The Project Gutenberg EBook of Happy Ending, by Louise Imogen Guiney This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Title: Happy Ending The Collected Lyrics of Louise Imogen Guiney Author: Louise Imogen Guiney Release Date: May 14, 2017 [EBook #54719] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HAPPY ENDING *** Produced by Emmy, Linda Cantoni, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive). This project is dedicated with love to Emmy's memory. HAPPY ENDING [Illustration: _G.F. Watts, pinx._ _Hollyer, Photo._] _Rower maul'd in the Sea, ah, Rower Limp as Grasses behind the Mower. Pity'd most that thy Woes deny thee Sight of the Spirit Steersman by thee!_ _Tho' more near than a hinted Haven Lie the Port that is coral-paven, All is well: the Unseen Befriending Makes of either the Happy Ending._ HAPPY ENDING _The Collected Lyrics of_ LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY [Illustration: TOUT BIEN OU RIEN] HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY BOSTON AND NEW YORK: 1909 COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED _Published December 1909_ TO ANNE WHITNEY PREFACE THIS volume has been garnered from the author's earlier books. Two poems have been chosen from "The White Sail" (1887); nine Oxford Sonnets from a privately printed booklet (1895), since added to, and much altered; and many lyrics, under a revised form, from "A Roadside Harp" (1893), and "The Martyrs' Idyl" (1899), plus some twenty newer titles transferred, with grateful acknowledgments, from _McClure's Magazine_, _The Atlantic_, _Harper's_, _Scribner's_, and _The Century_. The principle of exclusion goes far enough to cover all poems in narrative form, or of any appreciable length, or translated; also, any which seemed out of keeping with the character of the present collection. Such as that is, it comprises the less faulty half of all the author's published verse. L.I.G. BOSTON, October 21, 1909. CONTENTS _The Kings_ 3 _The Squall_ 5 _Open, Time_ 9 _The Knight Errant_ (_Donatello's Saint George_) 11 _To a Dog's Memory_ 13 _Memorial Day_ 15 _Romans in Dorset: A.D. MDCCCXCV_ 16 _Horologion_ 19 _His Angel to his Mother_ 21 _Autumn Magic_ 23 _Five Carols for Christmastide_: _I. The Ox he Openeth wide the Doore_ 25 _II. Vines Branching Stilly_ 26 _III. Three without Slumber Ride from Afar_ 27 _IV. Was a Soule from Farre Away_ 28 _V. The Ox and the Ass_ 29 _On Leaving Winchester_ 32 _Cobwebs_ 34 _Astræa_ 35 _The Yew-Tree_ 36 _Ten Colloquies_: _I. The Search_ 38 _II. Fact and the Mystic_ 39 _III. The Poet's Chart_ 40 _IV. Of the Golden Age_ 41 _V. On Time's Threshold_ 42 _VI. Wood-Pigeons_ 42 [Transcriber's Note: original erroneously has "Wood-Doves"] _VII. Predicaments_ 43 _VIII. The Co-Eternal_ 44 _IX. Stern Aphrodite_ 44 _X. The Jubilee_ 45 _Winter Boughs_ 46 _W.H.: A.D. MDCCLXXVIII-MDCCCXXX_ 47 _The Vigil-at-Arms_ 48 _A Friend's Song for Simoisius_ 49 _To an Ideal_ 51 _In a Ruin, after a Thunder-Storm_ 53 _Beati Mortui_ 54 _Two Irish Peasant Songs_: _I. In Leinster_ 57 _II. In Ulster_ 58 _The Japanese Anemone_ 61 _Orisons_ 63 _The Inner Fate: A Chorus_ 64 _The Acknowledgment_ 66 _By the Trundle-Bed_ 67 _Arboricide_ 68 _The Cherry Bough_ 70 _The Wild Ride_ 73 _Bedesfolk_ 75 _In a City Street_ 77 _Florentin: A.D. MDCCCXC_ 79 _A Song of the Lilac_ 80 _Monochrome_ 81 _Saint Francis Endeth his Sermon_ 82 _An Estray_ 83 _Friendship Broken_ 85 _A Talisman_ 87 _Heathenesse_ 88 _For Izaak Walton_ 89 _Fifteen Epitaphs_ 91 _Deo Optimo Maximo_ 98 _Charista Musing_ 99 _The Still of the Year_ 100 _A Footnote to a Famous Lyric_ 102 _T.W.P.: A.D. MDCCCXIX-MDCCCXCII_ 104 _Summum Bonum_ 105 _When on the Marge of Evening_ 106 _Hylas_ 107 _Nocturne_ 109 _To Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey_ 110 _Planting the Poplar_ 111 _To One Who would not Spare Himself_ 113 _Winter Peace_ 114 _Sleep_ 116 _Writ in my Lord Clarendon's History of the Rebellion_ 117 _In a February Garden_ (_Somerset, England_) 118 _A Valediction._ (_R.L.S.: A.D. MDCCCXCIV_) 120 _A Footpath Morality_ 121 _The Light of the House_ 123 _An Outdoor Litany_ 125 _Of Joan's Youth_ 127 _In a Brecon Valley_ 128 _A Song of Far Travel_ 130 _Spring_ 131 _The Colour-Bearer_ 132 _Sanctuary_ 134 _Emily Brontë_ 135 _Pascal_ 136 _Borderlands_ 137 _Ode for a Master Mariner Ashore_ 138 _Oxford and London: XXVI Sonnets_ _Oxford_: _I. The Tow-Path_ 145 _II. Ad Antiquarium_ 146 _III. Martyrs' Memorial_ 147 _IV. Parks Road_ 148 _V. Tom_ 149 _VI, VIa. On the Pre-Reformation Churches about Oxford_ 150 _VII. A December Walk_ 152 _VIII. The Old Dial of Corpus_ 153 _IX. Rooks: New College Gardens_ 154 _X. Above Port Meadow_ 155 _XI. Undertones at Magdalen_ 156 _XII, XIIa. A Last View_ 157 _London_: _I. On First Entering Westminster Abbey_ 159 _II. Fog_ 160 _III. St. Peter-ad-Vincula_ 161 _IV. Strikers in Hyde Park_ 162 _V. Changes in the Temple_ 163 _VI. The Lights of London_ 164 _VII. Doves_ 165 _VIII. In the Reading-Room of the British Museum_ 166 _IX. Sunday Chimes in the City_ 167 _X. A Porch in Belgravia_ 168 _XI. York Stairs_ 169 _XII. In the Docks_ 170 _Notes_ 171 HAPPY ENDING _The Kings_ A MAN said unto his Angel: "My spirits are fallen low, And I cannot carry this battle: O brother! where might I go? "The terrible Kings are on me With spears that are deadly bright; Against me so from the cradle Do fate and my fathers fight." Then said to the man his Angel: "Thou wavering witless soul, Back to the ranks! What matter To win or to lose the whole, "As judged by the little judges Who hearken not well, nor see? Not thus, by the outer issue, The Wise shall interpret thee. "Thy will is the sovereign measure And only event of things: The puniest heart, defying, Were stronger than all these Kings. "Though out of the past they gather, Mind's Doubt, and Bodily Pain, And pallid Thirst of the Spirit That is kin to the other twain, "And Grief, in a cloud of banners, And ringletted Vain Desires, And Vice, with the spoils upon him Of thee and thy beaten sires,-- "While Kings of eternal evil Yet darken the hills about, Thy part is with broken sabre To rise on the last redoubt; "To fear not sensible failure, Nor covet the game at all, But fighting, fighting, fighting, Die, driven against the wall." _The Squall_ WHILE all was glad, It seemed our birch-tree had, That August hour, intelligence of death; For warningly against the eaves she beat Her body old, lamenting, prophesying, And the hot breath Of ferny hollows nestled at her feet Spread out in startled sighing. Across an argent sea, Distinct unto the farthest reef and isle, The clouds began to be. Huge forms 'neath sombre draperies, awhile Made slow uncertain rally; But as their ranks conjoined, and from the north The leader shook his lance, Oh, then how fair Unvested, they stood forth, In diverse armour, plumed majestically, Each with his own esquires, a King in air! Up moved the dark vanguard, With insolent colours that o'erdusked the skies, And trailed from beach to beach: Massed orange and mould-green; vermilion barred On bronze or mottled silver; saffron dyes And purples migratory Fanned each in each, As the long column broke, athirst for glory. Sudden, the thunder! Upon the roofed verandas how it rolled, Twice, thrice: a thud and flame of doom that told New-fallen, nor far away, Some black destruction on the innocent day. And little Everard Deep in the hammock under, eyes alight With healthful fear and wonder The brave do ne'er unlearn, Clenched his soft hand, and breathing hard, Smiled there against his father, like a knight Baptized on Cressy field or Bannockburn. A moment gone, Into our paradise from Acheron, With imperceptive sorcery crawled ashore Odours unnamable: an exhalation Of men and ships in oozy graves. (Ah, cease, Derisive nereids! cease: Be it enough, that even ye can pour, From crystal flagons of your ancient peace, So strange obscene libation.) But with the thunder-peal Sprang the pure winds, their thurible swung wide, To chase that tainted tide; Fresh from the pastures and the cedar-grove, They rode the copper ridges of the main, And bared a league of distance to reveal A sail, aslant, astrain, Impetuous for the cove; And tossing after, panic-stricken, Another, and a third: white spirits, fain to sicken, Nor out of natural harm salvation gain. The selfsame hunter winds that drave The horror down, as faithful-hearted drew The sad clouds from their carnage, and up-piled Their rebel gonfalons, or jocund threw Their cannon in the wave; And subtly, with a parting whisper, gave An eve most mild: A sunset like a prayer, a world all rose and blue: A good world, as it was, And as it shall be: clear circumferent space, Where punctual yet, for worship of their Cause, The stars came thick in choir. Sleep had our Everard in her cool embrace, Else from his cot he hardly need have stooped To see (and laugh to see!) the headland pine Embossed on changing fire: For close behind it, cooped Within a smallest span, In fury, to and fro and round and round, The routed leopards of the lightning ran: Bright, bright, inside their dungeon-bars, malign They ran; and ran till dawn, without a sound. _Open, Time_ OPEN, Time, and let him pass Shortly where his feet would be! Like a leaf at Michaelmas Swooning from the tree, Ere its hour the manly mind Trembles in a sure decrease, Nor the body now can find Any hold on peace. Take him, weak and overworn; Fold about his dying dream Boyhood, and the April morn, And the rolling stream: Weather on a sunny ridge, Showery weather, far from here; Under some deep-ivied bridge, Water rushing clear: Water quick to cross and part (Golden light on silver sound), Weather that was next his heart All the world around! Soon upon his vision break These, in their remembered blue; He shall toil no more, but wake Young, in air he knew. He hath done with roofs and men. Open, Time, and let him pass, Vague and innocent again, Into country grass. _The Knight Errant_ (_Donatello's Saint George_) SPIRITS of old that bore me, And set me, meek of mind, Between great dreams before me, And deeds as great behind, Knowing humanity my star As first abroad I ride, Shall help me wear with every scar Honour at eventide. Let claws of lightning clutch me From summer's groaning cloud, Or ever malice touch me, And glory make me proud. Oh, give my youth, my faith, my sword, Choice of the heart's desire: A short life in the saddle, Lord! Not long life by the fire. Forethought and recollection Rivet mine armour gay! The passion for perfection Redeem my failing way! The arrows of the upper slope From sudden ambush cast, Rain quick and true, with one to ope My Paradise at last! I fear no breathing bowman, But only, east and west, The awful other foeman Impowered in my breast. The outer fray in the sun shall be, The inner beneath the moon; And may Our Lady lend to me Sight of the Dragon soon! _To a Dog's Memory_ THE gusty morns are here, When all the reeds ride low with level spear; And on such nights as lured us far of yore, Down rocky alleys yet, and through the pine, The Hound-star and the pagan Hunter shine: But I and thou, ah, field-fellow of mine, Together roam no more. Soft showers go laden now With odours of the sappy orchard-bough, And brooks begin to brawl along the march; Steams the late frost from hollow sedges high; The finch is come, the flame-blue dragonfly, The marsh-born marigold that children spy, The plume upon the larch. There is a music fills The oaks of Belmont and the Wayland hills Southward to Dewing's little bubbly stream,-- The heavenly weather's call! Oh, who alive Hastes not to start, delays not to arrive, Having free feet that never felt a gyve Weigh, even in a dream? But thou, instead, hast found The sunless April uplands underground, And still, wherever thou art, I must be. My beautiful! arise in might and mirth, (For we were tameless travellers from our birth); Arise against thy narrow door of earth, And keep the watch for me. _Memorial Day_ O DAY of roses and regret, Kissing the old graves of our own! Not to the slain love's lovely debt Alone. But jealous hearts that live and ache, Remember; and while drums are mute, Beneath your banners' bright outbreak, Salute: And say for us to lessening ranks That keep the memory and the pride, On whose thinned hair our tears and thanks Abide, Who from their saved Republic pass, Glad with the Prince of Peace to dwell: _Hail, dearest few! and soon, alas, Farewell_. _Romans in Dorset_ _A.D. MDCCCXCV_ A STUPOR on the heath, And wrath along the sky; Space everywhere; beneath A flat and treeless wold for us, and 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 as any sun Through vistas hollow grey, Aloft, and one by one, In brazen casques the Emperors loomed large, and sank away. In ovals of wan light Each warrior eye and mouth: A pageant brutal bright 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, Like yellow stonecrop comely grown around a 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 sin of Cæsar's ruined line engulfed us, innocent. The vision great and dread Corroded; sole in view Was empty Egdon spread, Her crimson summer weeds ashake 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. _Horologion_ THE frost may form apace, The roses pine away: Nomæa! if I see thy face, Then is the summer day. A word of thine, a breath, And lo! my joy shall seem To peer far down where life and death Stir like a forded stream; Or else shall misery sound And travel in that hour All utmost things in their shut round, As a bee feels his flower. Thought lags and cries Alas, Love ranges quick and free. Oh, figured clock and sanded glass, They mark no term for me. And since I can but rue The calendar gone wrong, And dials never telling true If dreams be short or long, Dear, from these arts that fail To thee I will repair. Till the last eve dance down the gale With no star in her hair, Be thou my solar chime, Be thou my wheel of night, Be thy bright heart, not ashen Time, My measure, law, and light. _His Angel to his Mother_ WHAT would you do for your fairest one, Wild as the wind and free as the sun, Born a fugitive, sure to slip Soon from secular ownership? Men in search of the heart's desire, Wearily trampling flood and fire, Rove betimes into some abyss Darker far than eternity's. (Ah, the hazard! it awes one so!) _And shall it be thus with the boy, or no? Sweet, if you love him, let him go._ Happy the Frontier to have gained Undetaining and undetained, Quick and clean, like a solar ray Shot through spindrift across the bay! Men would follow a long vain quest, Feed on ashes and forfeit rest, Bleed with battle and flag with toil, Only to stifle in desert soil. (Ah, the failure! it stings one so!) _And shall it be thus with the boy, or no? Sweet, if you love him, let him go._ Vats fill up, and the sheaves are in: Never a blessing is left to win Save for the myrtle coronal Round the urn at the end of all. Men will clutch, as they clutched of old, Souring honey or dimming gold, Not the treasure-trove of the land Here shut fast in a roseleaf hand. (Ah, the folly! it irks one so!) _And shall it be thus with the boy, or no? Sweet, if you love him, let him go._ _Autumn Magic_ SOON as divine September, flushing from sea to sea, Peers from the whole wide upland into eternity, Soft as an exhalation, ghosts of the thistle start: Never a poet saw them but ached in his baffled heart. Gossamer armies rising thicker than snowflakes fall, Waken in blood and marrow, aware of the unheard call. Oh, what a nameless urging through avenues laid in air, Hints of escape, unbodied, intricate, everywhere, Sense of a feared denial, or access hard to be won; Gleams of a dubious gesture for guesses to feed upon! Flame goes flying in heaven, the down on the cool hillside: Earth is a bride-veil glory to show and conceal the Bride. _Five Carols for Christmastide_ I THE OX he openeth wide the Doore, And from the Snowe he calls her inne, And he hath seen her Smile therefor, Our Ladye without Sinne. Now soone from Sleep A Starre shall leap, And soone arrive both King and Hinde: _Amen, Amen_: But O, the Place co'd I but finde! The Ox hath hush'd his voyce and bent Trewe eyes of Pitty ore the Mow, And on his lovelie Neck, forspent, The Blessed layes her Browe. Around her feet Full Warme and Sweete His bowerie Breath doth meeklie dwell: _Amen, Amen_: But sore am I with Vaine Travèl! The Ox is host in Judah stall And Host of more than onelie one, For close she gathereth withal Our Lorde her littel Sonne. Glad Hinde and King Their Gyfte may bring, But wo'd to-night my Teares were there, _Amen, Amen_: Between her Bosom and His hayre! II VINES branching stilly Shade the open door, In the house of Zion's Lily, Cleanly and poor. Oh, brighter than wild laurel The Babe bounds in her hand, The King, who for apparel Hath but a swaddling-band, And sees her heavenlier smiling than stars in His command! Soon, mystic changes Part Him from her breast, Yet there awhile He ranges Gardens of rest: Yea, she the first to ponder Our ransom and recall, Awhile may rock Him under Her young curls' fall, Against that only sinless love-loyal heart of all. What shall inure Him Unto the deadly dream, When the Tetrarch shall abjure Him, The thief blaspheme, And scribe and soldier jostle About the shameful tree, And even an Apostle Demand to touch and see?-- But she hath kissed her Flower where the Wounds are to be. III THREE without slumber ride from afar, Fain of the roads where palaces are; All by a shed as they ride in a row, "Here!" is the cry of their vanishing Star. First doth a greybeard, glittering fine, Look on Messiah in slant moonshine: "_This have I bought for Thee!_" Vainly: for lo, Shut like a fern is the young hand divine. Next doth a magian, mantled and tall, Bow to the Ruler that reigns from a stall: "_This have I sought for Thee!_" Though it be rare, Loath little fingers are letting it fall. Last doth a stripling, bare in his pride, Kneel by the Lover as if to abide: "_This have I wrought for Thee!_" Answer him there Laugh of a Child, and His arms opened wide. IV WAS a Soule from farre away Stood wistful in the Hay, And of the Babe a-sleeping hadde a sight: Neither reck'd hee any more Men behind him and before, Nor a thousand busie Winges, flitting light: But in middle of the night This few-worded wight (_Yule! Yule!_) Bespake Our Ladye bright: "Fill mee, ere my corage faints, With the lore of all the Saints: Harte to harte against my Brother let mee be. By the Fountaines that are His I wo'd slumber where Hee is: Prithee, Mother, give the other Brest to mee!" The Soule that none co'd see She hath taken on her knee: (_Yule! Yule!_) Sing prayse to Our Ladye. V _The Ox and the Ass, Tell aloud of them: Sing their pleasure as it was In Bethlehem._ STILL as blowing rose, sudden as a sword, Maidenly the Maiden bare Jesu Christ the Lord; Yet for very lowlihood, such a Guest to greet, Goeth in a little swoon while kissing of His feet. Mary, drifted snow on the earthen floor, Joseph, fallen wondrous weak now he would adore,-- (Oh, the surging might of love! Oh, the drowning bliss!) Both are rapt to Heaven and lose their human Heaven that is. From the Newly Born trails a lonely cry. With a mind to heed, the Ox turns a glowing eye; In the empty byre the Ass thinks her heart to blame: Up for comforting of God the beasts of burden came, Softly to inquire, thrusting as for cheer There between the tender hands, furry faces dear. Blessing on the honest coats! tawny coat and grey Friended Our Delight so well when warmth had strayed away. Crooks are on the sill; sceptres sail the wave; All the hopes of all the years are thronging to the Cave. Mother slept not long, nor long Father's sense was dim, But another twain the while stood parent-wise to Him. _The Ox and the Ass, Be you glad for them Such a moment came to pass In Bethlehem!_ _On Leaving Winchester_ WINTON, my window with a mossy marge, My lofty oriel, whence the soul hath sight Of passionate yesterdays, all gold and large, Arisen 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 waters leap, And nigh thy towers the nesting ring-doves 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. _Cobwebs_ WHO would not praise thee, miracle of Frost? Some gesture overnight, some breath benign, And lo! the tree's a fountain all a-shine, The hedge a throne of unimagined cost; In wheel and fan along a wall embossed, The spider's humble handiwork shows fine With jewels girdling every airy line: Though the small mason in the cold be lost. Web after web, a morning snare of bliss Starring with beauty the whole neighbourhood, May well beget an envy clean and good. When man goes too into the earth-abyss, And God in His altered garden walks, I would My secret woof might gleam so fair as this. _Astræa_ SINCE I avail no more, O men! with you, I will go back unto the gods content; For they recall me, long with earth inblent, Lest lack of faith divinity undo. I served you truly while I dreamed you true, And golden pains with sovereign pleasure spent: But now, farewell! I take my sad ascent, With failure over all I nursed and knew. Are ye unwise, who would not let me love you? Or must too bold desires be quieted? Only to ease you, never to reprove you, I will go back to heaven with heart unfed: Yet sisterly I turn, I bend above you, To kiss (ah, with what sorrow!) all my dead. _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. * * * * * At eve, o'erlooking The smooth chilly tide, With age-hidden meaning The Yew-tree sighed, By the square grey tower, In the short grey grass, As I came homeward At merry Christmas. _Ten Colloquies_ I. THE SEARCH "WHY dost thou hide from these Out along the hills halloaing? Why hast forbade Thy face, O goddess! to thy votaries?" "_Unasking and unknowing Is he whom I make glad, Like Dian grandly going To the sleeping shepherd-lad. Men that pursue learn not To follow is my lot._" "Happiness, secret one, Heartbeat of the April weather, Where art thou found? Tell; lest I err too, yonder in the sun." "_Call in thine eye from ether, Thy feet from far ground; Seek Honour in this heather, With austere purples wound. Serve her: she will reveal Me, hound-like at thy heel._" II. FACT AND THE MYSTIC "GOOD-MORROW, Symbol."--"_Call me not The name I neither love nor merit._" --"That grave eternal name inherit, Thine ever, though all men forgot." "_Mistake me not; secure and free From rock to rock my falchion passes: But Symbols trail through grey morasses The tattered shows of faëry._" "My Symbol thou, of phantom blood, With starlight from thy temples raying; Along thy floated body playing Are withering wings, and wings in bud." "_Alas, thine eye with clay is sealed._" --"Symbol, before the clay's denial, While yet I had a god's espial, I saw thee in a solar field!" "_Nay: I am Fact._"--"Then lose thy praise; And lest to-day no song behoove thee, Lest mine impeach thee, or reprove thee, Ah, Symbol, Symbol! go thy ways." III. THE POET'S CHART "WHERE shall I find my light?" "_Turn from another's track: Whether for gain or lack, Love but thy natal right. Cease to follow withal, Though on thine up-led feet Flakes of the phosphor fall. Oracles overheard Are never again for thee, Nor at a magian's knee Under the hemlock tree, Burns the illumining word._" "Whence shall I take my law?" "_Neither from sires nor sons, Nor the delivered ones, Holy, invoked with awe. Rather, dredge the divine Out of thine own poor dust, Feebly to speak and shine. Schools shall be as they are: Be thou truer, and stray Alone, intent, and away, In a savage wild to obey Some dim primordial star._" IV. OF THE GOLDEN AGE "RECALL for me, recall The time more true and ample; The world whereon I trample, How tortuous and small! Behold, I tire of all. "Once, gods in jewelled mail Through greenwood ways invited; There how the moon is blighted, And mosses long and pale On lifeless cedars trail." "_Child, keep this good unrest: But give to thine own story Simplicity with glory; To greatness dispossessed, Dominion of thy breast._ "_In abstinence, in pride, Thou, who from Folly's boldest Thy sacred eye withholdest, Another morn shalt ride At Agamemnon's side._" V. ON TIME'S THRESHOLD "_See: brood: remember: this thy function only; Neither to have nor do is meet for thee._" "Ah, earth's a palace where I must go lonely!" "_Nay: earth's a dungeon which thou passest, free._" VI. WOOD-PIGEONS "I CANNOT soar beside, but must for ever suffer Blue air athrill with thee to lap against my breast, And dream it is thy wing." --"_Dear, sighs about thee hover: Among the dewy leaves my longing is thy guest. Yet, lone and far apart, shall we no joy discover To travel the same sky, and by one sea to rest? Say, mate in all this world?_" --"Ah, mute forbidden lover, Ah, song I shall not hear!" --"_Ah, sweet unbuilded nest!_" VII. PREDICAMENTS "IF the gods ruin send?"-- "_Make that thy bride and friend._" "If the gods cheat?"--"_They say The one true word alway._" "If for some loss I pine?" "--_The past is theirs, yet thine._" "If I sue not?"--"_Vain cares! The morrow's thine, not theirs._" VIII. THE CO-ETERNAL "_Is it thou, silly heart, Not prone on thy pallet, but grieving apart?_" --"Natal Star, even so." "_I miss thee to-night, while thou smoulderest low._" --"Live in beauty! but I For bloodshed of spirit, here dwindle and die." "_Are we two not the same, By law everlasting one mystical flame? Aloft if I burn, Every ray of my light be thy stair of return: Up, up! to our lot Where warfare and time and the body are not._" IX. STERN APHRODITE "IOLE is coy with me, Goddess! for a month I suffer Knowing not how far I be: Teach me softer arts, or rougher, Well to sail that sea." "_Fie: how long could Love divine Venturing, abstain from answer, Nor look landward for a sign! Niggard, take of thine entrancer Shipwreck in the brine._" X. THE JUBILEE "_Master of your wounded heart, regent of your pleasure! We that long defied your art, tamèd Moods at leisure, All with you, nor now apart, would tread out our measure._" "Welcome, equal powers benign, quit of ancient madness! Dance with me beneath the vine, not ungentle Sadness; Link your little hand in mine soberly, my Gladness." _Winter Boughs_ HOW tender and how slow, in sunset cheer, Far on the hill, our quiet treetops fade! A broidery of ebon seaweed, laid Long in a book, were scarce more fine and clear. Frost and sad light and windless atmosphere Have breathed on them, and of their frailties made Beauty more sweet than summer's builded shade, Whose green domes fallen, leave this wonder here. O ye forgetting and outliving boughs, With not a plume, gay in the joust before, Left for the Archer! so, in evening's eye, So stilled, so lifted, let your lover die, Set in the upper calm no voices rouse, Stript, meek, withdrawn, against the heavenly door. _W.H._ _A.D. MDCCLXXVIII-MDCCCXXX_ 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! Falleth no thing that was to thee eternal. Sleep safe in dark Soho: the stars are shining, Titian and Wordsworth live; the People marches. _The Vigil-at-Arms_ KEEP holy watch with silence, prayer, and fasting Till morning break, and every bugle play; Unto the One aware from everlasting Dear are the winners: thou art more than they. Forth from this peace on manhood's way thou goest, Flushed with resolve, and radiant in mail; Blessing supreme for men unborn thou sowest, O knight elect! O soul ordained to fail! _A Friend's Song for Simoisius_ THE breath of dew and twilight's grace Be on the lonely battle-place, And to so young, so kind a face, The long protecting grasses cling! (Alas, alas, That one inexorable thing!) In rocky hollows cool and deep, The honey-bees unrifled sleep; The early moon from Ida steep Comes to the empty wrestling-ring; Upon the widowed wind recede No echoes of the shepherd's reed; And children without laughter lead The war-horse to the watering; With footstep separate and slow The father and the mother go, Not now upon an urn they know To mingle tears for comforting. Thou stranger Ajax Telamon! What to the lovely hast thou done, That nevermore a maid may run With him across the flowery Spring? The world to me has nothing dear Beyond the namesake river here: Oh, Simois is wild and clear! And to his brink my heart I bring; My heart, if only this might be, Would stay his waters from the sea, To cover Troy, to cover me, To haste the hour of perishing. (Alas, alas, That one inexorable thing!) _To an Ideal_ THAT I have tracked you from afar, my crown I call it and my height: All hail, O dear and difficult star! All hail, O heart of light! No pleasure born of time for me, Who in you touch eternity. If I have found you where you are, I win my mortal fight. You flee the plain: I therefore choose summit and solitude for mine, The high air where I cannot lose our comradeship divine. More lovely here, to wakened blood, Sparse leaf and hesitating bud, Than rosaries in the dewy vales for which the dryads pine. Spirit austere! lend aid: I walk along inclement ridges too, Disowning toys of sense, to baulk my soul of ends untrue. Because man's cry, by night and day, Cried not for God, I broke away. On, at your ruthless pace! I'll stalk, a hilltop ghost, with you. _In a Ruin, after a Thunder Storm_ 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. _Beati Mortui_ BLESSED the Dead in Spirit, our brave dead Not passed, but perfected: Who tower up to mystical full bloom From self, as from a known alchemic tomb; Who out of wrong Run forth with laughter and a broken thong; Who win from pain their strange and flawless grant Of peace anticipant; Who cerements lately wore of sin, but now, Unbound from foot to brow, Gleam in and out of cities, beautiful As sun-born colours of a forest pool Where Autumn sees The splash of walnuts from her thinning trees. Though wondered-at of some, yea, feared almost As any chantry ghost, How sight of these, in hermitage or mart, Makes glad a wistful heart! For life's apologetics read most true In spirits risen anew, Like larks in air To whom flat earth is all a heavenward stair, And who from yonder parapet Scorn every mortal fret, And rain their sweet bewildering staves Upon our furrow of fresh-delvèd graves. If thus to have trod and left the wormy way Makes men so wondrous gay, So stripped and free and potently alive, Who would not his infirmity survive, And bathe in victory, and come to be As blithe as ye, Saints of the ended wars? Ah, greeting give; Turn not away, too fugitive: But hastening towards us, hallow the foul street, And sit with us at meat, And of your courtesy, on us unwise Fix oft those purer eyes, Till in ourselves who love them dwell The same sure light ineffable: Till they who walk with us in after years Forgetting time and tears (As we with you), shall sing all day instead: "How blessed are the Dead!" _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-sodden earth, the earth-coloured streams, They breathe on me awake, and moan to me in dreams, And yonder ivy fondling the broke castle-wall, 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 hedgerow to 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; The rocks 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 tender 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. _The Japanese Anemone_ ALL summer the breath of the roses around Exhales with a delicate passionate sound; And when from a trellis, in holiday places, They croon and cajole, with their slumberous faces, A lad in the lane must slacken his paces. Fragrance of these is a voice from a bower: But low by the wall is my odourless flower, So pure, so controlled, not a fume is above her, That poet or bee should delay there and hover; For she is a silence, and therefore I love her. And never a mortal by morn or midnight Is called to her hid little house of delight; And she keeps from the wind, on his pillages olden, Upon a true stalk in rough weather upholden, Her winter-white gourd with the hollow moon-golden. While ardours of roses contend and increase, Methinks she has found how noble is peace, Like a spirit besought from the world to dissever, Not absent to men, though resumed by the Giver, And dead long ago, being lovely for ever. _Orisons_ ORANGE and olive and glossed bay-tree, And air of the evening out at sea, And out at sea on the steep warm stone, A little bare diver poising alone. Flushed from the cool of Sicilian waves, Flushed as the coral in clean sea-caves, "I am!" he cries to his glorying heart, And unto he knows not what: "THOU art!" He leaps, he shines, he sinks and is gone: He will climb to the golden ledge anon. Perfecter rite can none employ, When the god of the isle is good to a boy. _The Inner Fate: a Chorus_ NOT weak with eld The stars beheld Proud Persia coming to her doom; Not battle-broke, nor tempest-tossed, The long luxurious galleys lost Their souls at Actium. Not outer arts Of hostile hearts Seduced the arm of France to be The wreckage of his wars at last, The orphan of the kingdoms, cast Upon the mothering sea. Man evermore doth work his will, And evermore the gods are still, Applauding him alone who stands Too just for Heaven-accusing groans, But in his house of havoc owns The doing of his hands: Transgressor, yet divinely taught To suffer all, blaspheming naught, When fair-begun must foul conclude: Himself progenitor of death Who breeds, within, the only breath Can kill beatitude. _The Acknowledgment_ SINCE first I knew it our divine employ To beat beyond the reach of soiling care, As at Philippi, well of doom aware, The Prætor called and heard the singing-boy; Since first my soul so jealous was of joy, That any facile linden-bloom in air, Or fall of water on a wildwood stair, Annulled for her all dragging dull annoy; Though word of thanks I lacked, though, dumb, I smiled Long, long, at such august amends up-piled, Let this the debt redeem: that when Ye drop Death's aloe-leaf within my honeyed cup, On thoughtful knee your much-beholden child, Immortals! unto You will drink it up. _By the Trundle-bed_ LOST love, be never beyond Love's calling! For this I claim of you, strong heart, sweet As fontal water in Arden falling, As first-mown hay in the April heat: To tend from heaven, to rear, to harden, And bring to bloom in the outer cold, Our daffodil bud of a walled-in garden, Our son that is like you, and six years old; And lest his worth be the worth unreal, To ward him not from the mortal blast, But suffer your own, through a long ordeal, Verily like you to be at the last, And hear men murmur, if so he merit In your old place with your look to arise: "The sign of a saved soul who can inherit?-- You have earned, O King! those beautiful eyes." _Arboricide_ A WORD of grief to me erewhile: _We have cut the oak down, in our isle._ And I said: "Ye have bereaven The song-thrush and the bee, And the fisher-boy at sea Of his sea-mark in the even; And gourds of cooling shade, to lie Within the sickle's sound; And the old sheep-dog's loyal eye Of sleep on duty's ground; And poets of their tent And quiet tenement. Ah, impious! who so paid Such fatherhood, and made Of murmurous immortality a cargo and a trade." For the hewn oak a century fair, A wound in earth, an ache in air. And I said: "No pillared height With a summer daïs over, Where a dryad fled her lover Through the long arcade of light; Nor 'neath Arcturus rolleth more, Since the loud leaves are gone, Between the shorn cliff and the shore, Pan's organ antiphon. Some nameless envy fed This blow at grandeur's head: Some breathed reproach, o'erdue, Degenerate men, ye drew! Hence, for his too plain heavenliness, our Socrates ye slew." _The Cherry Bough_ IN a new poet's and a new friend's honour, Forth from the scornèd town and her gold-getting, Come men with lutes and bowls, and find a welcome Here in my garden, Find bowers and deep shade and windy grasses, And by the south wall, wet and forward-jutting, One early branch fire-tipped with Roman cherries. Oh, naught is absent, Oh, naught but you, kind head that far in prison Sunk on a weary arm, feels no god's pity Stroking and sighing where the kingly laurels Were once so plenty; Nor dreams, from revel and strange faces turning, How on the strength of my fair tree that knew you I lean to-day, when most my heart is laden With your rich verses! Since, long ago, in other gentler weather, Ere wrath and exile were, you lay beneath it (Your symbol then, your innocent wild brother Glad with your gladness), What has befallen in the world of wonder, That still it puts forth bubbles of sweet colour, And you, and you that fed our eyes with beauty, Are sapped and rotten? Alas! When my young guests have done with singing, I break it, leaf and fruit, my garden's glory, And hold it high among them, and say after: "O my poor Ovid, "Years pass, and loves pass too; and yet remember For the clear time when we were boys together, These tears at home are shed; and with you also Your bough is dying." _The Wild Ride_ I HEAR in my heart, I hear in its ominous pulses All day, on the road, the hoofs of invisible horses, All night, from their stalls, the importunate pawing and neighing. Let cowards and laggards fall back! but alert to the saddle Weather-worn and abreast, go men of our galloping legion, With a stirrup-cup each to the lily of women that loves him. The trail is through dolour and dread, over crags and morasses; There are shapes by the way, there are things that appal or entice us: What odds? We are Knights of the Grail, we are vowed to the riding. Thought's self is a vanishing wing, and joy is a cobweb, And friendship a flower in the dust, and glory a sunbeam: Not here is our prize, nor, alas! after these our pursuing. A dipping of plumes, a tear, a shake of the bridle, A passing salute to this world and her pitiful beauty: We hurry with never a word in the track of our fathers. (I hear in my heart, I hear in its ominous pulses All day, on the road, the hoofs of invisible horses, All night, from their stalls, the importunate pawing and neighing.) We spur to a land of no name, out-racing the storm-wind; We leap to the infinite dark like sparks from the anvil. Thou leadest, O God! All's well with Thy troopers that follow. _Bedesfolk_ WHO is good enough to be Near the never-stainèd sea? Ah, not I, Who thereby Only sigh: _Pray for me._ Standing underneath some free Innocent magnanimous tree, To be true, There anew Must I sue: _Pray for me._ Ere I pass on hilly lea Fellow-lives of glad degree, Without shame, Name by name These I claim: _Pray for me._ Fail not, then, thou kingly sea! Aid the needy, sister tree! March herds, Ye have words! April birds, _Pray for me_! _In a City 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 To rest an urban eye; The bells, the dripping gable, the tavern's corner glare; The cab in firefly darting; the barrel-organ air, While one by one, or two by two The hatless babes are waltzing through The gutters of the Square. Not on Thessalian 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 this place As in a minster choir. O names of awe and rapture! O deeds 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. _Florentin_ _A.D. MDCCCXC_ HEART all full of heavenward haste, too like the bubble bright On wild little waters floating half of an April night, Fled from the ear in music, fled from the eye in light, Dear and stainless heart of a boy! No sweeter thing can be Drawn to the quiet centre of God who is our sea: Whither, through troubled valleys, we also follow thee. _A Song of the Lilac_ ABOVE the wall that's broken, And from the coppice thinned, So sacred and so sweet The lilac in the wind! For when by night the May wind blows The lilac-blooms apart, The memory of his first love Is shaken on his heart. In tears it long was buried, And trances wrapt it round; Oh, how they wake it now, The fragrance and the sound! For when by night the May wind blows The lilac-blooms apart, The memory of his first love Is shaken on his heart. _Monochrome_ SHUT fast again in Beauty's sheath Where ancient forms renew, The round world seems above, beneath, One wash of faintest blue, And air and tide so stilly sweet In nameless union lie, The little far-off fishing fleet Goes drifting up the sky. Secure of neither misted coast Nor ocean undefined, Our flagging sail is like the ghost Of one that served mankind, Who in the void, as we upon This melancholy sea, Finds labour and allegiance done, And Self begin to be. _Saint Francis Endeth his Sermon_ "AND now, my clerks who go in fur or feather Or brighter scales, I bless you all. Be true To your true Lover and Avenger, whether By land or sea ye die the death undue. Then proffer man your pardon; and together Track him to Heaven, and see his heart made new. "From long ago one hope hath in me thriven, Your hope, mysterious as the scented May: Not to Himself your titles God hath given In vain, nor only for our mortal day. O doves! how from The Dove shall ye be driven? O darling lambs! ye with The Lamb shall play." _An Estray_ WELL we know, not ever here is a footing for thy dream: Thou art sick for horse and spear beside an Asian stream, For the hearth-smoke in the wild, for the goatherd's stave, For a beauty far exiled, a belief within its grave. While another sky and ground orb thy strange remembering, And no world of mortal bound is the master of thy wing, Canst thou yet thy fate forgive, that the godhead in thy breast Has this life at least to live as a force in rhythmic rest, As a seed that bides the hour of obscureness and decay, Being troth of flower to flower down the long dynastic day? Child whom elder airs enfold, who hast greatness to maintain Where heroic hap of old may return and shine again, As too oft across thy heart flits the too familiar light, How alarms of love upstart at the token quick and slight! Lest captivity be o'er, lest thou glide away, and so From our tents of Nevermore strike the trail of Long Ago. _Friendship Broken_ I WE chose the faint chill morning, friend and friend, Pacing the twilight out beneath an oak, Soul calling soul to judgment; and we spoke Strange things and deep as any poet penned, Such truth as never truth again can mend, Whatever art we use, what gods invoke; It was not wrath, it made nor strife nor smoke: Be what it may, it had a solemn end. Farewell, in peace. We of the selfsame throne Are foeman vassals; pale astrologers, Each a wise skeptic of the other's star. Silently, as we went our ways alone, The steadfast sun, whom no poor prayer deters, Drew high between us his majestic bar. II MINE was the mood that shows the dearest face Through a long avenue, and voices kind Idle, and indeterminate, and blind As rumours from a very distant place; Yet, even so, it gathered the first chase Of the first swallows where the lane's inclined, An ebb of wavy wings to serve my mind For round Spring's vision. Ah, some equal grace (The calm sense of seen beauty without sight) Befell thee, honourable heart! no less In patient stupor walking from the dawn; Albeit thou too wert loser of life's light, Like fallen Adam in the wilderness, Aware of naught but of the thing withdrawn. _A Talisman_ TAKE Temperance to thy breast, While yet is the hour of choosing, As arbitress exquisite Of all that shall thee betide; For better than fortune's best Is mastery in the using, And sweeter than any thing sweet The art to lay it aside! _Heathenesse_ NO round boy-satyr, racing from the mere, Shakes on the mountain lawn his dripping head This many a May, your sister being dead, Ye Christian folk! your sister great and dear. To breathe her name, to think how sad-sincere Was all her searching, straying, dreaming, dread, How of her natural night was Plato bred (A star to keep the ways of honour clear), Who will not sigh for her? who can forget Not only unto campèd Israel, Nor martyr-maids that as a bridegroom met The Roman lion's roar, salvation fell? To Him be most of praise that He is yet Your God through gods not inaccessible. _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. Oh, hush thee, Oh, hush thee! heart innocent and dear. Again the foamy shallows fill, The quiet clouds amass, And soft as bees by Catherine Hill At dawn the anglers pass, And follow the hollow, In boughs to disappear. Oh, hush thee, Oh, hush thee! heart innocent and dear. Nay, rise not now, nor with them take One amber-freckled fool! Thy sons to-day bring each an ache For ancient arts to cool. But, father, lie rather Unhurt and idle near; Oh, hush thee, Oh, 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: Oh, hush thee, Oh, hush thee! heart innocent and dear. _Fifteen Epitaphs_ I I LAID the strewings, darling, on thine urn; I lowered the torch, I poured the cup to Dis. Now hushaby, my little child, and learn Long sleep how good it is. In vain thy mother prays, wayfaring hence, Peace to her heart, where only heartaches dwell; But thou more blest, O mild intelligence! Forget her, and Farewell. II GENTLE Grecian passing by, Father of thy peace am I: Wouldst thou now, in memory, Give a soldier's flower to me, Choose the standard named of yore Beautiful Worth-dying-for, That shall wither not, but wave All the year above my grave. III LIGHT thou hast of the moon, Shade of the dammar-pine, Here on thy hillside bed; Fair befall thee, O fair Lily of womanhood, Patient long, and at last Here on thy hillside bed, Happier: ah, Blæsilla! IV ME, deep-tressèd meadows, take to your loyal keeping, Hard by the swish of sickles ever in Aulon sleeping, Philophron, old and tired, and glad to be done with reaping! V UPON thy level tomb, till windy winter morn, The fallen leaves delay; But plain and pure their trace is, when themselves are torn From delicate frost away. As here to transient frost the absent leaf is, such Thou wert and art to me: So on my passing life is thy long-passèd touch, O dear Alcithoë! VI HAIL, and be of comfort, thou pious Xeno, Late the urn of many a kinsman wreathing; On thine own shall even the stranger offer Plentiful myrtle. VII HERE lies one in the earth who scarce of the earth was moulded, Wise Æthalides' son, himself no lover of study, Cnopus, asleep, indoors: the young invincible runner. They from the cliff footpath that see on the grave we made him, Tameless, slant in the wind, the bare and beautiful iris, Stop short, full of delight, and cry out: "See, it is Cnopus Runs, with white throat forward, over the sands to Chalcis!" VIII ERE the Ferryman from the coast of spirits Turn the diligent oar that brought thee thither, Soul, remember: and leave a kiss upon it For thy desolate father, for thy sister, Whichsoever be first to cross hereafter. IX JAFFA ended, Cos begun Thee, Aristeus. Thou wert one Fit to trample out the sun: Who shall think thine ardours are But a cinder in a jar? X TWO white heads the grasses cover: Dorcas, and her lifelong lover. While they graced their country closes Simply as the brooks and roses, Where was lot so poor, so trodden, But they cheered it of a sudden? Fifty years at home together, Hand in hand, they went elsewhither, Then first leaving hearts behind Comfortless. Be thou as kind. XI AS wind that wasteth the unmarried rose, And mars the golden breakers in the bay, Hurtful and sweet from heaven for ever blows Sad thought that roughens all our quiet day; And elder poets envy, while they weep, Ion, whom first the gods to covert brought, Here under inland olives laid asleep, Most wise, most happy, having done with thought. XII COWS in the narrowing August marshes, Cows in a stretch of water Motionless, Neck on neck overlapped and drooping; These in their troubled and dumb communion, Thou on the steep bank yonder, Pastora! No more ever to lead and love them, No more ever. Thine innocent mourners Pass thy tree in the evening Heavily, Hearing another herd-girl calling. XIII GO you by with gentle tread. This was Paula, who is dead: Dear grey eyes that had a look Like some rock-o'ershadowed brook, Voice upon the ear to cling Sweeter than the cithern string. With that spirit shy and fair Quietly and unaware Climbing past the starry van Went, for triple talisman, They to whom the heavens must ope: Candour, Chastity, and Hope. XIV TAKE from an urn my vow and salutation Unto the land I never now shall see: Laid here exiled, my heart in desolation Frets like a child against her breast to be. Far from the sky, a rose that opes at even (One liquid star for dewdrop on the rose), Far from the shower that nesting low in heaven Thrice in an hour light-wingèd comes and goes, Far from my lost and blessèd and belovèd Nightfall of June beside the Rhodian wave, Mine is the pain another isle to covet, Though all in vain, for gardener of my grave. XV PRAISE thou the Mighty Mother for what is wrought, not me, A nameless nothing-caring head asleep against her knee. _Deo Optimo Maximo_ ALL else for use, One only for desire; Thanksgiving for the good, but thirst for Thee: Up from the best, whereof no man need tire, Impel Thou me. Delight is menace if Thou brood not by, Power a quicksand, Fame a gathering jeer. Oft as the morn (though none of earth deny These three are dear), Wash me of them, that I may be renewed, And wander free amid my freeborn joys: Oh, close my hand upon Beatitude! Not on her toys. _Charista Musing_ MOVELESS, on the marge of a sunny cornfield, Rapt in sudden revery while thou standest, Like the sheaves, in beautiful Doric yellow Clad to the ankle, Oft to thee with delicate hasty footstep So I steal, and suffer because I find thee Inly flown, and only a fallen feather Left of my darling. Give me back thy wakening breath, thy ringlets Fragrant as the vine of the bean in blossom, And those eyes of violet dusk and daylight Under sea-water, Eyes too far away, and too full of longing! Yes: and go not heavenward where I lose thee, Go not, go not whither I cannot follow, Being but earthly. Willing swallow poisèd upon my finger, Little wild-wing ever from me escaping, For the care thou art to me, I thy lover Love thee, and fear thee. _The Still of the Year_ UP from the willow-root Subduing agonies leap; The field-mouse and the purple moth Turn over amid their sleep; The icicled rocks aloft Burn amber and blue alway, And trickling and tinkling The snows of the drift decay. Oh, mine is the head must hang And share the immortal pang! Winter or spring is fair; Thaw's hard to bear. Heigho! my heart's sick. Sweet is cherry-time, sweet A shower, a bobolink, And trillium, fain far under Her cloistering leaf to shrink; But here in the vast, unborn, Is the bitterest place to be, Till striving and longing Shall quicken the earth and me. What change inscrutable Is nigh us, we know not well; Gone is the strength to sigh Either to live or die. Heigho! my heart's sick. _A Footnote 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 all must envy and adore: _I could not love thee, dear, so much, Loved I not Honour more._ No critic born since Charles was King But sighed in smiling, as he read: "Here's theft supreme of everything 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? Oh, 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 Lived, 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. _T.W.P._ _A.D. MDCCCXIX-MDCCCXCII_ FRIEND who hast gone, and dost enrich to-day New England brightly building far away, And crown her liberal walk With company more choice, and sweeter talk, Look not on Fame, but Peace; and in a bower Receive at last her fulness and her power: Nor wholly, pure of heart! Forget thy few, who would be where thou art. _Summum Bonum_ WAITING on Him who knows us and our need, Most need have we to dare not, nor desire, But as He giveth, softly to suspire Against His gift with no inglorious greed, For this is joy, though still our joys recede; And, as in octaves of a noble lyre, To move our minds with His, and clearer, higher, Sound forth our fate: for this is strength indeed. Thanks to His love let earth and man dispense In smoke of worship when the heart is stillest, A praying more than prayer: "Great good have I, Till it be greater good to lay it by; Nor can I lose peace, power, permanence, For these smile on me from the thing Thou willest!" _When on the Marge of Evening_ WHEN on the marge of evening the last blue light is broken, And winds of dreamy odour are loosened from afar, Or when my lattice opens, before the lark hath spoken, On dim laburnum-blossoms, and morning's dying star, I think of thee (O mine the more if other eyes be sleeping!), Whose greater noonday splendours the many share and see, While sacred and for ever, some perfect law is keeping The late, the early twilight, alone and sweet for me. _Hylas_ (THERE'S a thrush on the under bough Fluting evermore and now: "_Keep--young!_" but who knows how?) Jar in arm, they bade him rove Through the alder's long alcove, Where the hid spring musically Gushes to the ample valley. Down the woodland corridor, Odours deepened more and more; Blossomed dogwood in the briars Struck her faint delicious fires; Miles of April passed between Crevices of closing green, And the moth, the violet-lover, By the wellside saw him hover. Ah, the slippery sylvan dark! Never after shall he mark (On his drownèd cheek down-sinking), Noisy ploughman drinking, drinking. Quit of serving is that wild Absent and bewitchèd child, Unto action, age, and danger Thrice a thousand years a stranger. Fathoms low, the naiads sing, In a birthday welcoming; Water-white their breasts, and o'er him, Water-grey, their eyes adore him. (There's a thrush on the under bough Fluting evermore and now: "_Keep--young!_" but who knows how?) _Nocturne_ THE sun that hurt his lovers from on high Is fallen; she more merciful is nigh, The blessèd one whose beauty's even glow Gave never wound to any shepherd's eye. Above our lonely boat in shallows drifting, Alone her plaintive form ascends the sky. Oh, sing! the water-golds are deepening now, Almost a hush is on the aspen bough; Her light caresseth thine, as saint to saint Sweet interchanged adorings may allow: Sing, Eunoë, that lily throat uplifting: They are so like, the holy Moon and thou! _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, that verse of strict imperious bent Heard sweetly as from some old harper's tent, And clanging 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, Oh, let me In at the gate! and smile into the eyes That sought you, Surrey, down three hundred years. _Planting the Poplar_ BECAUSE thou'rt not an oak To breast the thunder-stroke, Or flamy-fruited yew Darker than Time, how few Of birds or men or kine Will love this throne of thine, Scant Poplar, without shade Inhospitably made! Yet, branches never parted From their straight secret bole, Yet, sap too single-hearted! Prosper as my soul. In loneliness, in quaint Perpetual constraint, In gallant poverty, A girt and hooded tree, See if against the gale Our leafage can avail: Lithe, equal, naked, true, Rise up as spirits do, And be a spirit crying Before the folk that dream! My slender early-dying Poplar, by the stream. _To One who would not Spare Himself_ A CENSER playing from a heart all fire, A flushing, racing, singing mountain stream Thou art; and dear to us of dull desire In thy far-going dream. Full to the grave be thy too fleeting way, And full thereafter: few that know thee best Will grudge it so, for neither thou nor they Can mate thy soul with rest. God put thee from the laws of Time adrift. Lo, He who moves without delay or haste, Far less may love the sheaves of ghostly thrift, Than some diviner waste. Be mine to ride in joy, ere thou art gone, The flame, the torrent, which is one with thee! Saint, from this pool of dying sweep us on Where Life must long to be. _Winter Peace_ APRIL seemed a restless pain, June a phantom in the rain; Weary Autumn without grain Turned her home, full of tears. O my year, the most in vain Of the years! While the furrowed field was red, While the roses rioted, While a leaf was left to shed, There was storm in the air. Now that troubled heart is dead, All is fair. 'Neath a glow of copper-grey Spreads the stubble far away, And the hilltop cedars play Interludes in accord, And the sun adorns the day Like a sword. Even, usual, and slow, Blue enchanted breakers go Over carmine reefs in snow, With a sail in the lee: There's the godhead that we know On the sea. Ah, let be a promise vast So mysteriously downcast! I will love this year that passed To her grave in the wild, And is clear of stain at last As a child. _Sleep_ O GLORIOUS tide, O hospitable tide On whose mysterious breast my head hath lain, Lest I, all eased of wounds and washed of stain Through holy hours, be yet unsatisfied, Loose me betimes: for in my soul abide Urgings of memory, and exile's pain Weighs on me, as the spirit of one slain May throb for the old strife wherein he died. Often and evermore, across the sea Of dark and dreams, to fatherlands of Day, Oh, speed me: as that outworn King erewhile By kind Phæacians borne ashore, so me, Thy loving healèd ward, fail not to lay Beneath the olive boughs of mine own isle. _Writ in my Lord Clarendon's History of the Rebellion_ HOW life hath cheapen'd, 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 deny'd, Oh, then I ask to be among your Swordes, My joyous gentlemen; Towards Honour's heaven to goe, and towards King Charles his gentlemen! _In a February Garden_ ONE rose till after snowtime O'erlooked the sodden grass; Now crocuses are twenty With spear and torch a plenty, To keep our Candlemas. So thin that winter greyness, So light that sleep forlorn, No seventh week uncloses Between the martyr roses And crocus newly born. All doubt is hushed for ever, Confuted without sound, All ruin featly ended, When bulbs begin their splendid Gay muster overground; And mid the golden heralds That ride the icy breeze, Man, too, divinely vernal, Storms into life eternal Victoriously with these. O Beauty, O Persistence Ineffable and strong! Would we had borne with Sorrow In her unlasting morrow: And Death was not for long. _A Valediction_ _R.L.S.: A.D. MDCCCXCIV_ 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, 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. _A Footpath Morality_ ALONG the Hills, height unto height Tosses the dappled light, Rills in a torrent flow, And cuckoo calls beyond the third hedgerow. Young winds nothing can quell Scale the wild-chestnut citadel, Again to make Its thousand faëry white pagodas shake. Up many a lane The blue vervain A coverlid hath featly spread For the bees' bed, That those tired sylvan thieves May lie most soft on the sweet and scalloped leaves. And by to-morrow morn Bright agrimony, in the thickets born, Will high uphold Each cinquefoil of plain gold; Dogwood in white will hood herself apace, And betony flaunt a varied gypsy mace, And copper pimpernel, true as a clock, On some waste common, by a rock Her small dark-centred wheel draw in Long, long ere dusk begin. This day Of infinite May Is far more fitly yours than ours, O spirit-bodied flowers! What heart disordered sore Comes through the greenwood door, Shall for your sake Find sap and soil and dew, and shall not break; And hearts beneath no ban Will in your sight some penance do for man, Poor lagging man, content to be Sick with the impact of eternity, Who might keep step with you in the low grass, Best part of one strange pageant made in joy to pass! Not ye, not ye, the privilege disown To flourish fair and fall fair, and be strewn Deep in that Will of God, where blend The origin of beauty and the end. _The Light of the House_ BEYOND the cheat of Time, here where you died, you live; You pace the garden walk, secure and sensitive; You linger on the stair: Love's lonely pulses leap! The harpsichord is shaken, the dogs look up from sleep. Here, after all the years, you keep the heirdom still; The youth and joy in you achieve their olden will, Unbidden, undeterred, with waking sense adored; And still the house is happy that hath so dear a lord. To every inmate heart, confirmed in cheer you brought, Your name is as a spell midway of speech and thought, And to a wonted guest (not awestruck heretofore), The sunshine that was you floods all the open door. _An Outdoor Litany_ _Donec misereatur nostri._ THE spur is red upon the briar, The sea-kelp whips the wave ashore; The wind shakes out the coloured fire From lamps a-row on the sycamore; The bluebird with his flitting note Shows to wild heaven his wedding-coat; The mink is busy; herds again Go hillward in the honeyed rain; The midges meet. I cry to Thee Whose heart Remembers each of these: Thou art My God who hast forgotten me! Bright from the mast, a scarf unwound, The lined gulls in the offing ride; Along an edge of marshy ground The shad-bush enters like a bride. Yon little clouds are washed of care That climb the blue New England air, And almost merrily withal The hyla tunes at evenfall His oboe in a mossy tree. So too, Am I not Thine? Arise, undo This fear Thou hast forgotten me. Happy the vernal rout that come To their due offices to-day, And strange, if in Thy mercy's sum, Excluded man alone decay. I ask no triumph, ask no joy, Save leave to live, in law's employ. As to a weed, to me but give Thy sap! lest aye inoperative Here in the Pit my strength shall be: And still Help me endure the Pit, until Thou wilt not have forgotten me. _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, On our sad shore, The carmine grape, the moth's auroral wing. Ah, say how winds in flooding 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. _In a Brecon Valley_ _Patulis ubi vallibus errans Subjacet aëriis montibus Isca pater._ H.V. _Ad Posteros._ I I FOLLOWED thee, wild stream of Paradise, White Usk, for ever 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 breakers 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 Grey hamlets kiss thee, and by herded hills Diviner run thy shallows than of old;-- If intellectual these, Oh! name my 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. _A Song of Far Travel_ MANY a time some drowsy oar from the nearer bank invited, Crossed a narrow stream, and bore in among the reeds moon-lighted, There to leave me on a shore no ferryman hath sighted. Many a time a mountain stile, dark and bright with sudden wetting, Lured my vagrant foot the while 'twixt uplifting and down-setting,-- Whither? Thousand mile on mile, beyond the last forgetting. Long by hidden ways I wend (past occasion grown a ranger); Yet enchantment, like a friend, takes from death the tang of danger: Hardly river or road can end where I need step a stranger. _Spring_ _With a difference._--HAMLET. AGAIN the bloom, the northward flight, The fount freed at its silver height, And down the deep woods to the lowest The fragrant shadows scarred with light. O inescapeable joy of Spring! For thee the world shall leap and sing; But by her darkened door thou goest Henceforward as a spectral thing. _The Colour-Bearer_ THY charge was: "Hold My banner Against our hidden foe; To war where sounds no manner Of glorious music, go!" And like Thy word my answer all joyless: "Be it so." Ah, not to brave Thy censure But win Thy smile of light, My heart of misadventure Will end in the losing fight, And lie out yonder, wattled with wounds from left to right. The day will pass of torment, The evenfall be sweet When I shall wear for garment The nakedness of defeat. But when afield Thou comest, and look'st in vain to meet That eagle of the wartime, That oriflamme, outrolled With strength of staff aforetime, With cleanly and costly fold,-- Ride on, ride on! and seek me with lanthorns through the cold, And take from me (turned donor That night on blood-soaked sand), The stick and rag of Honour There safe in a stiffened hand, Not left, not lost, nor ever a spoil in the victor's land. _Sanctuary_ HIGH above hate I dwell: O storms! farewell. Though at my sill your daggered thunders play Lawless and loud to-morrow as to-day, To me they sound more small Than a young fay's footfall: Soft and far-sunken, forty fathoms low In Long Ago, And winnowed into silence on that wind Which takes wars like a dust, and leaves but love behind. Hither Felicity Doth climb to me, And bank me in with turf and marjoram Such as bees lip, or the new-weanèd lamb; With golden barberry-wreath, And bluets thick beneath; One grosbeak, too, mid apple-buds a guest With bud-red breast, Is singing, singing! All the hells that rage Float less than April fog below our hermitage. _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. _Pascal_ THOU lovedst life, but not to brand it thine (O rich in all forborne felicities!), Nor use it with marauding power, to seize And stain the sweet earth's blue horizon-line. Virgin the grape might in the trellis twine Where thou hadst long ago an hour of ease, And foot of thine across the unpressed leas Went light as some Idæan foot divine. Spirit so abstinent, in thy deeps lay What passion of possession? Day by day Was there no thirst upon thee, sharp and pure, In forward sea-like surges unforgot? Yes: and in life and death those joys endure More blessedly, that men can name them not. _Borderlands_ THROUGH all the evening, All the virginal long evening, Down the blossomed aisle of April it is dread to walk alone; For there the intangible is nigh, the lost is ever-during; And who would suffer again beneath a too divine alluring, Keen as the ancient drift of sleep on dying faces blown? Yet in the valley, At a turn of the orchard alley, When a wild aroma touched me in the moist and moveless air, Like breath indeed from out Thee, or as airy vesture round Thee, Then was it I went faintly, for fear I had nearly found Thee, O Hidden, O Perfect, O Desired! O first and final Fair! _Ode for a Master Mariner Ashore_ THERE in his room, whene'er the moon looks in, To silver now a shell, and now a fin, And o'er his chart glide like an argosy, Quiet and old sits he. Danger! he hath grown homesick for thy smile. Where hidest thou the while, heart's boast, Strange face of beauty sought and lost, Star-face that lured him out from boyhood's isle? Blown clear from dull indoors, his dreams behold Night-water smoke and sparkle as of old, The taffrail lurch, the sheets triumphant toss Their veering weight across. On, on he wears, the seaman long exiled, To lands where stunted cedars throw A lace-like shadow over snow, Or tropic fountains wash their agates wild. Again play up and down the briny spar Odours of Surinam or Zanzibar, Till blithely thence he ploughs, in visions new, The Labradorian blue; All homeless hurricanes about him break; The purples of spent day he sees From Samos to the Hebrides, And drowned men dancing darkly in his wake. Where the small deadly foam-caps, well descried, Top, tier on tier, the hundred-mountained tide, Away, and far away, his barque is borne Riding the noisy morn, Plunges, and preens her wings, and laughs to know The helm and tightening halyards still Follow the urging of his will, And scoff at sullen earth a league below. Alas! Fate bars him from his heirdom high, And shackles him with many an inland tie, And of his only wisdom makes a jibe Amid an alien tribe: No wave abroad but moans his fallen state. The trade-wind ranges now, the trade-wind roars! Why is it on a yellowing page he pores? Ah, why this hawser fast to a garden gate? Thou friend so long withdrawn, so deaf, so dim, Familiar Danger, Oh, forget not him! Repeat of thine evangel yet the whole Unto his subject soul, Who suffers no such palsy of her drouth, Nor hath so tamely worn her chain, But she may know that voice again, And shake the reefs with answer of her mouth. And give him back, before his passion fail, The singing cordage and the hollow sail, And level with those ageing eyes let be The bright unsteady sea; And like a film remove from sense and brain This pasture wall, these boughs that run Their evening arches to the sun, Yon hamlet spire across the sown champaign; And on the shut space and the shallow hour, Turn the great floods! and to thy spousal bower, With rapt arrest and solemn loitering, Him whom thou lovedst, bring: That he, thy faithful one, with praising lip, Not having, at the last, less grace Of thee than had his roving race, Sum up his strength to perish with a ship. OXFORD AND LONDON XXVI SONNETS OXFORD 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 scattered 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 sits, Auspicious Pan among the river reeds. West of the glowing hayricks, tawny black Where waters by their warm escarpments run, Two lovers, newly 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. II. _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. III. _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 'gainst her own 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 To live of all his dear domain forgot. IV. _Parks Road_ VIEWED yesterday, in sad elusive light, These everlasting heptarchs, tree by tree, Seemed filing off to exile, lingeringly, Each with his giant falchion, kinless quite. All the wild winter day and flooded night They feigned to march far as the eye could see, Through transient oceans plunging to the knee Their centuried greaves, ebon and malachite. To-day, accustomed bole and branch all bare Stand with old gems inlaid. Like coloured snow Or vista'd flame along the drowsy air, Their gold-green lichens stir and cling and glow. What secret craftsmen painted them so fair? Angels of Moisture and the Long Ago. V. _Tom_ HARK! the king bell, loud in his vesper choir. As in between each golden roar doth come That solemn, plangent, unregarded hum Chiding the truant with archaic ire, On Worcester mere far off, in elfin gyre The wavelets laugh, and laughter showereth from May's chestnut like a lampadarium By Brasenose, with every point afire. Yet over all roofs to the uttermost, Call, Shepherd dear, from thy dream-haunted ground: For some there be, on whatsoever coast, In midst of any morrow's ordered round, Hear as of old (in earth and heaven an host!) And like young lambs, leap homeward at the sound. VI. _On the Pre-Reformation Churches about Oxford_ I IMPERIAL Iffley, Cumnor bowered in green, And Templar Sandford in the boatman's call, And sweet-belled Appleton, and Elsfield wall That dost upon adoring ivies lean; Meek Binsey; Dorchester, where streams convene Bidding on graves thy solemn shadow fall; Clear Cassington, soaring perpetual, Holton, and Hampton Poyle, and fanes 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. II 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 heart is called 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 spirit fain To watch beside 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." VII. _A December Walk_ WHITHERSOEVER cold and fair ye flow, Take me, O gentle moon and gentler wind, Past Wyatt's cumbering portal, frost-entwined, And Merton 'neath that huge tiara's glow, And groves in bridal gossamer 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. VIII. _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 will unto you remain Alternately a symbol and a hope, Men, spirits! of Emmanuel your Light. IX. _Rooks: New College Gardens_ THROUGH rosy cloud and over thorny towers, Their wings with darkling autumn distance filled, From Isis' valley border, many-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 gather power in some monastic tree Where breathe against their docile breasts by night The scholar's star, the star of sanctity. X. _Above 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 Inroll from Cowley turf 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 laid reluctant 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 Who lets her vesture fall, a floss of fire, Abstracted, on the ivory hills of heaven. XI. _Undertones at Magdalen_ FAIR are the finer creature-sounds; of these Is Magdalen full: her bees, the while they drop Susurrant to the garth from weeds atop; And round the priestless Pulpit, auguries Of wrens in council from an hundred leas; And merry fish of Cherwell, 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 murmurs of good men to come: Invasive seas of hushed approach that make Memorial music, would the ear but hark. XII. _A Last View_ I WHERE down the hill, across the hidden 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 A plot of 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. II STARS in the bosom of thy braided tide, Soft air and ivy on thy gracile stone, O Glory of the West, as thou wert sown, Stand perfect: O miraculous, abide! And still, for greatness flickering from thy side, Eternal alchemist, evoke, 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. LONDON I. _On First Entering Westminster Abbey_ HOLY of England! since my light is short And faint, Oh, 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 storm-spent sea of ended Kings. 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 founder, 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 natural 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. III. _St. 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 piteous 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 man's injustice then and now Add to these aisles one other broken heart. 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 The other's rote of evil and of change. V. _Changes in the Temple_ THE cry is at thy gates, long-lovèd ground, Again: for oft ere now thy children went Beggared and wroth, and parting greeting sent Some old red 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. Oh, 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. 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; and gases bright Prick door and window; every street obscure Sparkles and swarms 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. 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." 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. 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 some naked coast Deploys her white and steady wing, alone. 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. 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. 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. NOTES _The Kings_: P. 3. II Kings, VI, 15, 16, 17. _His Angel to his Mother_: P. 21. One line of the refrain is taken from an old love song, "Sweet, if you Love me, Let me Go," set to a charming melody in D major, and to be found in Chappell's Popular Music of the Olden Time. _Beside Hazlitt's Grave_: P. 47. St. Anne's, Soho, boasts the "sorry steeple," one of London's architectural absurdities. Hazlitt's grave is grassed over and unmarked, but the epitaph which has now for some years stood in place of the interesting original one, may be read on the headstone set against the outer west wall of the church. _The Vigil-at-Arms_: P. 48. Suggested by the very simple but soldierly melody in Mendelssohn's Lied ohne Worte in A, Book I, Opus 19, No. 4, the last two lines coming in for repetitions. _A Friend's Song for Simoisius_: P. 49. Having to do with Iliad IV, 473-489. _The Inner Fate_: P. 64. It is perhaps too daring to force into Greek forms any sentiment so dead against the Greek spirit of determinism. _The Acknowledgment_: P. 66. "The Prætor." Brutus in Shakespeare, if not the historical Brutus. _The Cherry Bough_: P. 70. "Si quis adhuc isthic meminit Nasonis adempti, Et superest sine me nomen in urbe meum." _Tristia_, Lib. III, El. X. "Atque aliquis vestrum, Nasonis nomine dicto, Deponat lacrymis pocula mista suis." _Idem_, Lib. V, El. IV. _A Talisman_: P. 87. Many years after these lines were in print, it was pointed out to the author by a friend, a student of St. Bernard, how they have managed to echo in part a saying of that great Doctor, in his _De Consideratione_, Lib. I, Cap. VIII, Sec. 9: "Prudentia item est quae inter voluptates et necessitates media, quasi quaedam arbitra sedens ... disterminat fines ... ex alterutris tertiam formans virtutem quam dicunt Temperantiam." _Fifteen Epitaphs_: P. 91. It may be well to state (as these have often been taken for translations), that they are only pseudo-Alexandrian. _A Footpath Morality_: P. 121. A sort of floral log-book of a walk from Oxford to Appleton in Berkshire, May, 1908. OXFORD _Ad Antiquarium_: P. 146. This is Wood's disinterested helper, John Aubrey, F.R.S., 1626-1697. Never was a truer lover of what he calls "that most ingeniose Place!" _Martyrs' Memorial_: P. 147. The only monument in the streets of Oxford was put up by the local Low Church party in 1841, not really so much to commemorate Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer, all Cambridge men, as to register a protest against Hurrell Froude (then dead), Newman, and Keble, who all showed frank disrespect to the heroes of the Reformation in England. The reference in the sestet is of course to Cardinal Newman, and was written barely a month before his rather sudden death on August 11, 1890. _Tom_: P. 149. The College is a century and a half older than the upper part of its chief entrance gate, and the once monastic bell is much older than either. "The Tom Tower [was] finished in November, 1682. In this was hung the bell called Great Tom of Christ Church, which had originally belonged to Osney Abbey.... From that time to this, it has rung its one hundred and one strokes every night at nine, as a signal that all students should be within their College walls. It need hardly be said that the signal is not obeyed!" J. WELLS, M.A., 1901. _Oxford and its Colleges_: Christ Church, pp. 205-206. _The Old Dial of Corpus_: P. 153. The great Dial in the quadrangle of Corpus Christi College was not put up until 1605,--too late to have been contemporary with either Erasmus or Pole. The author discovered the error several years ago, but has never known how to correct it except by this caution. "Osney Bell" is Great Tom (see just above): Christ Church being next neighbour to Corpus; but Tom may or may not have been in place and condition to ring for curfew in the second year of Queen Elizabeth's reign. The closing line is meant to refer to the motto of the University, _Dominus illuminatio mea_, taken from the opening of Psalm XXVII. _Undertones at Magdalen_: P. 156. "The priestless Pulpit" was an accurate description when this sonnet was written (1895), though it is so no longer. From the open-air Pulpit of Magdalen, disused since the Reformation, a Sermon is once again delivered annually on St. John Baptist's Day. LONDON _St. Peter-ad-Vincula_: P. 161. St. Peter-ad-Vincula is the ancient and sadly appropriate dedication of the Church near the Beauchamp Tower and the site of the scaffold. The vaults are under the chancel. _York Stairs_: P. 169. Inigo Jones' Water Gate, standing on the Embankment at the foot of Villiers Street, Strand, now a long way from the river, is still called York Stairs. It is the sole surviving appanage of the great town-house of the seventeenth-century Dukes of Buckingham. The Riverside Press CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS U . S . A End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Happy Ending, by Louise Imogen Guiney *** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HAPPY ENDING *** ***** This file should be named 54719-8.txt or 54719-8.zip ***** This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: http://www.gutenberg.org/5/4/7/1/54719/ Produced by Emmy, Linda Cantoni, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive). This project is dedicated with love to Emmy's memory. Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will be renamed. 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