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Title: "England and Yesterday": A Book of Short Poems

Author: Louise Imogen Guiney

Release date: July 9, 2016 [eBook #52533]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Emmy, MWS and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK "ENGLAND AND YESTERDAY": A BOOK OF SHORT POEMS *** 


“ENGLAND AND YESTERDAY”



This cover has been created by the transcriber by adding the title text to the original cover and is placed in the public domain.







[i]





“ENGLAND AND YESTERDAY”






[ii]
[iii]


“England and Yesterday”



A BOOK OF SHORT POEMS



BY

LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY






LONDON

GRANT     RICHARDS

1898








[iv]



CHISWICK PRESS:—CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO.

TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON.








[v]


CONTENTS.







 
PAGE




London: Sonnets Written in 1889.




I. 
On First Entering Westminster Abbey
3




II. 
Fog
4




III. 
Saint Peter-ad-Vincula
5




IV. 
Strikers in Hyde Park
6




V. 
Changes in the Temple
7




VI. 
The Lights of London
8




VII. 
Doves
9




VIII. 
In the Reading-Room of the British Museum   
10




IX. 
Sunday Chimes in the City
11




X. 
A Porch in Belgravia
12




XI. 
York Stairs
13




XII. 
In the Docks
14




 




Oxford: Sonnets Written there between 1890 and 1895.




I. 
The Tow-Path
17




II. 
The Old Dial of Corpus
18




III. 
Ad Antiquarium
19




IV. 
Rooks in New College Gardens
20




V. 
On the Pre-Reformation Churches about Oxford
21




VI. 
On the Same (continued)
22




[vi]VII. 
A December Walk
23




VIII. 
Undertones at Magdalen
24




IX. 
Port Meadow
25




X. 
Martyrs’ Memorial
26




XI. 
A Last View
27




XII. 
Retrieval
28




 




Lyrics.




A Ballad of Kenelm
31




Two Irish Peasant Songs
33




In a Ruin, after a Thunderstorm
35




To a Child
36




In a Perpendicular Church
37




A Seventeenth-Century Song
37




Columba and the Stork
38




The Chantry
39




April in Govilon
40




On Leaving Winchester
41




On the Cenotaph of the Prince Imperial in Saint George’s Chapel    
42




Of Joan’s Youth
43




Passing the Minster
43




The Yew-Tree
44




Shropshire Landscape
45




The Graham Tartan to a Graham
46




In a London Street
46




Athassel Abbey
47




Romans in Dorset
49




 




Lines on Various Fly-Leaves.




To Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey
53




[vii]For Izaak Walton
53




A Footnote to a Famous Lyric
54




A Memory of a Breconshire Valley
56




Writ in my Lord Clarendon’s “History of the Rebellion”
57




A Last Word on Shelley
57




An Epitaph for William Hazlitt
58




Emily Brontë
58




Pax Paganica
59




Valediction: R. L. S., 1894
59











[1]


LONDON:
SONNETS WRITTEN IN 1889.

TO HERBERT E. CLARKE.






[2]
[3]


I.
ON FIRST ENTERING WESTMINSTER
ABBEY.






Holy of England! since my light is short


And faint, O rather by the sun anew


Of timeless passion set my dial true,


That with thy saints and thee I may consort;


And wafted in the cool enshadowed port


Of poets, seem a little sail long due,


And be as one the call of memory drew


Unto the saddle void since Agincourt!


Not now for secular love’s unquiet lease,


Receive my soul, who, rapt in thee erewhile,


Hath broken tryst with transitory things;


But seal with her a marriage and a peace


Eternal, on thine Edward’s altar-isle,


Above the stormless sea of ended kings.










[4]


II.
FOG.






Like bodiless water passing in a sigh,


Through palsied streets the fatal shadows flow,


And in their sharp disastrous undertow


Suck in the morning sun, and all the sky.


The towery vista sinks upon the eye,


As if it heard the horns of Jericho,


Black and dissolved; nor could the founders know


How what was built so bright should daily die.


Thy mood with man’s is broken and blent in,


City of Stains! and ache of thought doth drown


The generous light in which thy life began.


Great as thy dole is, smirchèd with his sin,


Greater and elder yet the love of man


Full in thy look, though the dark visor’s down.










[5]


III.
S. PETER-AD-VINCULA.






Too well I know, pacing the place of awe,


Three queens, young save in trouble, moulder by;


More in his halo, Monmouth’s mocking eye,


The eagle Essex in a harpy’s claw;


Seymour and Dudley, and stout heads that saw


Sundown of Scotland: how with treasons lie


White martyrdoms; rank in a company


Breaker and builder of the eternal law.


Oft as I come, the bitter garden-row


Of ruined roses hanging from the stem,


Where winds of old defeat yet batter them,


Infects me: suddenly must I depart,


Ere thought of men’s injustice then, and now,


Add to these aisles one other broken heart.










[6]


IV.
STRIKERS IN HYDE PARK.






A woof reversed the fatal shuttles weave,


How slow! but never once they slip the thread.


Hither, upon the Georgian idlers’ tread,


Up spacious ways the lindens interleave,


Clouding the royal air since yester-eve,


Come men bereft of time, and scant of bread,


Loud, who were dumb, immortal, who were dead,


Through the cowed world their kingdom to retrieve.


What ails thee, England? Altar, mart, and grange


Dream of the knife by night; not so, not so,


The clear Republic waits the general throe,


Along her noonday mountains’ open range.


God be with both! for one is young to know


Her mother’s rote of evil and of change.










[7]


V.
CHANGES IN THE TEMPLE.






The cry is at thy gates, thou darling ground,


Again; for oft ere now thy children went


Beggared and wroth, and parting greeting sent


Some red old alley with a dial crowned;


Some house of honour, in a glory bound


With lives and deaths of spirits excellent;


Some tree, rude-taken from his kingly tent,


Hard by a little fountain’s friendly sound.


O for Virginius’ hand, if only that


Maintain the whole, and spoil these spoilings soon!


Better the scowling Strand should lose, alas,


Her walled oasis, and where once it was,


All mournful in the cleared quadrangle sat


Echo, and ivy, and the loitering moon.










[8]


VI.
THE LIGHTS OF LONDON.






The evenfall, so slow on hills, hath shot


Far down into the valley’s cold extreme,


Untimely midnight; spire and roof and stream


Like fleeing spectres, shudder and are not.


The Hampstead hollies, from their sylvan plot


Yet cloudless, lean to watch, as in a dream,


From chaos climb, with many a hasty gleam,


London, one moment fallen and forgot.


Her booths begin to flare; her gases bright


Prick door and window; street and lane obscure


Sparkle and swarm with nothing true nor sure,


Full as a marsh of mist and winking light:


Heaven thickens over, heaven that cannot cure


Her tear by day, her fevered smile by night.










[9]


VII.
DOVES.






Ah, if man’s boast and man’s advance be vain!


And yonder bells of Bow, loud-echoing home,


And the lone Tree, foreknow it, and the Dome,


That monstrous island of the middle main;


If each inheritor must sink again


Under his sires, as falleth where it clomb


Back on the gone wave the disheartened foam?—


I crossed Cheapside, and this was in my brain.


What folly lies in forecasts and in fears!


Like a wide laughter sweet and opportune,


Wet from the fount, three hundred doves of Paul’s


Shook their warm wings, drizzling the golden noon,


And in their rain-cloud vanished up the walls.


“God keeps,” I said, “our little flock of years.”










[10]


VIII.
IN THE READING-ROOM OF THE
BRITISH MUSEUM.






Praised be the moon of books! that doth above


A world of men, the sunken Past behold,


And colour spaces else too void and cold,


To make a very heaven again thereof;


As when the sun is set behind a grove,


And faintly unto nether ether rolled,


All night, his whiter image and his mould


Grows beautiful with looking on her love.


Thou, therefore, moon of so divine a ray,


Lend to our steps both fortitude and light!


Feebly along a venerable way


They climb the infinite, or perish quite;


Nothing are days and deeds to such as they,


While in this liberal house thy face is bright.










[11]


IX.
SUNDAY CHIMES IN THE CITY.






Across the bridge, where in the morning blow


The wrinkled tide turns homeward, and is fain


Homeward to drag the black sea-goer’s chain,


And the long yards by Dowgate dipping low;


Across dispeopled ways, patient and slow,


Saint Magnus and Saint Dunstan call in vain:


From Wren’s forgotten belfries, in the rain,


Down the blank wharves the dropping octaves go.


Forbid not these! Though no man heed, they shower


A subtle beauty on the empty hour,


From all their dark throats aching and outblown;


Aye in the prayerless places welcome most,


Like the last gull that up a naked coast


Deploys her white and steady wing, alone.










[12]


X.
A PORCH IN BELGRAVIA.






When, after dawn, the lordly houses hide


Till you fall foul of it, some piteous guest,


(Some girl the damp stones gather to their breast,


Her gold hair rough, her rebel garment wide,


Who sleeps, with all that luck and life denied


Camped round, and dreams how seaward and southwest


Blue over Devon farms the smoke-rings rest,


And sheep and lambs ascend the lit hillside,)


Dear, of your charity, speak low, step soft,


Pray for a sinner. Planet-like and still,


Best hearts of all are sometimes set aloft


Only to see and pass, nor yet deplore


Even Wrong itself, crowned Wrong inscrutable,


Which cannot but have been, for evermore.










[13]


XI.
YORK STAIRS.






Many a musing eye returns to thee,


Against the formal street disconsolate,


Who kept in green domains thy bridal state,


With young tide-waters leaping at thy knee;


And lest the ravening smoke, and enmity


Corrode thee quite, thy lover sighs, and straight


Desires thee safe afar, too graceful gate!


Throned on a terrace of the Boboli.


Nay, nay, thy use is here. Stand queenly thus


Till the next fury; teach the time and us


Leisure and will to draw a serious breath:


Not wholly where thou art the soul is cowed,


Nor the fooled capital proclaims aloud


Barter is god, while Beauty perisheth.










[14]


XII.
IN THE DOCKS.






Where the bales thunder till the day is done,


And the wild sounds with wilder odours cope;


Where over crouching sail and coiling rope,


Lascar and Moor along the gangway run;


Where stifled Thames spreads in the pallid sun,


A hive of anarchy from slope to slope;


Flag of my birth, my liberty, my hope,


I see thee at the masthead, joyous one!


O thou good guest! So oft as, young and warm,


To the home-wind thy hoisted colours bound,


Away, away from this too thoughtful ground,


Sodden with human trespass and despair,


Thee only, from the desert, from the storm,


A sick mind follows into Eden air.










[15]


OXFORD:
SONNETS WRITTEN THERE IN
1890 AND 1895.

TO LIONEL JOHNSON.






[16]
[17]


I.
THE TOW-PATH.






Furrow to furrow, oar to oar succeeds,


Each length away, more bright, more exquisite;


The sister shells that hither, thither flit,


Strew the long stream like dropping maple-seeds.


A comrade on the marge now lags, now leads,


Who with short calls his pace doth intermit:


An angry Pan, afoot; but if he sit,


Auspicious Pan among the river reeds.


West of the glowing hay-ricks, (tawny-black,


Where waters by their warm escarpments run),


Two lovers, slowly crossed from Kennington,


Print in the early dew a married track,


And drain the aroma’d eve, and spend the sun,


Ere, in laborious health, the crews come back.










[18]


II.
THE OLD DIAL OF CORPUS.






Warden of hours and ages, here I dwell,


Who saw young Keble pass, with sighing shook


For good unborn; and, towards a willow nook,


Pole, princely in the senate and the cell;


And doubting the near boom of Osney bell,


Turning on me that sweetly subtile look,


Erasmus, in his breast an Attic book:


Peacemakers all, their dreams to ashes fell.


Naught steadfast may I image nor attain


Save steadfast labour; futile must I grope


After my god, like him, inconstant bright.


But sun and shade must unto you remain


Alternately a symbol and a hope,


Men, spirits! of Emmanuel your Light.










[19]


III.
AD ANTIQUARIUM.






My gentle Aubrey, who in everything


Hadst of thy city’s youth so lovely lust,


Yet never lineal to her towers august


Thy spirit could fix, or perfectly upbring,


Sleep, sleep! I ope, not unremembering,


Thy comely manuscript, and, interthrust,


Find delicate hueless leaves more sad than dust,


Two centuries unkissed of any spring.


Filling a homesick page beneath a lime,


Thy mood beheld, as mine thy debtor’s now,


The endless terraces of ended Time,


Vague in green twilight. Goodly was release


Into that Past where these poor leaves, and thou,


Do freshen in the air of eldest peace.










[20]


IV.
ROOKS IN NEW COLLEGE GARDENS.






Through rosy cloud, and over thorny towers,


Their wings with darkling autumn distance filled,


From Isis’ valley border, hundred-hilled,


The rooks are crowding home as evening lowers:


Not for men only, and their musing hours,


By battled walls did gracious Wykeham build


These dewy spaces early sown and stilled,


These dearest inland melancholy bowers.


Blest birds! A book held open on the knee


Below, is all they guess of Adam’s blight:


With surer art the while, and simpler rite,


They follow Truth in some monastic tree,


Where breathe against their docile breasts, by night,


The scholar’s star, the star of sanctity.










[21]


V.
ON THE PRE-REFORMATION CHURCHES
ABOUT OXFORD.






Imperial Iffley, Cumnor bowered in green,


And Templar Sandford in the boatman’s call,


And sweet-belled Appleton, and Marcham wall


That dost upon adoring ivies lean;


Meek Binsey; Dorchester, where streams convene


Bidding on graves thy solemn shadow fall;


Clear Cassington that soars perpetual;


Holton and Hampton Poyle, and towers between:


If one of all in your sad courts that come,


Belovèd and disparted! be your own,


Kin to the souls ye had, while yet endures


Some memory of a great communion known


At home in quarries of old Christendom,—


Ah, mark him: he will lay his cheek to yours.










[22]


VI.
ON THE SAME (CONTINUED).






Is this the end? Is this the pilgrim’s day


For dread, for dereliction, and for tears?


Rather, from grass and air and many spheres,


In prophecy his spirit sinks away;


And under English eaves, more still than they,


Far-off, incoming, wonderful, he hears


The long-arrested, the believing years


Carry the sea-wall! Shall he, sighing, say:


“Farewell to Faith, for she is dead at best


Who had such beauty”? or, with kisses lain


For witness on her darkened doors, go by


With a new psalm: “O banished light so nigh!


Of them was I, who bore thee and who blest:


Even here remember me when thou shalt reign.”










[23]


VII.
A DECEMBER WALK.






Whithersoever cold and fair ye flow,


Calm tides of moonlit midnight, bear my mind!


Past Christchurch gate, with leafy frost entwined,


And Merton in a huge tiara’s glow,


And groves in bridal gossamers below


Saint Mary’s armoured spire; and whence aligned


In altered eminence for dawn to find,


Sleep the droll Cæsars, hooded with the snow.


White sacraments of weather, shine on me!


Upbear my footfall, and my fancy sift,


Lest either blemish an ensainted ground


Spread so with childhood. Bid with me, outbound,


On recollected wing mine angel drift


Across new spheres of immortality.










[24]


VIII.
UNDERTONES AT MAGDALEN.






Fair are the finer creature-sounds; of these


Is Magdalen full: her bees, the while they drop


Susurrant in the garth from weeds atop;


And round the priestless Pulpit, auguries


Of wrens in council from a hundred leas;


And Cherwell fish in laughter fain to stop


The water-plantain’s way; and deer that crop


Delicious herbage under choral trees.


The cry for silver and gold in Christendom


Without, threads not her silence and her dark.


Only against the isolate Tower there break


Low rhythmic rumours of good men to come:


Invasive seas of hushed approach, that make


Memorial music, would the ear but hark.










[25]


IX.
PORT MEADOW.






The plain gives freedom. Hither, from the town,


How oft a dreamer and a book of yore


Escaped the lamplit Square, and heard no more


From Cowley border surge the game’s renown;


But bade the vernal sky with spices drown


His head by Plato’s in the grass, before


Yon oar that’s never old, the sunset oar,


At Medley Lock was lain in music down!


So seeming far the confines and the crowd,


The gross routine, the cares that vex and tire,


From this large light, sad thoughts in it, high-driven,


Go happier than the inly-moving cloud


That lets her vesture fall, a floss of fire,


Abstracted, on the ivory hills of heaven.










[26]


X.
MARTYRS’ MEMORIAL.






Such natural debts of love our Oxford knows,


So many ancient dues undesecrate,


I marvel how the landmark of a hate


For witness unto future time she chose;


How out of her corroborate ranks arose


The three, in great denial only great,


For Art’s enshrining! . . Thus, averted straight,


My soul to seek a holier captain goes:


That sweet adventurer whom Truth befell


Whenas the synagogues were watching not;


Whose crystal name on royal Oriel


Hangs like a shield; who to an outland spot


Led hence, beholds his Star; and counts it well


Of all his dear domain to live forgot.










[27]


XI.
A LAST VIEW.






Where down the glen, across the shallow ford,


Stretches the open aisle from scene to scene,


By halted horses silently we lean,


Gazing enchanted from our steeper sward.


How yon low loving skies of April hoard


An hundred pinnacles, and how with sheen


Of spike and ball her languid clouds between,


Grey Oxford grandly rises riverward!


Sweet on those dim long-dedicated walls,


Silver as rain the frugal sunshine falls;


Slowly sad eyes resign them, bound afar.


Dear Beauty, dear Tradition, fare you well:


And powers that aye aglow in you, impel


Our quickening spirits from the slime we are.










[28]


XII.
RETRIEVAL.






Stars in the bosom of thy triple tide,


June air and ivy on thy gracile stone,


O glory of the West, as thou wert sown,


Be perfect: O miraculous, abide!


And still, for greatness flickering from thy side,


Eternal alchemist, upraise, enthrone


True heirs in true succession, later blown


From that same seed of fire which never died.


Nor love shall lack her solace, to behold


Ranged to the morrow’s melancholy verge,


Thy lights uprisen in Thought’s disclosing spaces;


And round some beacon-spirit, stable, old,


In radiant broad tumultuary surge


For ever, the young voices, the young faces.










[29]


LYRICS.

TO DORA SIGERSON SHORTER
AND
CLEMENT SHORTER.






[30]
[31]


A BALLAD OF KENELM.






“In Clent cow-batch, Kenelm, King born,


Lieth under a thorn.”












It was a goodly child,


Sweet as the gusty May;


It was a knight that broke


On his play,


A fair and coaxing knight:


“O little liege!” said he,


“Thy sister bids thee come


After me.






“A pasture rolling west


Lies open to the sun,


Bright-shod with primroses


Doth it run;


And forty oaks be nigh,


Apart, and face to face,


And cow-bells all the morn


In the space.






“And there the sloethorn bush


Beside the water grows,


And hides her mocking head


[32]Under snows;


Black stalks afoam with bloom,


And never a leaf hath she:


Thou crystal of the realm,


Follow me!”






Uplooked the undefiled:


“All things, ere I was born,


My sister found; now find


Me the thorn.”


They travelled down the lane,


An hour’s dust they made:


The belted breast of one


Bore a blade.






The primroses were out,


The aislèd oaks were green,


The cow-bells pleasantly


Tinked between;


The brook was beaded gold,


The thorn was burgeoning,


Where evil Ascobert


Slew the King.






He hid him in the ground,


Nor washed away the dyes,


Nor smoothed the fallen curls


From his eyes.


No father had the babe


To bless his bed forlorn;


No mother now to weep


[33]By the thorn.






There fell upon that place


A shaft of heavenly light;


The thorn in Mercia spake


Ere the night:


“Beyond, a sister sees


Her crownèd period,


But at my root a lamb


Seeth God.”






Unto each, even so.


As dew before the cloud,


The guilty glory passed


Of the proud.


Boy Kenelm has the song,


Saint Kenelm has the bower;


His thorn a thousand years


Is in flower!












TWO IRISH PEASANT SONGS.


I. IN LEINSTER.








I try to knead and spin, but my life is low the while.


Oh, I long to be alone, and walk abroad a mile,


Yet if I walk alone, and think of naught at all,


Why from me that’s young should the wild tears fall?






The shower-stricken earth, the earth-coloured streams,


They breathe on me awake, and moan to me in dreams,


And yonder ivy fondling the broke castle-wall,


[34]It pulls upon my heart till the wild tears fall.






The cabin-door looks down a furze-lighted hill,


And far as Leighlin Cross the fields are green and still;


But once I hear the blackbird in Leighlin hedges call,


The foolishness is on me, and the wild tears fall!








II. IN ULSTER.








’Tis the time o’ the year, if the quicken-bough be staunch,


The green, like a breaker, rolls steady up the branch,


And surges in the spaces, and floods the trunk, and heaves


In jets of angry spray that is the under-white of leaves;


And from the thorn in companies the foamy petals fall,


And waves of jolly ivy wink along a windy wall.






’Tis the time o’ the year the marsh is full of sound,


And good and glorious it is to smell the living ground.


The crimson-headed catkin shakes above the pasture-bars,


The daisy takes the middle field, and spangles it with stars,


And down the bank into the lane the primroses do crowd,


All coloured like the twilight moon, and spreading like a cloud!






’Tis the time o’ the year, in early light and glad,


The lark has a music to drive a lover mad;


[35]The downs are dripping nightly, the breathèd damps arise,


Deliciously the freshets cool the grayling’s golden eyes,


And lying in a row against the chilly north, the sheep


Inclose a place without a wind for little lambs to sleep.






’Tis the time o’ the year I turn upon the height


To watch from my harrow the dance of going light;


And if before the sun be hid, come slowly up the vale


Honora with her dimpled throat, Honora with her pail,


Hey, but there’s many a March for me, and many and many a lass!


I fall to work and song again, and let Honora pass.












IN A RUIN, AFTER A THUNDERSTORM.






Keep of the Norman, old to flood and cloud!


Thou dost reproach me with thy sunset look,


That in our common menace, I forsook


Hope, the last fear, and stood impartial proud:


Almost, almost, while ether spake aloud,


Death, from the smoking stones, my spirit shook


Into thy hollow as leaves into a brook,


No more than they by heaven’s assassins cowed.


But now thy thousand-scarrèd steep is flecked


With the calm kisses of the light delayed,


Breathe on me better valour: to subject


My soul to greed of life, and grow afraid


Lest, ere her fight’s full term, the Architect


See downfall of the stronghold that He made.










[36]


TO A CHILD.








Dear Owain, when you are minded


To gather the perfect thing,


Over Abergavenny


Climb in the evening!—


I have seen where orchis dances


A saraband with the Spring;






Where samphire leans to ocean,


And shakes in the word he saith;


Or the brood of the peasant ragweed,


Innocent, sweet of breath,


Runs with a wild Welsh river


That never has heard of death;






Where thrift, with a foot shell-tinted,


On the dark coast-road delays;


And foxglove flames in a ruin;


And campion meekly lays


On a crag’s uneven shoulder


Her satiny cheek, for days.






Well: these in their mortal beauty,


And these in their youth, abound.


But over Abergavenny,


Past sunset-hour, I found


(O Holy Grail of a flower!)


The sun on the hilltop ground.












[37]


IN A PERPENDICULAR CHURCH.








The slackened arches never lose their beauty of alarm;


The tall lines frown along the wall, like angels, sword in arm;


And where the vaults diverge, a grove with fancied snow o’erspread,


Goes light among a myriad panes, with dust upon her head.






England of old most innocent, whose flower of skill achieved


Failed quick as Lammas lilies, when thy hand no more believed,


What hast thou here, beloved but dead, held to thy childless heart?


Alas, thy human all of heaven: thine own and only Art.












A SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY SONG.








She alone of Shepherdesses


With her blue disdayning eyes,


Wo’d not hark a Kyng that dresses


All his lute in sighes:


Yet to winne


Katheryn,


I elect for mine Emprise.






None is like her, none above her,


Who so lifts my youth in me,


[38]That a little more to love her


Were to leave her free!


But to winne


Katheryn,


Is mine utmost love’s degree.






Distaunce, cold, delay, and danger,


Build the four walles of her bower;


She’s noe Sweete for any stranger,


She’s noe valley flower:


And to winne


Katheryn,


To her height my heart can Tower!






Uppe to Beautie’s promontory


I will climb, nor loudlie call


Perfect and escaping glory


Folly, if I fall:


Well to winne


Katheryn!


To be worth her is my all.












COLUMBA AND THE STORK.








The cliffs of Iona were red, with the moon to lee,


A finger of rock in the infinite wind and the sea;


And white on the cliffs as a volley of spray down-flying,


The beautiful stork of Eiré indriven and dying.






I stole from the choir; I fed him, I bathed his breast,


[39]Till in late sunshine he lifted his wing to the west.


Oh, the bells of the Abbey were calling clearer and bolder,


And I feared the pale admonishing face at my shoulder.






Columb the saint’s! but I said, with mine arm in air,


(Of that banished body and homesick spirit aware,)


“The bird is of Eiré; out of the storm I bore him;


And lo, he is free, with the valleys of Eiré before him.”






Of the man that was Eiré-born, and in exile yet,


This the reproach I had, and cannot forget,


This the reproach I had, and never another:


“Blessed art thou, to have lightened the heart of my brother!”












THE CHANTRY.






A loyal lady young; a knight for honour slain:


All beauty and all quiet sealed of old upon


Their images that lie in coif and morion.


A moment since, through rifts and pauses of the rain,


The day shot in; the lancet window showered again


Its moth-like play of silver, rose, and sapphire; shone


What arms of warring duchies glorious, bygone:


Lombardy, Desmond, Malta, suitored Aquitaine!


The while, aloft in Art’s immortal summertide,


Fair is the carven hostel, fortunate either guest,


And men of moodier England pass, and hear outside


[40]Fury of toil alone, and fate’s diurnal storm,


Hearts with the King of Saints, hearts beating light and warm!


To these your courage give, that these attain your rest.










APRIL IN GOVILON.








Slowly, slowly darken


Primrose and pimpernel;


Heather of the rock, a-shake


On delicious air;


Slanted seas of spreading grass,


(Green glow and tidal swell,)


Under wind and pausing light how variably fair!






Larks from heaven descending


Hush; not a cloud-shadow,


Where so late the romping lambs


Chased it, in a ring;


High along a little wood


Quick rain-sparkles go;


Blorenge walls the faëry world: the sole substantial thing.






April in Govilon,


Filled with a bright heart-break;


Evenfall on dying wing,


Swanlike and supreme!


Soon, unheard, the Hyades


Run up the hills to take


Seven lamps, and trail the seven all night in Isca stream.












[41]


ON LEAVING WINCHESTER.








A palmer’s kiss on thy familiar marge,


My oriel city, whence the soul hath sight


Of passional yesterdays, all gold and large,


Arising to enrich our narrow night:


Though others bless thee, who so blest before


Hath pastured, from the violent time apart,


And laved in supersensual light the heart


Alone with thy magnificent No More?






Sweet court of roses now, sweet camp of bees!


The hills that lean to thy white bed at dawn,


Hear, for the clash of raging dynasties,


Laughter of boys about a branchy lawn.


Hast thou a stain? Let ivy cover all;


Nor seem of greatness disinhabited,


While spirits in their wonted splendour tread


From close to close, by Wolvesey’s idle wall.






Bright fins against thy lucid water leap,


And nigh thy towers the nesting wood-dove dwell;


Be lenient winter, and long moons, and sleep


Upon thee, but on me the sharp Farewell.


Happy art thou, O clad and crowned with rest!


Happy the shepherd (would that I were he!)


Whose early way is step for step with thee,


Whose old brow fades on thine immortal breast.












[42]


ON THE CENOTAPH OF THE PRINCE
IMPERIAL IN SAINT GEORGE’S
CHAPEL.








No young and exiled dust beneath is laid


In sole entail of high inheritance,


Though once compassion softly came, and made


A sleep at Windsor for the Son of France:


And sleep so long hath kept his image clear


Of pain’s pollution, and the Zulu spear,


It seems his piteous self at last that lies


In prayer’s old heart built to the island skies,


Low as the sifted snow is, and meek as Paradise.






Thus passeth all ye dream of might and grace!


Wherefore, beside the stones that cry it loud,


Let every musing spirit pause to trace


The cloud-burst of that Empire like a cloud;


And, looking on these stainless brows, proclaim


Peace unto Corsica’s portentous name,


And peace to her, who in a sculptured boy,


Mould of her martyred beauty and her joy,


Reads here the end of Helen, the end of Helen’s Troy.












[43]


OF JOAN’S YOUTH.








I would unto my fair restore


A simple thing:


The flushing cheek she had before!


Out-velveting


No more, no more,


By Severn shore,


The carmine grape, the moth’s auroral wing.






Ah, say how winds in flooded grass


Unmoor the rose;


Or guileful ways the salmon pass


To sea, disclose;


For so, alas,


With Love, alas,


With fatal, fatal Love a girlhood goes.












PASSING THE MINSTER.






Praise to thine awful beauty, praise


And peace, O warden of my ways!


Bid o’er the brow to thee I raise,


Eternal unction fall.


Nobly and equally thou must


Take adoration of my dust,


And unto altitudes august


Thy low-born lover call.


Bless me; forget me not: a lone


Clear Amen through thine arches blown,


A heartstring of that Hope, a stone


Fixed also in that Wall.










[44]


THE YEW-TREE.








As I came homeward


At merry Christmas,


By the old church tower,


Through the churchyard grass,






And saw there, circled


With graves all about,


The yew-tree paternal,


The yew-tree devout,






Then this hot life-blood


Was hard to endure,


O Death! so I loved thee,


The sole love sure.






For stars slip in heaven,


They wander, they break:


But under the yew-tree


Not one heartache.






And ours, what failure


Renewed and avowed!


But ah, the long-buried


Is leal, and is proud.






Now I came homeward


At merry Christmas,


By the wise gray tower,


Through the green kind grass.












[45]


SHROPSHIRE LANDSCAPE.








Vague, in a silver sheen


Rayed from their armour green,


Some aged limes upstand;


Nigh fields kindle and shine:


Beauty incarnadine!


What thrill of what Uranian wine


So flushed the placid land?






All tints of a broken wave


Light the leafy architrave,


Far up the cloudy spring;


And the ploughed soil ruddier glows


Than the ruby or the rose,


Or the moon, when the harvest goes


Beneath her blazing wing.






Trees keep the broad outpost;


Dusk, by their dusky host,


Long-loved Severn glides.


Thence, towards the hilly south,


Like a queen, battle-wroth,


Upon a vermeil saddle-cloth,


The three-spired city rides.












[46]


THE GRAHAM TARTAN TO A GRAHAM.








Use me in honour: cherish me


As ivy from a sacred tree.


Mine in the winds of war to close


Around the armour of Montrose,


And kiss the death-wound of Dundee.






Yet fear not me, nor such estate


Heroic and inviolate;


But green-and-white-and-azure wind


About thy body and thy mind,


And by that length enlarge thy fate!












IN A LONDON STREET.








Though sea and mount have beauty, and this but what it can,


Thrice fairer than their life the life here battling in the van,


The tragic gleam, the mist and grime,


The dread endearing stain of time,


The sullied heart of man.






Mine is the clotted sunshine, a bubble in the sky,


That where it dare not enter, steals in shrouded passion by;


And mine the saffron river-sails,


And every plane-tree that avails


[47]To rest an urban eye;






The bells, the dripping gables, the tavern’s corner glare


The cabs in firefly dartings, the barrel-organ’s air,


Where one by one, or two by two,


The hatless babes are dancing through


The gutters of the square.






Not on Sicilian headlands of song and old desire,


My spirit chose her pleasure-house, but in the London mire:


Long, long alone she loves to pace,


And find a music in the place


As in a minster choir.






O deeds of awe and rapture! O names of legendry!


Still is it most of joy within your altered pale to be,


Whose very ills I fain would slake,


Mine angels are, and help to make


In hell, a heaven for me.












ATHASSEL ABBEY.








Folly and Time have fashioned


Of thee a songless reed;


O not-of-earth-impassioned!


Thy music’s mute indeed.






Red from the chantry crannies


The orchids burn and swing,


And where the arch began is


[48]Rest for a raven’s wing;






And up the dinted column


Quick tails of squirrels wave,


And black, prodigious, solemn,


A forest fills the nave.






Still faith fuller, still faster,


To ruin give thy heart:


Perfect before the Master


Aye as thou wert, thou art.






But I am wind that passes


In ignorance and tears,


Uplifted from the grasses,


Blown to the void of years,






Blown to the void, yet sighing


In thee to merge and cease,


Last breath of beauty’s dying,


Of sanctity, of peace!






Though use nor place forever


Unto my soul befall,


By no belovèd river


Set in a saintly wall,






Do thou by builders given


Speech of the dumb to be,


Beneath thine open heaven,


Athassel! pray for me.












[49]


ROMANS IN DORSET. (TO A. B.)








A stupor on the heath,


And wrath along the sky;


Space everywhere; beneath,


The flat and treeless wold for us, with darkest noon on high.






Sullen quiet below,


But storm in upper air!


A wind from long ago,


In mouldy chambers of the cloud, had ripped an arras there,






And singed the triple gloom,


And let through, in a flame,


Crowned faces of old Rome:


Regnant, o’er Rome’s abandoned ground, processional they came.






Uprisen like any sun,


Through vistas hollow gray,


Aloft, and one by one,


In brazen casque, the Emperors loomed large, and sank away.






In ovals of wan light,


Each warrior eye and mouth:


A pageant brutal bright,


[50]As if, once over, loudly passed Jove’s laughter in the south;






And dimmer, these among,


Some cameo’d head aloof,


With ringlets heavy-hung,


As golden stone-crop comely grows around the castle roof.






An instant; gusts again,


Then heaven’s impacted wall,


The hot insistent rain,


The thunder-shock: and of the Past, mirage no more at all.






No more the alien dream


Pursuing, as we went,


With glory’s cursèd gleam;


Nor sins of Cæsar’s ruined line engulphed us, innocent.






The vision, great and dread,


Corroded; sole in view


Was empty Egdon spread,


Her crimson summer weeds a-shake in tempest: but we knew






What Tacitus had borne


In that wrecked world we saw;


And what, thine heart uptorn,


My Juvenal! distraught with love of violated Law.












[51]


LINES ON VARIOUS FLY-LEAVES.

TO GWENLLIAN E. F. MORGAN.






[52]
[53]


TO HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY.






Young father-poet! much in you I praise


Adventure high, romantic, vehement,


All with inviolate honour sealed and blent,


To the axe-edge that cleft your soldier bays:


Your friendships too, your follies, whims, and frays;


And, most, your verse, with strict imperious bent,


Heard sweetly as from some old harper’s tent,


And surging in the listener’s brain for days.


At Framlingham to-night, if there should be


No guest, beyond a sea-born wind that sighs,


No guard, save moonlight’s crossed and trailing spears,


And I, your pilgrim, call you, O let me


In at the gate! and smile into the eyes


That sought you, Surrey, down three hundred years.










FOR IZAAK WALTON.








Can trout allure the rod of yore


In Itchen stream to dip?


Or lover of her banks restore


That sweet Socratic lip?


Old fishing and wishing


Are over many a year.


O hush thee, O hush thee! heart innocent and dear.






Again the foamy shallows fill,


The quiet clouds amass,


And soft as bees, by Catherine Hill


[54]At dawn the anglers pass,


And follow the hollow,


In boughs to disappear.


O hush thee, O hush thee! heart innocent and dear.






Nay, rise not now, nor with them take


One golden-freckled fool!


Thy sons to-day bring each an ache


For ancient arts to cool.


But, father, lie rather


Unhurt and idle near:


O hush thee, O hush thee! heart innocent and dear.






While thought of thee to men is yet


A sylvan playfellow,


Ne’er by thy marble they forget


In pious cheer to go.


As air falls, the prayer falls


O’er kingly Winchester:


O hush thee, O hush thee! heart innocent and dear.












A FOOT-NOTE TO A FAMOUS LYRIC.








True love’s own talisman, which here


Shakespeare and Sidney failed to teach,


A steel-and-velvet Cavalier


Gave to our Saxon speech:






Chief miracle of theme and touch


That many envy and adore:


I could not love thee, dear, so much,


[55]Loved I not Honour more.






No critic born since Charles was king,


But sighed in smiling, as he read:


“Here’s theft of the supremest thing


A poet might have said!”






Young knight and wit and beau, who won


Mid war’s upheaval, ladies’ praise,


Was’t well of you, ere you had done,


To blight our modern bays?






O yet to you, whose random hand


Struck from the dark whole gems like these,


(Archaic beauty, never planned


Nor reared by wan degrees,






Which leaves an artist poor, and Art


An earldom richer all her years;)


To you, dead on your shield apart,


Be Ave! passed in tears.






’Twas virtue’s breath inflamed your lyre;


Heroic from the heart it ran;


Nor for the shedding of such fire


Lives, since, a manlier man.






And till your strophe sweet and bold


So lovely aye, so lonely long,


Love’s self outdo, dear Lovelace! hold


The parapets of song.












[56]


A MEMORY OF A BRECONSHIRE
VALLEY.






—“Patulis ubi vallibus errans,


Subjacet aëriis montibus Isca pater.”


Ad Posteros.






I.






I followed thee, wild stream of Paradise,


White Usk, forever showering the sunned bee


In the pink chestnut and the hawthorn tree;


And, all along, had magical surmise


Of mountains fluctuant in those vesper skies,


As unto mermen, caverned in mid-sea,


Far up the vast green reaches, soundlessly


The giant rollers form, and fall, and rise.


Above thy poet’s dust, by yonder yew,


Ere distance perished, ere a star began,


His clear monastic measure, heard of few,


Through lonelier glens of mine own being ran;


And thou to me wert dear, because I knew


The God who made thee gracious, and the man.






II.







If, by that second lover’s power controlled,


In sweet symbolic rite thy breath o’erfills


Fields of no war with vagrant daffodils,


From distance unto distance trailing gold;


If dazzling sands or thickets thee enfold,


Transfigured Usk, where from their mossy sills


[57]Gray hamlets kiss thee, and by herded hills


Diviner run thy shallows than of old;—


If intellectual these, O name thy Vaughan


Creator too: and close his memory keep,


Who from thy fountain, kind to him, hath drawn


Birth, energy, and joy; devotion deep;


A play of thought more mystic than the dawn;


And death at home; and centuried sylvan sleep.










WRIT IN MY LORD CLARENDON’S
“HISTORY OF THE REBELLION.”








How life hath cheapened, and how blank


The Worlde is! like a fen


Where long ago unstainèd sank


The starrie gentlemen:


Since Marston Moor and Newbury drank


King Charles his gentlemen.






If Fate in any air accords


What Fate denied, O then


I ask to be among your Swordes,


My joyous gentlemen;


Towards Honour’s heaven to goe, and towards


King Charles his gentlemen!












A LAST WORD ON SHELLEY.








Each great inrolling wave, a league of sound,


All night, all day, the hostile crags confound


[58]To merest snow and smoke. The crags remain.






Smile at the storm for our safe poet’s sake!


Not ever this ordainèd world shall break


That mounting, foolish, foam-bright heart again.












AN EPITAPH FOR WILLIAM HAZLITT.








Between the wet trees and the sorry steeple,


Keep, Time, in dark Soho, what once was Hazlitt,


Seeker of Truth, and finder oft of Beauty;






Beauty’s a sinking light, ah, none too faithful;


But Truth, who leaves so here her spent pursuer,


Forgets not her great pawn: herself shall claim it.






Therefore sleep safe, thou dear and battling spirit,


Safe also on our earth, begetting ever


Some one love worth the ages and the nations!






Nothing falls under, to thine eyes eternal.


Sleep safe in dark Soho: the stars are shining;


Titian and Wordsworth live; the People marches.












EMILY BRONTË.






What sacramental hurt that brings


The terror of the truth of things,


Had changed thee? Secret be it yet.


’Twas thine, upon a headland set,


To view no isles of man’s delight


With lyric foam in rainbow flight,


But all a-swing, a-gleam, mid slow uproar,


Black sea, and curved uncouth sea-bitten shore.










[59]


PAX PAGANICA.








Good oars, for Arnold’s sake,


By Laleham lightly bound,


And near the bank, O soft,


Darling swan!


Let not the o’erweary wake


Anew from natal ground,


But where he slumbered oft,


Slumber on.






Be less than boat or bird,


The pensive stream along;


No murmur make, nor gleam,


At his side.


Where was it he had heard


Of warfare and of wrong?—


Not there, in any dream


Since he died.












VALEDICTION (R. L. S., 1894).






When from the vista of the Book I shrink,


From lauded pens that earn ignoble wage,


Begetting nothing joyous, nothing sage,


Nor keep with Shakespeare’s use one golden link;


When heavily my sanguine spirits sink,


To read too plain on each impostor page


Only of kings the broken lineage,


Well for my peace if then on thee I think,


[60]Louis: our priest of letters, and our knight


With whose familiar baldric hope is girt,


From whose young hands she bears the Grail away.


All glad, all great! Truer because thou wert,


I am and must be; and in thy known light


Go down to dust, content with this my day.










[61]



emblem: lion rampant with anchor




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[62]
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