A CLUSTER OF GRAPES

I begin through the grass once again to be bound to the Lord;

I can see, through a face that has faded, the face full of rest

Of the earth, of the mother, my heart with her heart in accord,

As I lie mid the cool green tresses that mantle her breast

I begin with the grass once again to be bound to the Lord.

By the hand of a child I am led to the throne of the King

For a touch that now fevers me not is forgotten and far,

And His infinite sceptred hands that sway us can bring

Me in dreams from the laugh of a child to the song of a star.

On the laugh of a child I am borne to the joy of the King.

I have wept a million tears:

Pure and proud one, where are thine,

What the gain though all thy years

In unbroken beauty shine?

All your beauty cannot win

Truth we learn in pain and sighs:

You can never enter in

To the circle of the wise.

They are but the slaves of light

Who have never known the gloom,

And between the dark and bright

Willed in freedom their own doom.

Think not in your pureness there,

That our pain but follows sin:

There are fires for those who dare

Seek the throne of might to win.

Pure one, from your pride refrain:

Dark and lost amid the strife

I am myriad years of pain

Nearer to the fount of life.

When defiance fierce is thrown

At the god to whom you bow,

Rest the lips of the Unknown

Tenderest upon my brow.

The blue dusk ran between the streets: my love was winged within my mind,

It left to-day and yesterday and thrice a thousand years behind.

To-day was past and dead for me, for from to-day my feet had run

Through thrice a thousand years to walk the ways of ancient Babylon.

On temple top and palace roof the burnished gold flung back the rays

Of a red sunset that was dead and lost beyond a million days.

The tower of heaven turns darker blue, a starry sparkle now begins;

The mystery and magnificence, the myriad beauty and the sins

Come back to me. I walk beneath the shadowy multitude of towers;

Within the gloom the fountain jets its pallid mist in lily flowers.

The waters lull me and the scent of many gardens, and I hear

Familiar voices, and the voice I love is whispering in my ear.

Oh real as in dream all this; and then a hand on mine is laid:

The wave of phantom time withdraws; and that young Babylonian maid,

One drop of beauty left behind from all the flowing of that tide,

Is looking with the self-same eyes, and here in Ireland by my side.

Oh light our life in Babylon, but Babylon has taken wings,

While we are in the calm and proud procession of eternal things.

"Soon!" says the Snowdrop, and smiles at the motherly earth,

"Soon!—for the Spring with her languors comes stealthily on

Snow was my cradle, and chill winds sang at my birth;

Winter is over—and I must make haste to be gone!"

"Soon," says the Swallow, and dips to the wind-ruffled stream,

"Grain is all garnered—the Summer is over and done;

Bleak to the eastward the icy battalions gleam,

Summer is over—and I must make haste to be gone!"

"Soon—ah, too soon!" says the Soul, with a pitiful gaze,

"Soon!—for I rose like a star, and for aye would have shone!

See the pale shuddering dawn, that must wither my rays,

Leaps from the mountains—and I must make haste to be gone!"

At morn I saw the level plain

So rich and small beneath my feet,

A sapphire sea without a stain,

And fields of golden-waving wheat;

Lingering I said, "At noon I'll be

At peace by that sweet-scented tide.

How far, how fair my course shall be,

Before I come to the Eventide!"

Where is it fled, that radiant plain?

I stumble now in miry ways;

Dark clouds drift landward, big with rain,

And lonely moors their summits raise.

On, on with hurrying feet I range,

And left and right in the dumb hillside

Grey gorges open, drear and strange,

And so I come to the Eventide!

Birds, that cry so loud in the old, green bowery garden,

Your song is of Love! Love! Love!

Will ye weary not nor cease?

For the loveless soul grows sick, the heart that the grey days harden;

I know too well that ye love! I would ye should hold your peace.

I too have seen Love rise, like a star; I have marked his setting;

I dreamed in my folly and pride that Life without Love were peace.

But if Love should await me yet, in the land of sleep and forgetting—

Ah, bird, could you sing me this, I would not your song should cease!

I knew a land whose streams did wind

More winningly than these,

Where finer shadows played behind

The clean-stemmed beechen trees.

The maidens there were deeper eyed,

The lads more swift and fair,

And angels walked at each one's side—

Would God that I were there!

Here daffodils are dressed in gold,

But there they wore the sun,

And here the blooms are bought and sold,

But there God gave each one.

There all roads led to fairyland

That here do lead to care,

And stars were lamps on Heaven's strand—

Would God, that I were there!

Here worship crawls upon her course

That there with larks would cope,

And here her voice with doubt is hoarse

That there was sweet with hope.

O land of Peace! my spirit dies

For thy once tasted air,

O earliest loss! O latest prize!

Would God that I were there!

From Life's enchantments,

Desire of place,

From lust of getting

Turn thou away, and set thy face

Toward the wilderness.

The tents of Jacob

As valleys spread,

As goodly cedars,

Or fair lign aloes, white and red,

Shall share thy wilderness.

With awful judgments,

The law, the rod,

With soft allurements

And comfortable words, will God

Pass o'er the wilderness.

The bitter waters

Are healed and sweet,

The ample heavens

Pour angel's bread about thy feet

Throughout the wilderness.

And Carmel's glory

Thou thoughtest gone,

And Sharon's roses,

The excellency of Lebanon

Delight thy wilderness.

Who passeth Jordan

Perfumed with myrrh,

With myrrh and incense?

Lo! on his arm Love leadeth her

Who trod the wilderness.

Some folks as can afford,

So I've heard say,

Sets up a sort of cross

Right in the garden way

To mind 'em of the Lord.

But I, when I do see

Thic apple tree

An' stoopin' limb

All spread wi' moss,

I think of Him

And how he talks wi' me.

I think of God

And how he trod

That garden long ago:

He walked, I reckon, to and fro

And then sat down

Upon the groun'

Or some low limb

What suited Him

Same as you see

On many a tree,

And on this very one

Where I at set o' sun

Do sit and talk wi' He.

An' mornings, too, I rise an' come

An' sit down where the branch be low;

A bird do sing, a bee do hum,

The flowers in the border blow,

An' all my heart's so glad an' clear

As pools be when the sun do peer:

As pools a laughin' in the light

When mornin' air is swep' an' bright,

As pools what got all Heaven in sight

So's my heart's cheer

When He be near.

He never pushed the garden door,

He left no footmark on the floor;

I never heard 'Un stir nor tread

An' yet His Hand do bless my head,

And when 'tis time for work to start

I takes Him with me in my heart.

And when I die, pray God I see

At very last thic apple tree

An' stoopin' limb,

An' think o' Him

And all He been to me.

I know you. You will hail the huge release,

Saying the sheathing of a thousand swords,

In silence and injustice, well accords

With Christmas bells. And you will gild with grease

The papers, the employers, the police,

And vomit up the void your windy words

To your new Christ; who bears no whip of cords

For them that traffic in the doves of peace.

The feast of friends, the candle-fruited tree,

I have not failed to honour. And I say

It would be better for such men as we

And we be nearer Bethlehem, if we lay

Shot dead on snows scarlet for Liberty,

Dead in the daylight; upon Christmas Day.

When I came back to Fleet Street,

Through a sunset-nook at night,

And saw the old Green Dragon

With the windows all alight,

And hailed the old Green Dragon

And the Cock I used to know,

Where all the good fellows were my friends

A little while ago.

I had been long in meadows,

And the trees took hold of me,

And the still towns in the beech-woods,

Where men were meant to be;

But old things held; the laughter,

The long unnatural night,

And all the truth the talk in hell,

And all the lies they write.

For I came back to Fleet Street,

And not in peace I came;

A cloven pride was in my heart,

And half my love was shame.

I came to fight in fairy tale,

Whose end shall no man know—

To fight the old Green Dragon

Until the Cock shall crow!

Under the broad bright windows

Of men I serve no more,

The groaning of the old great wheels

Thickened to a throttled roar;

All buried things broke upwards;

And peered from its retreat,

Ugly and silent, like an elf,

The secret of the street.

They did not break the padlocks,

Or clear the wall away.

The men in debt that drank of old

Still drink in debt to-day;

Chained to the rich by ruin,

Cheerful in chains, as then

When old unbroken Pickwick walked

Among the broken men.

Still he that dreams and rambles

Through his own elfin air,

Knows that the street's a prison,

Knows that the gates are there:

Still he that scorns or struggles,

Sees frightful and afar

All that they leave of rebels

Rot high on Temple Bar.

All that I loved and hated,

All that I shunned and knew,

Clears in broad battle lightening;

Where they, and I, and you,

Run high the barricade that breaks

The barriers of the Street,

And shout to them that shrink within,

The Prisoners of the Fleet!

Passionate peace is in the sky

And on the snow in silver sealed

The beasts are perfect in the field

And men seem men so suddenly

But take ten swords, and ten times ten,

And blow the bugle in praising men

For we are for all men under the sun

And they are against us every one

And misers haggle, and mad men clutch

And there is peril in praising much

And we have the terrible tongues un-curled

That praise the world to the sons of the world.

The idle humble hill and wood

Are bowed about the sacred Birth

And for one little while the earth

Is lazy with the love of good

But ready are you and ready am I

If the battle blow and the guns go by

For we are for all men under the sun

And they are against us every one

For the men that hate herd altogether

To pride and gold and the great white feather

And the thing is graven in star and stone

That the men that love are all alone.

Hunger is hard and time is tough

But bless the beggars and kiss the kings

For hope has broken the heart of things

And nothing was ever praised enough

But hold the shield for a sudden swing

And point the sword in praising a thing

For we are for all men under the sun

And they are against us every one

And mime and merchant, thane and thrall,

Hate us because we love them all

Only till Christmas time goes by

Passionate peace is in the sky.

As I looked out one May morning,

I saw the tree-tops green;

I said: "My crown I will lay down

And live no more a queen."

Then I tripped down my golden steps

All in my silken gown,

And when I stood in the open wood,

I met some gipsies brown.

"O gentle, gentle gipsies,

That roam the wide world through,

Because I hate my crown and state

O let me come with you.

"My councillors are old and grey,

And sit in narrow chairs;

But you can hear the birds sing clear,

And your hearts are as light as theirs."

"If you would come along with us,

Then you must count the cost;

For though in Spring the sweet birds sing,

In Winter comes the frost.

"Your ladies serve you all the day

With courtesy and care;

Your fine-shod feet they tread so neat,

But a gipsy's feet go bare.

"You wash in water running warm

Through basins all of gold;

The streams where we roam have silvery foam,

But the streams, the streams are cold.

"And barley-bread is bitter to taste,

While sugary cakes they please—

Which will you choose, O which will you choose,

Which will you choose of these?

"For if you choose the mountain streams

And barley-bread to eat,

Your heart will be free as the birds in the tree,

But the stones will cut your feet.

"The mud will spoil your silken gown,

And stain your insteps high;

The dogs in the farm will wish you harm

And bark as you go by.

"And though your heart grow deep and gay,

And your heart grow wise and rich,

The cold will make your bones to ache

And you will die in a ditch."

"O gentle, gentle gipsies,

That roam the wide world through,

Although I praise your wandering ways,

I dare not come with you."

I hung about their fingers brown

My ruby rings and chain,

And with my head as heavy as lead,

I turned me back again.

As I went up the palace steps,

I heard the gipsies laugh;

The birds of Spring so sweet did sing;

My heart it broke in half.

The dandelion is brave and gay,

And loves to grow beside the way;

A braver thing was never seen

To praise the grass for growing green;

You never saw a gayer thing,

To sit and smile and praise the Spring.

The children with their simple hearts,

The lazy men that come in carts,

The little dogs that lollop by,

They all have seen its shining eye:

And every one of them would say,

They never saw a thing so gay.

Like to islands in the seas,

Stand our personalities—

Islands where we always face

One another's watering-place.

When we promenade our sands

We can hear each other's bands,

We can see on festal nights

Red and green and purple lights,

Gilt pavilions in a row,

Stucco houses built for show.

But our eyes can never reach

Further than the tawdry beach,

Never can they hope to win

To the wonders far within:

Jagged rocks against the sky

Where the eagles haunt and cry,

Forests full of running rills,

Darkest forests, sunny hills,

Hollows where a dragon lowers,

Sweet and unimagined flowers.

Here lies a most beautiful lady,

Light of step and heart was she:

I think she was the most beautiful lady

That ever was in the West Country.

But beauty vanishes; beauty passes;

However rare—rare it be;

And when I crumble who will remember

This lady of the West Country?

Far are the shades of Arabia,

Where the princes ride at noon,

'Mid the verdurous vales and thickets

Under the ghost of the moon;

And so dark is that vaulted purple,

Flowers in the forest rise

And toss into blossom 'gainst the phantom stars,

Pale in the noonday skies.

Sweet is the music of Arabia

In my heart, when out of dreams

I still in the thin clear mirk of dawn

Descry her gliding streams;

Hear her strange lutes on the green banks

Ring loud with the grief and delight

Of the dim-silked, dark-haired musicians,

In the brooding silence of night.

They haunt me—her lutes and her forests;

No beauty on earth I see

But shadowed with that dream recalls

Her loveliness to me:

Still eyes look coldly upon me,

Cold voices whisper and say—

"He is crazed with the spell of far Arabia,

They have stolen his wits away."

Softly along the road of evening,

In a twilight dim with rose,

Wrinkled with age and drenched with dew,

Old Nod, the shepherd, goes.

His drowsy flock streams on before him,

Their fleeces charged with gold,

To where the sun's last beam leans low

On Nod the shepherd's fold.

The hedge is quick and green with briar,

From their sand the conies creep;

And all the birds that fly in heaven

Flock singing home to sleep.

His lambs outnumber a noon's roses

Yet, when night's shadows fall,

His blind old sheep dog, Slumber-soon,

Misses not one of all.

His are the quiet steeps of dreamland,

The waters of no more pain,

His ram's bell rings 'neath an arch of stars,

"Rest, rest, and rest again."

Oh! the downs high to the cool sky;

And the feel of the sun-warmed moss;

And each cardoon, like a full moon,

Fairy-spun of the thistle floss;

And the beech grove, and a wood dove,

And the trail where the shepherds pass;

And the lark's song, and the wind-song,

And the scent of the parching grass!

If on a Spring night I went by

And God were standing there,

What is the prayer that I would cry

To Him? This is the prayer:

O Lord of Courage grave,

O Master of this night of Spring!

Make firm in me a heart too brave

To ask Thee anything!

Where my fathers stood, watching the sea,

Gale-spent herring boats hugging the lea;

There my Mother lives, moorland and tree.

Sight o' the blossoms! Devon to me!

Where my fathers walked, driving the plough;

Whistled their hearts out—who whistles now?—

There my Mother burns fire faggots free.

Scent o' the wood-smoke! Devon to me!

Where my fathers sat, passing their bowls;

—They've no cider now, God rest their souls!

There my Mother feeds red cattle three.

Sup o' the cream-pan! Devon to me!

Where my fathers sleep, turning to dust,

This old body throw when die I must!

There my Mother calls, wakeful is she!

Sound o' the West-wind! Devon to me!

Where my fathers lie, when I am gone,

Who need pity me, dead? Never one!

There my Mother clasps me. Let me be!

Feel o' the red earth! Devon to me!

I have seen Maeve of the Battles wandering over the hill,

And I know that the deed that is in my heart is her deed,

And my soul is blown about by the wild wind of her will,

For always the living must follow whither the dead would lead—

I have seen Maeve of the Battles wandering over the hill.

I would dream a dream at twilight of ease and beauty and peace—

A dream of light on the mountains, and calm on the restless sea;

A dream of the gentle days of the world when battle shall cease

And the things that are in hatred and wrath no longer shall be.

I would dream a dream at twilight of ease and beauty and peace.

The foamless waves are falling soft on the sands of Lissadil

And the world is wrapped in quiet and a floating dream of grey;

But the wild winds of the twilight blow straight from the haunted hill

And the stars come out of the darkness and shine over Knocknarea—

I have seen Maeve of the Battles wandering over the hill.

There is no rest for the soul that has seen the wild eyes of Maeve;

No rest for the heart once caught in the net of her yellow hair—

No quiet for the fallen wind, no peace for the broken wave;

Rising and falling, falling and rising with soft sounds everywhere,

There is no rest for the soul that has seen the wild eyes of Maeve.

I have seen Maeve of the Battles wandering over the hill

And I know that the deed that is in my heart is her deed;

And my soul is blown about by the wild winds of her will,

For always the living must follow whither the dead would lead—

I have seen Maeve of the Battles wandering over the hill.

The darkness draws me, kindly angels weep

Forlorn beyond receding rings of light,

The torrents of the earth's desires sweep

My soul through twilight downward into night.

Once more the light grows dim, the vision fades,

Myself seems to myself a distant goal,

I grope among the bodies' drowsy shades,

Once more the Old Illusion rocks my soul.

Once more the Manifold in shadowy streams

Of falling waters murmurs in my ears,

The One Voice drowns amid the roar of dreams

That crowd the narrow pathway of the years.

I go to seek the starshine on the waves,

To count the dewdrops on the grassy hill,

I go to gather flowers that grow on graves,

The worlds' wall closes round my prisoned will.

Yea, for the sake of the wild western wind

The sphered spirit scorns her flame-built throne,

Because of primroses, time out of mind,

The Lonely turns away from the Alone.

Who once has loved the cornfield's rustling sheaves,

Who once has heard the gentle Irish rain

Murmur low music in the growing leaves,

Though he were god, comes back to earth again.

Oh Earth! green wind-swept Eirinn, I would break

The tower of my soul's initiate pride

For a grey field and a star-haunted lake,

And those wet winds that roam the country side.

I who have seen am glad to close my eyes,

I who have soared am weary of my wings,

I seek no more the secret of the wise,

Safe among shadowy, unreal human things.

Blind to the gleam of those wild violet rays

That burn beyond the rainbow's circle dim,

Bound by dark nights and driven by pale days,

The sightless slave of Time's imperious whim;

Deaf to the flowing tide of dreams divine

That surge outside the closed gates of birth,

The rhythms of eternity, too fine

To touch with music the dull ears of earth—

I go to seek with humble care and toil

The dreams I left undreamed, the deeds undone,

To sow the seed and break the stubborn soil,

Knowing no brightness whiter than the sun.

Content in winter if the fire burns clear

And cottage walls keep out the creeping damp,

Hugging the Old Illusion warm and dear,

The Silence and the Wise Book and the Lamp.

He in his deepest mind

That inner harmony divined

That lit the soul of John

And in the glad eyes shone

Of Dionysos, and dwelt

Where Angel Gabriel knelt

Under the dark cypress spires;

And thrilled with flameless fires

Of Secret Wisdom's rays

The Giaconda's smiling gaze;

Curving with delicate care

The pearls in Beatrice d'Este's hair;

Hiding behind the veil

Of eyelids long and pale,

In the strange gentle vision dim

Of the unknown Christ who smiled on him.

His was no vain dream

Of the things that seem,

Of date and name.

He overcame

The Outer False with the Inner True,

And overthrew

The empty show and thin deceits of sex,

Pale nightmares of this barren world that vex

The soul of man, shaken by every breeze

Too faint to stir the silver olive trees

Or lift the Dryad's smallest straying tress

Frozen in her clear marble loveliness.

He, in curved lips and smiling eyes,

Hid the last secret's faint surprise

Of one who dies in fear and pain

And lives and knows herself again.

He, in his dreaming under the sun,

Saw change and the unchanging One,

And built in grottoes blue a shrine

To hold Reality Divine.

Like the diamond spark of the morning star

When night grows pale

Love gleams in the depths of thine eyes afar

Through the rifted veil

Of thy cloudy dreams.

I saw in the glint of thy wavy hair

His splendour shine

A moment, and now thy cheeks declare

The fire divine

In their rosy streams.

It leaps from thy face to mine, and flushes

From brow to chin.

The hot blood sings in my ears and gushes

With surge and spin

Through my tingling veins.

I lift up my heart for thy fervent lips

To kiss, my sweet.

I would lift up my soul, but she swooning slips

Down at thy feet,

And the rainbow stains.

Brighten and cloud on her wings that close

And open slow,

As a butterfly's move, on the breast of a rose

Rocked to and fro

By a crooning wind.

O star! O blossom! I faint for bliss.

I faint for thee;

For the kiss on my closed eyes, thy kiss

In ecstasy

That leaves me blind.

Me has love molten for thee to mould.

Ah, shape me fair

As the crown of thy life, as a crown of gold

In thy flame-like hair

Worn for a sign!

Nay, rather my life be a wind-flower

Slow kissed to death,

Petal by petal, on lips that stir

With love's own breath.

Dear life, take mine!

I cannot sing,

So weary of life my heart is and so sore

Afraid. What harp-playing

Back from the land whose name is Never More

My lost desire will bring?

*    *    *    *    *

These words she said

Before the Pheidian Fates. "There comes an end

Of love, and mine is fled:

But, if you let me, I will be your friend,

A better friend, instead."

Was it her own,

The voice I heard, marmoreal, strange, remote,

As though from yonder throne

Clotho had spoken, and the headless throat

Had uttered words of stone?

I sought her face;

It was a mask inscrutable, a screen

Baffling all hope to trace

The woman whose passionate loveliness had been

Mine for a little space.

Thereat I rose,

Smiling, and said—"The dream is past and gone.

Surely Love comes and goes

Even as he will. And who shall thwart him? None.

Only, while water flows

And night and day

Chase one another round the rolling sphere,

Henceforth our destined way

Divides. Fare onward, then, and leave me, dear.

There is no more to say."

*    *    *    *    *

Harsh songs and sweet

Come to me still, but as a tale twice told.

The throb, the quivering beat

Harry my blood no longer as of old,

Nor stir my wayworn feet.

Yet for a threne

Once more I wear the purple robe and make

Sad music and serene

For pity's sake, ah me, and the old time's sake,

And all that might have been.

For Love lies dead.

Love, the immortal, the victorious,

Is fallen and vanquished.

What charm can raise, what incantation rouse

That lowly, piteous head?

Why should I weep

My triumph? 'Twas my life or his. Behold

The wound, how wide and deep

Which in my side the arrow tipped with gold

Smote as I lay asleep!

Across thy way

I came not, Love, nor ever sought thy face;

But me, who dreaming lay

Peaceful within my quiet lurking-place,

Thy shaft was sped to slay.

When hadst thou ruth,

That I should sorrow o'er thee and forgive?

Why should I grieve, forsooth?

Art thou not dead for ever, and I live?

And yet—and yet, in truth

Almost I would

That I had perished, and beside my bier

Thou and thy mother stood,

And from relenting eyes let fall a tear

Upon me, and my blood

Changed to a flower

Imperishable, a hyacinthine bloom,

In memory of an hour

Splendidly lived between Delight and Doom

Once when I wandered from my ivory tower.

I

From Wynyard's Gap the livelong day,

The livelong day,

We beat afoot the northward way

We had travelled times before.

The sun-blaze burning on our backs,

Our shoulders sticking to our packs,

By fosseway, fields, and turnpike tracks

We skirted sad Sedge Moor.

II

Full twenty miles we jaunted on,

We jaunted on—

My fancy-man, and jeering John,

And Mother Lee, and I.

And, as the sun drew down to west,

We climbed the toilsome Poldon crest,

And saw, of landskip sights the best,

The inn that beamed thereby.

III

For months we had padded side by side,

Ay, side by side

Through the Great Forest, Blackmoor wide,

And where the Parret ran.

We'd faced the gusts on Mendip ridge,

Had crossed the Yeo unhelped by bridge,

Been stung by every Marshwood midge,

I and my fancy man.

IV

Lone inns we loved, my man and I,

My man and I;

"King's Stag," "Windwhistle" high and dry,

"The Horse" on Hintock Green,

The cosy house at Wynyard's Gap,

"The Hut" renowned on Bredy Knap,

And many another wayside tap

Where folk might sit unseen.

V

Now as we trudged—O deadly day,

O deadly day!—

I teased my fancy-man in play

And wanton idleness.

I walked alongside jeering John,

I laid his hand my waist upon;

I would not bend my glances on

My lover's dark distress.

VI

Thus Poldon top at last we won,

At last we won,

And gained the inn at sink of sun

Far famed as "Marshall's Elm."

Beneath us figured tor and lea,

From Mendip to the western sea—

I doubt if finer sight there be

Within this royal realm.

VII

Inside the settle all a-row—

All four a-row

We sat, I next to John, to show

That he had wooed and won.

And then he took me on his knee,

And swore it was his turn to be

My favoured mate, and Mother Lee

Passed to my former one.

VIII

Then in a voice I had never heard,

I had never heard,

My only Love to me: "One word,

My lady, if you please!

Whose is the child you are like to bear?—

His? After all my months of care?"

God knows 'twas not! But, O despair!

I nodded—still to tease.

IX

Then up he sprung, and with his knife—

And with his knife

He let out jeering Johnny's life,

Yes; there, at set of sun.

The slant ray through the window nigh

Gilded John's blood and glazing eye,

Ere scarcely Mother Lee and I

Knew that the deed was done.

X

The taverns tell the gloomy tale,

The gloomy tale,

How that at Ivel-chester jail

My Love, my sweetheart swung;

Though stained till now by no misdeed

Save one horse ta'en in time o' need;

(Blue Jimmy stole right many a steed

Ere his last fling he flung.)

XI

Thereaft I walked the world alone,

Alone, alone!

On his death-day I gave my groan

And dropped his dead-born child.

'Twas nigh the jail, beneath a tree,

None tending me; for Mother Lee

Had died at Glaston, leaving me

Unfriended on the wild.

XII

And in the night as I lay weak,

As I lay weak,

The leaves a-falling on my cheek,

The red moon low declined—

The ghost of him I'd die to kiss

Rose up and said: "Ah, tell me this!

Was the child mine, or was it his?

Speak, that I rest may find!"

XIII

O doubt not but I told him then,

I told him then,

That I had kept me from all men

Since we joined lips and swore.

Whereat he smiled, and thinned away

As the wind stirred to call up day ...

—'Tis past! And here alone I stray

Haunting the Western Moor.

1902.

Last as first the question rings

Of the Will's long travailings;

Why the All-mover,

Why the All-prover

Ever urges on and measures out the droning tune of Things.

Heaving dumbly

As we deem,

As in dream,

Apprehending not how fare the sentient subjects of Its scheme.

Nay;—shall not Its blindness break?

Yea, must not Its heart awake,

Promptly tending

To Its mending

In a genial germing purpose, and for loving-kindness' sake?

Should It never

Curb or cure

Aught whatever

Those endure

Whom It quickens, let them darkle to extinction swift and sure.

But a stirring thrills the air,

Like to sounds of joyance there

That the rages

Of the ages

Shall be cancelled, and deliverance offered from the darts that were,

Consciousness the Will informing, till It fashion all things fair!

1907.

Sing, Ballad-singer, raise a hearty tune;

Make me forget that there was ever a one

I walked with in the meek light of the moon

When the day's work was done.

Rhyme, Ballad-rhymer, start a country song;

Make me forget that she whom I loved well

Swore she would love me dearly, love me long,

Then—what I cannot tell!

Sing, Ballad-singer, from your little book;

Make me forget those heart-breaks, achings, fears;

Make me forget her name, her sweet sweet look—

Make me forget her tears.

The world's gone forward to its latest fair

And dropt an old man done with by the way,

To sit alone among the bats and stare

At miles and miles and miles of moorland bare

Lit only with last shreds of dying day.

Not all the world, not all the world's gone by;

Old man, you're like to meet one traveller still,

A journeyman well kenned for courtesy

To all that walk at odds with life and limb;

If this be he now riding up the hill

Maybe he'll stop and take you up with him....

"But thou art Death?" "Of Heavenly Seraphim

None else to seek thee out and bid thee come."

"I only care that thou art come from Him,

Unbody me—I'm tired—and get me home."

Time, you old gipsy man,

Will you not stay,

Put up your caravan

Just for one day?

All things I'll give you

Will you be my guest,

Bells for your jennet

Of silver the best,

Goldsmiths shall beat you

A great golden ring,

Peacocks shall bow to you,

Little boys sing,

Oh, and sweet girls will

Festoon you with may,

Time, you old gipsy,

Why hasten away?

Last week in Babylon,

Last night in Rome,

Morning, and in the crush

Under Paul's dome;

Under Paul's dial

You tighten your rein,

Only a moment

And off once again;

Off to some city

Now blind in the womb,

Off to another

Ere that's in the tomb.

Time, you old gipsy man,

Will you not stay,

Put up your caravan

Just for one day?

Sour fiend, go home and tell the Pit:

For once you met your master,

A man who carried in his soul

Three charms against disaster,

The Devil and disaster.

Away, away, and tell the tale

And start your whelps a-whining,

Say "In the greenwood of his soul

A lizard's eye was shining,

A little eye kept shining."

Away, away, and salve your sores,

And set your hags a-groaning,

Say "In the greenwood of his soul

A drowsy bee was droning,

A dreamy bee was droning."

Prodigious Bat! Go start the walls

Of Hell with horror ringing,

Say "In the greenwood of his soul

There was a goldfinch singing,

A pretty goldfinch singing."

And then come back, come, if you please,

A fiercer ghoul and ghaster,

With all the glooms and smuts of Hell

Behind you, I'm your master!

You know I'm still your master.

Nought is there here the eye to strike—

Uncurved canals where barges ply;

A hundred hamlets all alike;

Flat fields that cut an arc of sky

With men and women o'er them bent

Who needs must labour lest they die.

Would any say that lives so spent

Might break, spurred on by love and pride,

Their bars of animal content?

Nay, here live men unvexed, untried—

I mused. Yet pacing Roosevelt street

In idle humour I espied

A village man and woman meet,

And pass with never word or sign—

So strange in neighbour-folk whose feet

Haunt the same fields in rain and shine

That, curious eyed, in either face,

In curve of lip, or graven line,

I sought for hints of pain or trace

Of harsh resolve, and so grew ware

That hers was as a hiding place

Where lurked the kinship of despair;

While his bore record deeply wrought

That life for him had but one care,

And that—to mesh re-iterant thought

In labour, till at last his soul

Should find the anodyne it sought.

Hence now with dreary face he stole

Through Roosevelt Street, nor stretched his hand

To beg from life its smallest dole.

And yet these two had loved and planned

To happiest end, but for the flood

That wrecks, upreared on rock or sand,

The house of hopes. Thus—cold of mood,

He, loving wholly, could but choose

To deem her heart as his subdued;

While she, as maidens oft-times use,

Denied sweet proofs of love, was fain

To gain them by the world-old ruse;

And failing, vexed to find that vain

Was all her pretty reticence,

She happed upon a worthless swain

On whom, reserved the gold, the pence

Of liberal smiles she flung away,

Till, snared by her own innocence,

She fell—Ah, God! how far that day

She fell—from hope and promise plumb,

To deeps where lips forget to pray.

But he, apart, with sorrow dumb,

Beheld, scarce conscious of the strife,

Himself in her by fate o'ercome;

And as she passed to her new life,

Righted by still more wrong, divined

Her hate for him who called her wife,

And on the hoarded knowledge pined

And starved, till he, as she, was dead,

And nought remained but to unwind

His coil of days. So with slow tread

He goes his way through Roosevelt Street

At night and morn, nor turns his head

When past him comes the sound of feet—

Of ghostly feet that long ago

In life had made his pulses beat.

For, mark you, both are dead, and so

Small wonder is it nought should pass

Betwixt them in the street, I trow.

Yet still they move with that huge mass

Of life unpurposeful that reaps

The corn in season, mows the grass,

And then by right of labour sleeps

With privilege of dreams that ape

Fulfilment, whereby each may creep

From pain through doors of dear escape;

Save such, unhappy, as would win

Some respite for themselves, and shape

Those passionate, deep appeals that din

The Powers, ere season due, to stay

The long slow tragedies of sin.

I know of fields by voices haunted still

That years ago grew hushed;

Whose buttercups are brushed

By feet that long have ceased to climb the hill.

On whose green slopes the happy children play

As on a mother's lap,

Then steal through gate and gap,

And by strange hedge-rows make their wondering way.

Sometimes great seas of ripening corn they spy

Across whose rippling face

The shadowy billows race

And round the gate, forlornly whispering, die;

Or in dark rutted lanes by weeds o'ergrown,

Round-eyed they watch a thrush

That breaks the noonday hush

Dashing with zest a snail against a stone;

At others, on an impulse waxing brave,

They climb the churchyard wall

And, marvelling at it all,

See strange black people gathered round a grave.

Then, without question, hurrying up the lane,

They seek once more their own—

That world in which is known

No fear of death, nor thought of change or pain.

Where still they call and answer, still they play,

And summer is ever there;

But I—I never dare

Pass through those fields, retrace the well-known way,

Lest I might meet a lad whom once I knew,

Whose eyes accusingly

Should make demand of me:

"Where are those dreams I left in charge with you?"

There comes a ghostly space

'Twixt midnight and the dawn,

When from the heart of London Town

The tides of life are drawn.

What time, when Spring is due,

The captives dungeoned deep

Beneath the stones of London Town

Grow troubled in their sleep,

And wake—mint, mallow, dock,

Brambles in bondage sore,

And grasses shut in London Town

A thousand years and more.

Yet though beneath the stones

They starve, and overhead

The countless feet pace London Town

Of men who hold them dead,

Like Samson, blind and scorned,

In pain their time they bide

To seize the roots of London Town

And tumble down its pride.

Now well by proof and sign,

By men unheard, unseen,

They know that far from London Town

The woods once more are green.

But theirs is still to wait,

Deaf to the myriad hum,

Beneath the stones of London Town

A Spring that needs must come.

Fellow-travellers here with me,

Loose for good each other's loads!

Here we come to the cross-roads:

Here must parting be.

Where will you five be to-night?

Where shall I? we little know:

Loosed from you, I let you go

Utterly from sight.

Far away go taste and touch,

Far go sight, and sound, and smell.

Fellow-Travellers, fare you well,—

You I loved so much.

How green the earth, how blue the sky,

How pleasant all the days that pass,

Here where the British settlers lie

Beneath their cloaks of grass!

Here ancient peace resumes her round,

And rich from toil stand hill and plain;

Men reap and store; but they sleep sound,

The men who sowed the grain.

Hard to the plough their hands they put,

And wheresoe'er the soil had need

The furrow drave, and underfoot

They sowed themselves for seed.

Ah! not like him whose hand made yield

The brazen kine with fiery breath,

And over all the Colchian field

Strewed far the seeds of death;

Till, as day sank, awoke to war

The seedlings of the dragon's teeth,

And death ran multiplied once more

Across the hideous heath.

But rich in flocks be all these farms,

And fruitful be the fields which hide

Brave eyes that loved the light, and arms

That never clasped a bride!

O willing hearts turned quick to clay,

Glad lovers holding death in scorn,

Out of the lives ye cast away

The coming race is born.

Sleep lies in every cup

Of land or flower:

Look how the earth drains up

Her evening hour!

Each face that once so laughed,

Now fain would lift

Lips to Life's sleeping-draught,

The goodlier gift.

Oh, whence this overflow,

This flood of rest?

What vale of healing so

Unlocks her breast?

What land, to give us right

Of refuge, yields

To the sharp scythes of light

Her poppied fields?

Nay, wait! our turn to make

Amends grows due!

Another day will break,

We must give too!

I

White-dreaming face of my dear,

Waken; the dawn is here.

Ope, oh so misty eyes;

Keep ope, and recognize!

Mouth, o'er the far sleep-sea

Spread now thy smile-wings for me.

II

Take from me the little flowers

And the bright-eyed beasts and the birds;

And the babies, oh God, take away;

Hearken my praying-words;

Empty my road of them,

Empty my house and my arm,

For black is my heart with hate,

And I would not these come to harm.

Twigs of despair on the high trees uplifted,

Torn cloud flying behind;

Whistling wind through the dead leaves drifted;

Oho! my mind

With you is racked and ruined and rifted.

Waves of the angry firth high-flying,

Rainstorm striping the sea,

Sleet-mist shrouding the hills; day dying;

Now around me

Closes the darkness of night in, wild crying.

God of the storm, in thy storm's heart unmeted

My shallop-soul rideth where roars

The swirling water-spout—rides undefeated;

No rudder, no oars;

Only within, thy small image seated.

Hail, truant with song-troubled breast—

Thou welcome and bewildering guest!

Blithe troubadour, whose laughing note

Brings Spring into a poet's throat,—

Flute, feathered joy! thy painted bill

Foretells the daffodil.

Enchanter, 'gainst the evening star

Singing to worlds where dreamers are,

That makes upon the leafless bough

A solitary vernal vow—

Sing, lyric soul! within thy song

The love that lures the rose along!

The snowdrop, hearing, in the dell

Doth tremble for its virgin bell;

The crocus feels within its frame

The magic of its folded flame;

And many a listening patience lies

And pushes toward its paradise.

Young love again on golden gales

Scents hawthorn blown down happy dales;

The phantom cuckoo calls forlorn

From limits of the haunted morn;—

Sing, elfin heart! thy notes to me

Are bells that ring in Faery!

Again the world is young, is young,

And silence takes a silver tongue;

The echoes catch the lyric mood

Of laughing children in the wood:

Blithe April trips in winter's way

And nature, wondering, dreams of May.

Sing on, thou dusky fount of life!

God love thee for a merry sprite!

Sing on! for though the sun be coy

I sense with thee a budding joy,

And all my heart with ranging rhyme

Is poet for the prime!

She moved like silence swathed in light,

Like mists at morning clear;

A music that enamoured sight

Yet did elude the ear.

A rapture and a spirit clad

In motion soft as sleep;

The epitome of all things glad,

The sum of all that weep;

Her form was like a poet's mind—

By all sensations sought;

She seemed the substance of the wind,

The shape of lyric thought,—

A being 'mid terrestrial things

Transcendently forlorn,

From time bound far on filmy wings

For some diviner bourne.

The rhythms of the raptured heart

Swayed to her sweet control;

Life in her keeping all was art,

And all of body soul.

Lone-shimmering in the roseate air

She seemed to ebb and flow,

A memory, perilously fair,

And pale from long ago.

She stooped to time's remembered tears,

Yearned to undawned delight.

Ah beauty, passionate from the years!

Oh body wise and white!

She vanished like an evening cloud,

A sunset's radiant gleam.

She vanished ... Life awhile endowed

The darkness with a dream.

Dear God, before Thee many weep

And bow the solemn knee;

But I who have thy joy to keep

Will sing and dance for Thee.

Come, lilt ye, lilt ye, lightsome birds,

For ye are glad as I;

Come frisk, ye sunlit flocks and herds

And cherubs of the sky;

Sweet elfin mischief of the hill,

We'll share a laugh together—

Oh half the world is hoyden still,

And waits for whistling weather!

The God of age is staid and old,

And asks a sober tongue;

But till the heart of youth is cold

The God of youth is young!

Then kiss, blithe lass and happy lad!

The rainbow passes over,

And love and life, the leal and glad,

Must step with time the rover.

Trip buds and bells in spangled ways!

Leap, leaves in every tree!

Ye winds and waters, nights and days,

Dance, dance for Deity.

On every hand is elfin land,

And faery gifts are falling;

Across the world, a twinkling band,

The elves are calling—calling.

In welcome smile the witching skies,

And with a jocund train,

With dancing joy-light in His eyes,

God, God comes home again!

Thou inmost, ultimate

Council of judgment, palace of decrees,

Where the high senses hold their spiritual state,

Sued by earth's embassies,

And sign, approve, accept, conceive, create;

Create—thy senses close

With the world's pleas. The random odours reach

Their sweetness in the place of thy repose,

Upon thy tongue the peach,

And in thy nostrils breathes the breathing rose.

To thee, secluded one,

The dark vibrations of the sightless skies,

The lovely inexplicit colours run;

The light gropes for those eyes.

O thou august! thou dost command the sun.

Music, all dumb, hath trod

Into thine ear her one effectual way;

And fire and cold approach to gain thy nod,

Where thou call'st up the day,

Where thou await'st the appeal of God.

With this ambiguous earth

His dealings have been told us. These abide:

The signal to a maid, the human birth,

The lesson, and the young Man crucified.

But not a star of all

The innumerable host of stars has heard

How He administered this terrestrial ball.

Our race have kept their Lord's entrusted Word.

Of His earth-visiting feet

None knows the secret, cherished, perilous,

The terrible, shamefast, frightened, whispered, sweet,

Heart-shattering secret of His way with us.

No planet knows that this

Our wayside planet, carrying land and wave,

Love and life multiplied, and pain and bliss,

Bears, as chief treasure, one forsaken grave.

Nor, in our little day,

May His devices with the heavens be guessed,

His pilgrimage to thread the Milky Way

Or His bestowals there be manifest.

But in the eternities,

Doubtless we shall compare together, hear

A million alien Gospels, in what guise

He trod the Pleiades, the Lyre, the Bear.

O, be prepared, my soul!

To read the inconceivable, to scan

The million forms of God those stars unroll

When, in our turn, we show to them a Man.

One wept whose only child was dead,

New-born, ten years ago.

"Weep not; he is in bliss," they said.

She answered, "Even so.

"Ten years ago was born in pain

A child, not now forlorn.

But oh, ten years ago, in vain,

A mother, a mother was born."

There's a clean wind blowing

Over hill-flower and peat,

Where the bell heather's growing,

And the brown burn flowing,

And the ghost-shadows going

Down the glen on stealthy feet.

There's a clean wind blowing,

And the breath of it is sweet.

There's a clean wind blowing,

And the world holds but three:

The purple peak against the sky,

The master wind, and me.

The moor birds are tossing

Like ships upon the sea;

There's a clean wind blowing

Free.

There's a clean wind blowing,

Untainted of the town,

A fair-hitting foeman

With his glove flung down.

Will ye take his lordly challenge

And the gauntlet that he throws,

And come forth among the heather

Where the clean wind blows!

The Night is a far-spreading garden, and all through the hours

Glisten and glitter and sparkle her wonderful flowers.

First the great moon-rose full blooming; the great bed of stars

Touching with restful gold petals the woodland's dark bars;

Then arc-lights like asters that blossom in street and in square,

And lamps like primroses beyond them in planted parterre;

Great tulips of crimson that rise from the factory towers;

White lilies that drop from deep windows: all flowers, the Night's flowers!

Blooms on the highway that twinkle and fade like the stars,

Golden and red on the vans and the carts and the cars;

Clusters of bloom in the village; lone homesteads a-light,

Decking the lawns of the darkness, the plots of the Night.

Then the bright blossoms of platform and signal that shine

By the iron-paved path of the garden—the lights of the Line;

The gold flowers of comfort and caution; the buds of dull red,

Sombre with warning; the green leaves that say "Right ahead!"

Then the flowers in the harbour that low to the tide of it lean;

The lights on the port and the starboard, the red and the green,

Mixing and mingling with mast lights that move in the air,

And deck lights and wharf lights and lights upon pier-head and stair;

An edging of gold where a liner steals by like a thief;

The giant grey gleam of a searchlight that swings like a leaf;

And far out to seaward faint petals that flutter and fall

Against the white flower of the Lighthouse that gathers them all.

Then flower lights all golden with welcome—the lights of the inn;

And poisonous hell-flowers, lit doorways that beckon to sin;

Soft vesper flowers of the Churches with dark stems above;

Gold flowers of court and of cottage made one flower by love;

Beacons of windows on hillside and cliff to recall

Some wanderer lost for a season—Night's flowers one and all!

In the street, in the lane, on the Line, on the ships and the towers,

In the windows of cottage and palace—all flowers, the Night's flowers!

As I lay dreaming in the grass

I saw a Knight of Tourney pass—

All conquering Summer. Twilit hours

Made soft light round him, rainbow flowers

Hung on his harness.

Down the dells

The fairy heralds rang blue-bells,

And even as they rocked and rang

Into the lists, full-armed, there sprang

Autumn, his helm the harvest moon,

His sword a sickle, the gleaner's tune

His hymn of battle.

Each bowed full low,

Knight to knight as to worthy foe,

Then Autumn tossed as his gauntlet down—

A leaf of the lime tree, golden brown—

And Summer bound it above the green

Of his shining breast-plate's verdant sheen.

—They closed. Above them the driving mists

Stooped and feathered—and hid the lists.

Later the cloud mist rolled away

But dead in his harness the Green Knight lay.

Sadly, apparently frustrate, life hangs above us,

Cruel, dark unexplained;

Yet still the immortal through mortal incessantly pierces

With calls, with appeals, and with lures.

Lure of the sinking sun, into undreamed islands,

Fortunate, far in the West;

Lure of the star, with speechless news o'er brimming,

With language of darted light;

Of the sea-glory of opening lids of Aurora,

Ushering eyes of the dawn;

Of the callow bird in the matin darkness calling,

Chorus of drowsy charm;

Of the wind, south-west, with whispering leaves illumined,

Solemn gold of the woods;

Of the intimate breeze of noon, deep-charged with a message,

How near, at times, unto speech!

Of the sea, that soul of a poet a-yearn for expression,

For ever yearning in vain!

Hoarse o'er the shingle with loud, unuttered meanings,

Hurling on caverns his heart.

Of the summer night, what to communicate, eager?

Perchance the secret of peace.

The lure of the silver to gold, of the pale unto colour,

Of the seen to the real unseen;

Of voices away to the voiceless, of sound unto silence,

Of words to a wordless calm;

Of music doomed unto wandering, still returning,

Ever to heaven and home.

The lure of the beautiful woman through flesh unto spirit,

Through a smile unto endless light;

Of the flight of a bird thro' evening over the marsh-land,

Lingering in Heaven alone;

Of the vessel disappearing over the sea-marge,

With him or with her that we love;

Of the sudden touch in the hand of a friend or a maiden,

Thrilling up to the stars.

The appealing death of a soldier, the moon just rising,

Kindling the battle-field;

Of the cup of water, refused by the thirsting Sidney,

Parched with the final pang:

Of the crucified Christ, yet lo, those arms extended,

Wide, as a world to embrace;

And last, and grandest, the lure, the invitation,

And sacred wooing of death;

Unto what regions, or heavens, or solemn spaces,

Who, but by dying, can tell?

Beautiful lie the dead;

Clear comes each feature;

Satisfied not to be,

Strangely contented.

Like ships, the anchor dropped,

Furled every sail is

Mirrored with all their masts

In a deep water.

I

Red skies above a level land

And thoughts of thee;

Sinking Sun on reedy strand,

And alder tree.

II

Only the heron sailing home

With heavy flight!

Ocean afar in silent foam,

And coming night!

III

Dwindling day and drowsing birds,

O my child!

Dimness and returning herds,

Memory wild.

Birds gived over singin'

Flitter-mice was wingin'

Mist lay on the meadows—

A purty sight to see.

Downling in the dimpsy, the dimpsy, the dimpsy—

Downling in the dimpsy

Theer went a maid wi' me.

Two gude mile o' walkin'

Not wan word o' talkin',

Then I axed a question

An' put the same to she.

Uplong in the owl-light, the owl-light, the owl-light—

Uplong in the owl-light

Theer come my maid wi' me.

By the abortions of the teeming Spring,

By Summer's starved and withered offering,

By Autumn's stricken hope and Winter's sting,

Oh, hear!

By the ichneumon on the writhing worm,

By the swift, far-flung poison of the germ,

By soft and foul brought out of hard and firm,

Oh, hear!

By the fierce battle under every blade,

By the etiolation of the shade,

By drouth and thirst and things undone half made,

Oh, hear!

By all the horrors of re-quickened dust,

By the eternal waste of baffled lust,

By mildews and by cankers and by rust,

Oh, hear!

By the fierce scythe of Spring upon the wold,

By the dead eaning mother in the fold,

By stillborn, stricken young and tortured old,

Oh, hear!

By fading eyes pecked from a dying head,

By the hot mouthful of a thing not dead,

By all thy bleeding, struggling, shrieking red,

Oh, hear!

By madness caged and madness running free,

Through this our conscious race that heeds not thee,

In its concept insane of Liberty,

Oh, hear!

By all the agonies of all the past,

By earth's cold dust and ashes at the last,

By her return to the unconscious vast,

Oh, hear!

Children and lovers and the cloud-robed sea

Shall mourn him first; and then the mother land

Weeping in silence by his empty hand

And fallen sword that flashed for Liberty.

Song-bringer of a glad new minstrelsy,

He came and found joy sleeping and swift fanned

Old pagan fires, then snatched an altar brand

And wrote, "The fearless only shall be free!"

Oh, by the flame that made thine heart a home,

By the wild surges of thy silver song,

Seer before the sunrise, may there come

Spirits of dawn to light this aching wrong

Called Earth! Thou saw'st them in the foreglow roam;

But we still wait and watch, still thirst and long.

Deep in the wood's recesses cool

I see the fairy dancers glide,

In cloth of gold, in gown of green,

My lord and lady side by side.

But who has hung from leaf to leaf,

From flower to flower, a silken twine—

A cloud of grey that holds the dew

In globes of clear enchanted wine.

Or stretches far from branch to branch,

From thorn to thorn, in diamond rain,

Who caught the cup of crystal pine

And hung so fair the shining chain?

'Tis Death, the spider, in his net

Who lures the dancers as they glide

In cloth of gold, in gown of green,

My lord and lady side by side.

Last night a hand pushed on the door

And tirled at the pin.

I turned my face unto the wall,

And could not cry, "Come in!"

I dared not cry "Come in!"

Last night a voice wailed round the house

And called my name upon,

And bitter, bitter did it mourn:

"Where is my mother gone?

Where is my mother gone?"

From saintly arms I slipped and flew

Adown the moon-lit skies,

I weary of the paths of Heav'n

And flowers of Paradise—

Sweet scents of Paradise!

"For little children prattle there,

And whisper all the day

Of lovely mothers on the earth,

Where once they used to play,

Who used with them to play.

"They linger laughing by the door,

And wait the threshold on;

I have no memory so fair,

Where is my mother gone?

Where is my mother gone?"

Thrice pushed the hand upon the door

And tirled at the pin.

I turned my face unto the wall,

And could not cry, "Come in!"

I dared not cry, "Come in!"

When I shall rise, and full of many fears,

Set forth upon my last long journey lone,

And leave behind the circling earth to go

Amongst the countless stars to seek God's throne.

When in the vapourish blue, I wander, lost,

Let some fair paradise reward my eyes—

Hill after hill, and green and sunny vale,

As I have known beneath the Irish skies.

So on the far horizon I shall see

No alien land but this I hold so dear—

Killiney's silver sands, and Wicklow hills,

Dawn on my frightened eyes as I draw near.

And if it be no evil prayer to breathe,

Oh, let no stranger saint or seraphim

Wait there to lead up to the judgment seat,

My timid soul with weeping eyes and dim.

But let them come, those dear and lovely ghosts,

In all their human guise and lustihood,

To stand upon that shore and call me home,

Waving their joyful hands as once they stood—

As once they stood!

Tell me, Tanagra, who made

Out of clay so sweet a thing?

Are you the immortal shade

Of a man's imagining?

In your incarnation meet

All things fair and all things fleet.

Arrow from Diana's bow, Atalanta's feet of fire,

Some one made you long ago,

Made you out of his desire.

Waken from the sleep of clay

And rise and dance the world away.

Giovanni Malatesta, the lame old man,

Walking one night, as he was used, being old,

Upon the grey seashore at Rimini,

And thinking dimly of those two whom love

Led to one death, and his less happy soul

For which Cain waited, heard a seagull scream,

Twice, like Francesca; for he struck but twice.

At that, rage thrust down pity; for it seemed

As if those windy bodies with the sea's

Unfriended heart within them for a voice

Had turned to mock him, and he called them friends,

And he had found a wild peace hearing them

Cry senseless cries, halloing to the wind.

He turned his back upon the sea; he saw

The ragged teeth of the sharp Apennines

Shut on the sea; his shadow in the moon

Ploughed up a furrow with an iron staff

In the hard sand, and thrust a long lean chin

Outward and downward, and thrust out a foot,

And leaned to follow after. As he saw

His crooked knee go forward under him

And after it the long straight iron staff,

"The staff," he thought, "is Paolo: like that staff

And like that knee we walked between the sun,

And her unmerciful eyes"; and the old man,

Thinking of God, and how God ruled the world,

And gave to one man beauty for a snare

And a warped body to another man,

Not less than he in soul, not less than he

In hunger and capacity for joy,

Forgot Francesca's evil and his wrong,

His anger, his revenge, that memory,

Wondering at man's forgiveness of the old

Divine injustice, wondering at himself:

Giovanni Malatesta judging God.

Olivier Metra's Waltz of Roses

Sheds in a rhythmic shower

The very petals of the flower;

And all is roses,

The rouge of petals in a shower.

Down the long hall the dance returning

Rounds the full circle, rounds

The perfect rose of lights and sounds,

The rose returning

Into the circle of its rounds.

Alone, apart, one dancer watches

Her mirrored, morbid grace;

Before the mirror, face to face,

Alone she watches

Her morbid, vague, ambiguous grace.

Before the mirror's dance of shadows

She dances in a dream,

And she and they together seem

A dance of shadows,

Alike the shadows of a dream.

The orange-rosy lamps are trembling

Between the robes that turn;

In ruddy flowers of flame that burn

The lights are trembling:

The shadows and the dancers turn.

And, enigmatically smiling,

In the mysterious night,

She dances for her own delight,

A shadow smiling

Back to a shadow in the night.

I come in the little things,

Saith the Lord:

Not borne on morning wings

Of majesty, but I have set My Feet

Amidst the delicate and bladed wheat

That springs triumphant in the furrowed sod.

There do I dwell, in weakness and in power;

Not broken or divided, saith our God!

In your strait garden plot I come to flower:

About your porch My Vine

Meek, fruitful, doth entwine;

Waits, at the threshold, Love's appointed hour.

I come in the little things,

Saith the Lord:

Yea! on the glancing wings

Of eager birds, the softly pattering feet

Of furred and gentle beasts, I come to meet

Your hard and wayward heart. In brown bright eyes

That peep from out the brake, I stand confest.

On every nest

Where feathery Patience is content to brood

And leaves her pleasure for the high emprise

Of motherhood—

There doth my Godhead rest.

I come in the little things,

Saith the Lord:

My starry wings

I do forsake,

Love's highway of humility to take;

Meekly I fit my stature to your need.

In beggar's part

About your gates I shall not cease to plead—

As man, to speak with man—

Till by such art

I shall achieve My Immemorial Plan,

Pass the low lintel of the human heart.

What do you seek within, O Soul, my Brother?

What do you seek within?

I seek a life that shall never die,

Some haven to win

From mortality.

What do you find within, O Soul, my Brother?

What do you find within?

I find great quiet where no noises come.

Without, the world's din:

Silence in my home.

Whom do you find within, O Soul, my Brother?

Whom do you find within?

I find a friend that in secret came:

His scarred hands within

He shields a faint flame.

What would you do within, O Soul, my Brother?

What would you do within?

Bar door and window that none may see:

That alone we may be

(Alone! face to face,

In that flame-lit place!)

When first we begin

To speak one with another.

Threatening the sky,

Foreign and wild the sea,

Yet all the fleet of fishers are afloat;

They lie

Sails furled

Each frail and tossing boat,

And cast their little nets into an unknown world.

The countless, darting splendours that they miss,

The rare and vital magic of the main,

The which for all their care

They never shall ensnare—

All this

Perchance in dreams they know;

Yet are content

And count the night well spent

If so

The indrawn net contain

The matter of their daily nourishment.

The unseizable sea,

The circumambient grace of Deity,

Where live and move

Unnumbered presences of power and love,

Slips through our finest net:

We draw it up all wet,

A-shimmer with the dew-drops of that deep.

And yet

For all their toil the fishers may not keep

The instant living freshness of the wave;

Its passing benediction cannot give

The mystic meat they crave

That they may live.

But on some stormy night

We, venturing far from home,

And casting our poor trammel to the tide,

Perhaps shall feel it come

Back to the vessel's side,

So easy and so light

A child might lift,

Yet hiding in its mesh the one desired gift;

That living food

Which man for ever seeks to snatch from out the flood.

I've heard, I've heard

The long low note of a bird,

The nightingale fluting her heart's one word.

I know, I know

Pink carnations heaped with snow.

Summer and winter alike they blow.

I've lain, I've lain

Under roses' delicate rain,

That fall and whisper and fall again.

Come woe, come white

Shroud o' the world, black night!

I have had love and the sun's light.

When did the Changeling enter in?

How did the Devil set him a gin

Where the little soul lay like a rabbit

Faint and still for a fiend to grab it?

I know not.

Where was the fount of our dishonour?

Was it a father's buried sin?

Brought his mother a curse upon her?

I trow not.

So pretty

Body and soul, the child began.

He carolled and kissed and laughed and ran,

A glad creature of Earth and Heaven,

And the knowledge of love and the secret of pity,

That need our learning,

God to him at his birth had given.

One remembers

Trifles indeed—the backward-turning

Way he would smile from the field at play.

Sometimes the Thing that sits by the embers

Smiles at me—devil!—the selfsame way.

If only early enough one had guessed,

Known, suspected, watched him at rest,

Noted the Master's sign and fashion,

And unbefooled by the heart's compassion,

Undeterred by form and feature,

Caught the creature,

Tried by the test of water and fire,

Pierced and pinioned with silver wire,

Circled with signs that could control,

Battered with spells that tame and torture

The demon nature,

Till he writhed in his shape, a fiend confest,

And vanished—

Then had come back, the poor soul banished,

Then had come back the little soul.

But now there is nothing to do or to say.

Will no one grip him and tear him away,

The Thing of Blood that gnaws at my breast?

Perhaps he called me and I was dumb.

Unconcerned I sat and heard

Little things,

Ivy tendrils, a bird's wings,

A frightened bird—

Or faint hands at the window-pane?

And now he will never come again,

The little soul. He is quite lost.

I have summoned him back with incantations

Of heart-deep sobs and whispering cries,

Of anguished love and travail of prayer,

Nothing has answered my despair

But long sighs

Of pitiful wind in the fir-plantations.

Poor little soul! He cannot come.

Perchance on a night when trees were tost,

The Changeling rode with his cavalcade

Among the clouds, that were tossing too,

And made the little soul afraid.

They hunted him madly, the howling crew,

Into the Limbo of the lost,

Into the Limbo of the others

Who wander crying and calling their mothers.

Now I know

The creatures that come to harry and raid

How they ride in the airy regions,

Dance their rounds on meadow and moor,

Gallop under the earth in legions,

Hunt and holloa and run their races

Over tombs in burial-places.

In the common roads where people go,

Masked and mingled with human traces,

I have marked, I who know,

In the common dust a devil's spoor.

To somebody's gate

A Thing is footing it, cares not much

Whether he creep through an Emperor's portal

And steal the fate

Of a Prince, or into a poor man's hutch—

For the grief will be everywhere as great

And he'll everywhere spread the smirch of sin—

So long as a taste of our blood he may win,

So long as he may become a mortal.

I beseech you,

Prince and poor man, to watch the gate.

The heart is poisoned where he has fed,

The house is ruined that lets him in.

Yet I know I shall never teach you.

With the voice of the dear and the eyes of the dead

He will come to the door, and you'll let him in.

If I could forget

Only that ever I had a child,

If only upon some mirk midnight,

When he stands at the door, all wet and wild,

With his owl's feather and dripping hair,

I could lie warm and not care,

I should rid myself of this Changeling yet.

I carried my woe to the Wise Man yonder,

"You sell forgetfulness, they say.

How much to pay

To forget a son who is my sorrow?"

The Wise Man began to ponder.

"Charms have I, many a one,

To make a woman forget her lover,

A man his wife or a fortune fled,

To make the day forget the morrow,

The doer forget the deed he has done,

But a mighty spell must I borrow

To make a woman forget her son,

For this I will take a royal fee.

Your house," said he,

"The storied hangings richly cover,

On your banquet table there were six

Golden branched candlesticks,

And of noble dishes you had a score.

The crown you wore

I remember, the sparkling crown.

All of these,

Madam, you shall pay me down.

Also the day I give you ease

Of golden guineas you pay a hundred."

Laughing I left the Wise Man's door.

Has he found such things where a Changeling sits?

The home is darkened from roof to floor,

The house is naked and ravaged and plundered

Where a Changling sits

On the hearthstone, warming his shivering fits.

He sits at his ease, for he knows well

He can keep his post.

He has left me nothing to pay the cost

Of snatching my heart from his private Hell.

Yet when all is done and told

I am glad the Wise Man in the City

Had no pity

For me, and for him I had no gold.

Because if I did not remember him,

My little child—Ah! What should we have,

He and I? Not even a grave

With a name of his own by the river's brim.

Because if among the poppies gay,

On the hill-side, now my eyes are dim,

I could not fancy a child at play,

And if I should pass by the pool in the quarry

And never see him, a darling ghost,

Sailing a boat there, I should be sorry—

If in the firelit, lone December

I never heard him come scampering post

Haste down the stair—if the soul that is lost

Came back, and I did not remember.