream
Once suddenly in the sleep of snow.
A deed is done among the centuries.
An avalanche slides slow,
And rests: one more eternity it lies:
And there has been a fall across the dream
Of the white sleep of snow.
Our cold and crownéd heads are lifted up in woe,
Our barren faces,
Whose tears are sealed in awful places.
Thou art so high above.
Let be. A little life! a little love!
What shall repay the baffled soul, the vain endeavour?
51Not our great nights
Whose dark unmeasured windy mystery,
Whose falls, whose heights
No heart doth feel, no eye doth see,
For ever.
No, Lord, no.
Nor our great open secret snow,
Where comes the sun at even and morn
To be alone,
And wild winds seeking solitude for their torn
And wounded souls. Can these atone,
Shall these repay?
No, nor the dawns we know,
Whose thoughts grow light on our eternal snow.
We mourn, we pray:
Oh, melt our snows to rain.
How can we reach thee?
Lay us low.
Level us with the plain,
Oh, we beseech thee.
Second Voice:
O cold and glorious!
O lonely and victorious!
52Suffer your thoughts, abide.
Suffer, ye seven-fold tried.
Wild winds and storm, rejoice the peaks among;
Exult with timbrel, dance, and song,
Deafen that pain with jubilee.
Cloud answers cloud with thunder;
And eagle’s voice to eagle’s voice replies far under.
I cannot let you be,
My chosen, till your answer rise to me.
Suffer your great wild things; abide.
The secrets that in your abysses hide,
And in your desolate cold are sealed,
Gather in heaven and fall in tender rain
That thoughts of many hearts may be revealed,
These hearts that throng the plain.
Over your brows shall clouds abide,
Yours be the wildest winds, and vast suns open-eyed,
And crowning mists that hide
High fields of thoughts and sunlights after pain.
First Voice:
How shall we reach thee?
Level us with the plain,
Oh, we beseech thee.
53

## SONNET.
THE LOVE OF NARCISSUS.

Like him who met his own eyes in the river,
The poet trembles at his own long gaze
That meets him through the changing nights and days
From out great Nature; all her waters quiver
With his fair image facing him for ever;
The music that he listens to betrays
His own heart to his ears; by trackless ways
His wild thoughts tend to him in long endeavour.
His dreams are for among the silent hills;
His vague voice calls him from the darkened plain
With winds at night; strange recognition thrills
His lonely heart with piercing love and pain;
He knows his sweet mirth in the mountain rills,
His weary tears that touch him with the rain.
54

## TO A LOST MELODY.

Ditties of no tone.
Keats.
Thou art not dead, O sweet lost melody,
Sung beyond memory,
When golden to the winds this world of ours
Waved wild with boundless flowers;
Sung in some past when wildernesses were,—
Not dead, not dead, lost air!
Yet in the ages long where lurkest thou,
And what soul knows thee now?
Wert thou not given to sweeten every wind
From that o’erburdened mind
That bore thee through the young world, and that tongue
By which thou first wert sung?
Was not thy holy choir the endless dome,
And nature all thy home?
Did not the warm gale clasp thee to his breast,
Lulling thy storms to rest?
55And is the June air laden with thee now,
Passing the summer-bough?
And is the dawn-wind on a lonely sea
Balmy with thoughts of thee?
To rock on daybreak winds dost thou rejoice,
As first on his strong voice
Whose radiant morning soul did give thee birth,
Gave thee to heaven and earth?
Or did each bird win one dear note of thee
To pipe eternally?
Art thou the secret of the small field-flowers
Nodding thy time for hours,
—Blown by the happy winds from hill to hill,
And such a secret still?
Or wert thou rapt awhile to other spheres
To gladden tenderer ears?
Doth music’s soul contain thee, precious air,
Sleepest thou clasped there,
Until a time shall come for thee to start
Into some unborn heart?
Then wilt thou as the clouds of ages roll,
Thou migratory soul,
56Amid a different wilder wilderness
—In crowds that throng and press,
Revive thy blessed cadences forgotten
In some soul new-begotten?
Oh, wilt thou ever tire of thy long rest
On nature’s silent breast?
And wilt thou leave thy rainbow showers, to bear
A part in human care?
—Forsake thy boundless silence to make choice
Of some pathetic voice?
—Forsake thy stars, thy suns, thy moons, thy skies,
For man’s desiring sighs?
Ah, not for mine, who sit with empty ears,
Dreaming of thee, to tears.
57

## SONNET.
AT A POET’S GRAVE.

Rather unto the Truth than unto one
Who sleepeth here is raised this monument.
To her he yields his tomb and is content.
Ye living singers, shower and wind and sun,
Days, nights, and flowers obey your fancy’s Art,
And mean your meanings, otherwhere; they own.
Here in this little sanctuary alone,
Meanings beyond the deepest poet’s heart.
Sing through the world; this is another world,
This poet’s empire, but he will not claim
One flower sprung from his heart, nor ever steep
One with his thoughts; his thoughts in truth are furled.
There was no need of him; hush up his fame,
Now earth has laid her docile child to sleep.
58

## SONNET.
THE POET TO NATURE.

Non tengo nascosto
A te mio cor.
Dante.
I have no secrets from thee, lyre sublime,
My lyre whereof I make my melody.
I sing one way like the west wind through thee,
With my whole heart, and hear thy sweet strings chime.
But thou, who soundest in my tune and rhyme,
Hast tones I wake not, in thy land and sea,
Loveliness not for me, secrets from me,
Thoughts for another, and another time.
And as, the west wind passed, the south wind alters
His intimate sweet things, his hues of noon,
The voices of his waves, sound of his pine,
The meanings of his lost heart,—this thought falters
In my short song—“Another bard shall tune
Thee, O my Lyre, to other songs than mine.”
59

## THE POET TO HIS CHILDHOOD.

Que vous ai-je donc fait, ô mes jeunes années!
Victor Hugo.
In my thought I see you stand with a path on either hand,
—Hills that look into the sun, and there a river’d meadow-land.
And your lost voice with the things that it decreed across me thrills,
When you thought, and chose the hills.
“If it prove a life of pain, greater have I judged the gain.
With a singing soul for music’s sake, I climb and meet the rain,
And I choose, whilst I am calm, my thought and labouring to be
Unconsoled by sympathy.”
60But how dared you use me so? For you bring my ripe years low
To your child’s whim and a destiny your child-soul could not know.
And that small voice legislating I revolt against, with tears.
But you mark not, through the years.
“To the mountain leads my way. If the plains are green to-day,
These my barren hills are flushing faintly, strangely in the May,
With the presence of the Spring amongst the smallest flowers that grow.”
But the summer in the snow?
Do you know, who are so bold, how in sooth the rule will hold,
Settled by a wayward child’s ideal at some ten years old?
—How the human arms you slip from, thoughts and love you stay not for,
Will not open to you more?
61You were rash then, little child, for the skies with storms are wild,
And you faced the dim horizon with its whirl of mists, and smiled,
Climbed a little higher, lonelier, in the solitary sun,
To feel how the winds came on.
But your sunny silence there, solitude so light to bear,
Will become a long dumb world up in the colder sadder air,
And the little mournful lonelinesses in the little hills
Wider wilderness fulfils.
And if e’er you should come down to the village or the town,
With the cold rain for your garland, and the wind for your renown,
You will stand upon the thresholds with a face of dumb desire,
Nor be known by any fire.
62It is memory that shrinks. You were all too brave, methinks,
Climbing solitudes of flowering cistus and the thin wild pinks,
Musing, setting to a haunting air in one vague reverie
All the life that was to be.
With a smile do I complain in the safety of the pain,
Knowing that my feet can never quit their solitudes again;
But regret may turn with longing to that one hour’s choice you had,
For the silence is so sad.
I rebel not, child gone by, but obey you wonderingly,
For you knew not, young rash speaker, all you spoke, and now will I,
With the life, and all the loneliness revealed that you thought fit,
Sing the Amen, knowing it.
63

## SONNET.
TO ——.

Com’ a te piace
Parla.
Dante.
Thou poet of one mood in all thy lays,
Who rangest all life with one only love,
Like a west wind across the world dost move,
Sweeping thy harp of floods thine own wild ways.
The countries change, but not the west-wind days
Which are thy songs. Thy soft skies shine above,
And on all seas the colours of a dove,
And on all fields a flash of silver greys.
So make the whole world answer to thy art,
And sweet monotonous meanings; charm our ears;
Change not thou ever, bearing, for thy part,
One thought that is the treasure of thy years,
A small cloud full of rain upon thy heart
And in thine arms, clasped, like a child in tears.
64

## AN UNMARKED FESTIVAL.

Benedetto sia’l giorno e’l mese e l’anno.
Petrarca.
There’s a feast, undated, yet
Both our true lives hold it fast,—
The first day we ever met.
What a great day came and passed!
—Unknown then, but known at last.
And we met; you knew not me,
Mistress of your joys and fears;
Held my hand that held the key
Of the treasure of your years,
Of the fountain of your tears.
For you knew not it was I,
And I knew not it was you.
We have learnt, as days went by.
But a flower struck root and grew
Underground, and no one knew.
65Day of days! Unmarked it rose,
In whose hours we were to meet,
And forgotten passed. Who knows,
Was earth cold, or sunny, sweet,
At the coming of your feet?
One mere day, we thought; the measure
Of such days the year fulfils.
Now, how dearly would we treasure
Something from its fields, its rills,
And its memorable hills;
—But one leaf of oak or lime,
Or one blossom from its bowers
No one gathered at the time.
Oh, to keep that day of ours
By one relic of its flowers!
66

## SONNET.
A YOUNG CONVERT.

Mio cor in sul fiorire e in sul far frutto.
Petrarca.
Who knows what days I answer for to-day?
Giving the bud I give the flower. I bow
This yet unfaded and a faded brow;
Bending these knees and feeble knees, I pray.
Thoughts yet unripe in me I bend one way,
Give one repose to pain I know not now,
One leaven to joy that comes, I guess not how.
Oh, rash! (I smile) as one, when Spring is grey,
Who dedicates a land of hidden wheat.
I fold to-day at altars far apart
Hands trembling with what toils? In their retreat
I sign my love to come, my folded art.
I light the tapers at my head and feet,
And lay the crucifix on this silent heart.
67

## SONNET.
SPRING ON THE ALBAN HILLS.
TO ——.

Silent with expectation.
Shelley.
O’er the Campagna it is dim warm weather;
The Spring comes with a full heart silently,
And many thoughts; a faint flash of the sea
Divides two mists; straight falls the falling feather.
With wild Spring meanings hill and plain together
Grow pale, or just flush with a dust of flowers.
Rome in the ages, dimmed with all her towers,
Floats in the midst, a little cloud at tether.
I fain would put my hands about thy face,
Thou with thy thoughts, who art another Spring,
And draw thee to me like a mournful child.
68Thou lookest on me from another place;
I touch not this day’s secret, nor the thing
That in thy silence makes thy sweet eyes wild.
69

## SONG OF THE NIGHT AT DAYBREAK.

Night hovers all day in the boughs.
Emerson.
All my stars forsake me,
And the dawn-winds shake me.
Where shall I betake me?
Whither shall I run
Till the set of sun,
Till the day be done?
To the mountain-mine,
To the boughs o’ the pine,
To the blind man’s eyne.
To a brow that is
Bowed upon the knees,
Sick with memories.
70

## SONNET.
TO A DAISY.

Slight as thou art, thou art enough to hide,
Like all created things, secrets from me,
And stand a barrier to eternity.
And I, how can I praise thee well and wide
From where I dwell—upon the hither side?
Thou little veil for so great mystery,
When shall I penetrate all things and thee,
And then look back? For this I must abide,
Till thou shalt grow and fold and be unfurled
Literally between me and the world.
Then I shall drink from in beneath a spring,
And from a poet’s side shall read his book.
O daisy mine, what will it be to look
From God’s side even of such a simple thing?
71

## SONNET.
TO ONE POEM IN A SILENT TIME.

De quel nom te nommer?
Victor Hugo.
Who looked for thee, thou little song of mine?
This winter of a silent poet’s heart
Is suddenly sweet with thee, but what thou art,
Mid-winter flower, I would I could divine.
Art thou a last one, orphan of thy line?
Did the dead summer’s last warmth foster thee?
Or is Spring folded up unguessed in me,
And stirring out of sight,—and thou the sign?
Where shall I look—backwards or to the morrow
For others of thy fragrance, secret child?
Who knows if last things or if first things claim thee?
—Whether thou be the last smile of my sorrow,
Or else a joy too sweet, a joy too wild?
How, my December violet, shall I name thee?
72

## A STUDY:
IN THREE MONOLOGUES, WITH INTERRUPTIONS.

### I.
Before Light.

Among the first to wake. What wakes with me?
A blind wind and a few birds and a star.
With tremor of darkened flowers and whisper of birds,
Oh, with a tremor, with a tremor of heart—
Begins the day i’ the dark. I, newly waked,
Grope backwards for my dreams, thinking to slide
Back unawares to dreams, in vain, in vain.
There is a sorrow for me in this day.
It watched me from afar the livelong night,
And now draws near, but has not touched me yet.
In from my garden flits the secret wind,—
My garden.—This great day with all its hours
(Its hours, my soul!) will be like other days
Among my flowers. The morning will awake,
73Like to the lonely waking of a child
Who grows uneasily to a sense of tears,
Because his mother had come and wept and gone;
The morning grass and lilies will be wet,
In all their happiness, with mysterious dews.
And I shall leave the high noon in my garden,
The sun enthroned and all his court my flowers,
And go my journey as I live,—alone.
Then in the ripe rays of the later day
All the small blades of thin grass one by one,
Looked through with sun, will make each a long shade,
And daisies’ heads will bend with butterflies.
And one will come with secrets at her heart,
Evening, whose darkening eyes hide all her heart,
And poppy-crowned move ’mid my lonely flowers.
And shall another, I wonder, come with her,—
I, with a heavy secret at my heart,
Uncrowned of all crowns to my garden and flowers?
Thou little home of mine, fair be thy day.
These things will be, but oh, across the hills,
Behind me in the dark, what things will be?
—Well, even if sorrow fills me through and through
Until my life be pain and pain my life,
74Shall I not bear myself and my own life?
—A little life, O Lord, a little sorrow.
And I remember once when I was ill
That the whole world seemed breaking through with me,
Who lay so light and still; stillness availed not,
My weakness being a thing of power, I thought.
“Come to the Port to-morrow,” says the letter,
And little more, except a few calm words,
Intended to prepare me (and I guess,
I guess for what). He never was too kind,
This man, the one i’ the world, kin to my son,
Who knew my crime, who watched me with cold eyes,
And stayed me with calm hands, and hid the thing,
For horror more than pity; and took my son;
And mercifully let me ebb away
In this grey town of undesigned grey lives,
Five years already. To-day he sends for me.
And now I will prevent the dawn with prayers.
75

### II.
About Noon.

She shut her five years up within the house.
And towards the noon she lifted up her eyes,
Looked to the gentle hills with a stirred heart,
Moved with the mystery of unknown places
Near to a long-known home; smiled, as she could,
A difficult smile that hurt half of her mouth,
Until she passed the streets and all sharp looks.
“Sharp looks, and since I was a child, sharp looks!
These know not, certainly, who scan me so,
That not a girl of all their brightest girls
Has such an eager heart for smiles as I.
It is no doubt the fault of my cold face
And reticent eyes that never make appeal,
Or plead for the small pale bewildered soul.
If they but knew what a poor child I am!
—Oh, born of all the past, what a poor child!
I could waste golden days and showers of words,
And laugh for nothing, and read my poets again,
And tend a voice I had, songless for ever;—
76I would not if I might. I would not cease,
No if I might, the penance and the pain
For that lost soul down somewhere in the past,
That soul of mine that did and knew such things
If I could choose; and yet I wish, I wish,
Such little wishes, and so longingly.
Who would believe me, knowing what I am?
“Now from these noontide hills my home, my time,
My life for years lies underneath mine eyes,
And all the years that led up to these years.
I can judge now, and not the world for me.
And I, being what I am, and having done
What I have done, look back upon my youth
—Before my crime, I mean,—and testify:
It was not happy, no, it was not white,
It was not innocent, no, the young fair time.
The people and the years passed in my glass;
And all the insincerity of my thoughts
I laid upon the pure and simple Nature
(Now all the hills and fields are free of me),
Smiling at my elaborate sigh the smile
Of any Greek composing sunny gods.
77And now begins my one true white child-time,
This time of desolate altars and all ruins.
For Pan is dead and the altars are in ruins.
“The world is full of endings for me, I find,
Emotions lost, and words and thoughts forgotten.
Yet amid all these last things, there is one,
But one Beginning, a seed within my soul.
Come quickly! and go by quickly, O my years!
Strip me of things and thoughts; as I have seen
The ilex changing leaves; for day by day
A little innocent life grows in my life,
A little ignorant life i’ the world-worn life;
And I become a child with a world to learn,
Timorous, with another world to learn,
Timorous, younger, whiter towards my death.”
She turned to the strange sea that five long years
Had sent her letters of his misty winds,
Bearing a cry of storms in other lands,
And songs of mariners singing over seas;
And having long conjectured of his face,
Seeing his face, paused, thinking of the past.
78Down the hills came she to the town and sea,
And met her child’s friend where he waited her.
She swayed to his words unsaid, as the green canes
Murmur i’ the quiet unto a wind that comes:
“I sent for you, mind, for your sake alone.
—No, my dear ward is well. But it has chanced
(I know it’s a hard thing for you to bear,
But you are strong, I know) that he has learnt
What I had faithfully kept,—your life, your past,
Your secret. Well, we hope that you repent,
At least, your son and I.”
“God bless my son,
My little son hopes I repent at least.”
“When he had read the papers—by mischance—
I would have kept them from him, broken down,
Beside myself at first, though the young heart
Recovered and is calm now, he resolved
On the completest parting; for he thinks
He could not live under one sky with you.
But being unwilling to disturb you now
And vex you in your harmless life, gives up
79His hopes in England, his career, and sails
To-night to make a new life in the States.
As to the question of your seeing him
(He is in the town here), I persuaded him
To let you choose, this being probably
The last time in this world. It rests with you.”
“I pray you, as we pray morning and night,
Save me from the sick eyes of my one child;
But let me see my one child once. Amen.
“I never came across the hills before
In all these years; now all these years are done.
Who would have said it, yesterday at this hour?
Now my son knows, and I have crossed the hills,
And sure my poor face faces other things.
Not back! not home! anything, anything,
Anything—no, don’t turn, I am very calm.
Not back the way I came to-day, not home.
Oh, anything but home and a long life.”
“Am I the arbiter? Besides, what fate
Can you desire more merciful than home
80And hidden life? And then remember him.
You have borne the separation as it seems
With the most perfect patience. And your life
Ending (as to the world), owes this at least—
It is not much—to his bright beginning life,
Absence and perfect silence till you die.
I’ve done my duty, as I think, to both.
If you seemed in the least to ask for pity
I well could pity you. I hope that time
Will bring you a softer heart. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye.”

### III.
At Twilight.

Gone, O my child forsaking me, my flower.
Yet I forsaken pity you with tears,
Gone while I learn a world to learn a world.
I am to have no part with you again,
And you have many things to share; it’s keen,—
I love you, I love you; but more keen is this,—
That you will have no part with me again;
And what have I to share? Pain, happy child.
81Gone, gone into the west, for ever gone,
O little one, my flower; not you alone,
My son who are leaving me, but he, the child
Of five years back. That is the worst farewell.
I had not thought him lost until to-day.
But he had kept with me until to-day;—
Never seen, never heard; but he was there,
Behind the door on which I laid my hand,
Out in the garden when I sat within,
A turn of road before me in my walks.
As others greet a presence I did greet
An absence, O my sweet, my sweet surprise!
How will it be now? for he is so changed
I hardly knew the face I saw pass by.
And yet it is the one that must of needs
Grow from that long ago face innocent,
Grave with the presage of a human life.
So, child, giving again in thought my kiss,
My last, long since, I kiss you tall and changed
In that one kiss, and kiss you a man and old,
And so I kiss you dead. And yet, O child,
O child, a certain soul goes from my days;
They fall together like a rosary told,
82Not aves now, but beads,—you being gone.
I was not worthy to be comfortless,
I find; and feasts broke in upon my fasts;
And innocent distractions and desires
Surprised me in my penitential tears.
For my absent child God gives me a child in Spring;
New seasons and the fresh and innocent earth,
Ever new years and children of the years,
Kin to the young thoughts of my weary heart,
Chime with the young thoughts of my weary heart,
My kin in all the world. And He Himself
Is young i’ the quiet time of cold and snows.
(Mary! who fledst to Egypt with Him; Joseph!
And thou whose tomb I kissed in Padua,
Protect this perilous childhood in my heart!)
But oh, to-night, I know not why, to-night
Out of the earth and sky, out of the sea
My consolations fade. These empty arms
I stretch no more unto the beautiful world,
But clasp them close about the lonely heart
No other arms will clasp. What is thy pain,
What is thy pain, inexplicable heart?
83Sorrow for ruined and for desolate days.
Failing in penitence, I, who fail in all,
Leave all my thoughts alone, and lift mine eyes
Quietly to One who makes amends for me.
Peace, O my soul, for thou hast failed in all:
(One thought, at last, that I might take to Heaven!)
It’s well I never guessed this thing before,—
I mean the weakness and the littleness
Of that which by God’s grace begins in me.
Oh, earthly hopes and wishes, stay with me
(He will be patient); linger, O my loves
And phases of myself, and play with this
New life of grace (as He whose gift it is
Played with the children, a child). How could I bear
To see how little is perfect yet—a speck
If all things else should suddenly wither away?
(And yet they wither away, they wither away.)
Less than I knew, less than I know am I,
Returning childless, but, O Father, a child.
She therefore turned unto the Eastern hills,
Thrilled with a west wind sowing stars. She saw
84Her lonely upward way climb to the verge
And ending of the day-time; and she knew
The downward way in presence of the night.
She heard the fitful sheep-bells in the glen
Move like a child’s thoughts. There she felt the earth
Lonely in space. And all things suddenly
Shook with her tears. She went with shadowless feet,
Moving along the shadow of the world,
Faring alone to home and a long life,
Setting her twilight face to meet the stars.
NOTE.

> I have borrowed the metre of one of the pieces in this volume—a stanza of three verses rhyming disyllabically—from a beautiful poem by Mr. Oliver Wendell Holmes.

UNWIN BROTHERS, THE GRESHAM PRESS, CHILWORTH AND LONDON.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

- Fixed typos; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.