*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 54822 *** --------------------------------------- This ebook is dedicated to EMMY friend, colleague, mentor, role model who fell off the planet far too soon. --------------------------------------- Note: Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/roadsideharpbook00guinuoft A ROADSIDE HARP * * * * * * By Miss Guiney. THE WHITE SAIL, AND OTHER POEMS. 16mo, gilt top, $1.25. SONGS AT THE START. 16mo, $1.00. A ROADSIDE HARP. 16mo. HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. BOSTON AND NEW YORK. * * * * * * A ROADSIDE HARP A Book of Verses by LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY “_Highway, since you my chief Parnassus be, And that my Muse, to some ears not unsweet, Tempers her words to trampling horses’ feet, More oft than to a chamber melody!_” [Illustration] Boston and New York Houghton Mifflin and Company M DCCC XCIII Copyright, 1893 By Louise Imogen Guiney All Rights Reserved The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U.S.A. Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co. TO DORA AND HESTER SIGERSON _There in the Druid brake If the cuckoo be awake Again, O take my rhyme! And keep it long for the sake Of a bygone primrose-time; You of the star-bright head That twilight thoughts sequester, You to your native fountains led Like to a young Muse garlanded: Dora, and Hester._ March, 1893. TABLE OF CONTENTS _Page_ PETER RUGG the Bostonian 1 A Ballad of Kenelm 8 Vergniaud in the Tumbril 10 Winter Boughs 13 M. A. 1822-1888 13 W. H. 1778-1830 14 The Vigil-at-Arms 14 A Madonna of Domenico Ghirlandajo 15 Spring Nightfall 15 A Friend’s Song for Simoisius 16 Athassel Abbey 17 Florentin 18 Friendship Broken 19 A Song of the Lilac 20 In a Ruin, after a Thunder-Storm 21 The Cherry Bough 21 Two Irish Peasant Songs 23 The Japanese Anemone 25 Tryste Noel 26 A Talisman 27 Heathenesse 27 For Izaak Walton 28 Sherman: “An Horatian Ode” 29 When on the Marge of Evening 32 Rooks in New College Gardens 32 Open, Time 33 The Knight Errant (Donatello’s Saint George) 34 To a Dog’s Memory 35 A Seventeenth-Century Song 36 On the Pre-Reformation Churches about Oxford 37 The Still of the Year 38 A Foot-note to a Famous Lyric 39 T. W. P. 1819-1892 41 Summum Bonum 41 Saint Florent-le-Vieil 42 Hylas 42 Nocturne 43 The Kings 44 Alexandriana 47 London: Twelve Sonnets. On First Entering Westminster Abbey 55 Fog 55 St. Peter-ad-Vincula 56 Strikers in Hyde Park 56 Changes in the Temple 57 The Lights of London 58 Doves 58 In the Reading-Room of the British Museum 59 Sunday Chimes in the City 59 A Porch in Belgravia 60 York Stairs 61 In the Docks 61 A ROADSIDE HARP. POEMS BY LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY _Peter Rugg the Bostonian_ I THE mare is pawing by the oak, The chaise is cool and wide For Peter Rugg the Bostonian With his little son beside; The women loiter at the wheels In the pleasant summer-tide. “And when wilt thou be home, Father?” “And when, good husband, say: The cloud hangs heavy on the house What time thou art away.” He answers straight, he answers short, “At noon of the seventh day.” “Fail not to come, if God so will, And the weather be kind and clear.” “Farewell, farewell! But who am I A blockhead rain to fear? God willing or God unwilling, I have said it, I will be here.” He gathers up the sunburnt boy And from the gate is sped; He shakes the spark from the stones below, The bloom from overhead, Till the last roofs of his own town Pass in the morning-red. Upon a homely mission North unto York he goes, Through the long highway broidered thick With elder-blow and rose; And sleeps in sound of breakers At every twilight’s close. Intense upon his heedless head Frowns Agamenticus, Knowing of Heaven’s challenger The answer: even thus The Patience that is hid on high Doth stoop to master us. II Full light are all his parting dreams; Desire is in his brain; He tightens at the tavern-post The fiery creature’s rein: “Now eat thine apple, six years’ child! We face for home again.” They had not gone a many mile With nimble heart and tongue, When the lone thrush grew silent The walnut woods among; And on the lulled horizon A premonition hung. The babes at Hampton schoolhouse, The wife with lads at sea, Search with a level-lifted hand The distance bodingly; And farmer folk bid pilgrims in Under a safe roof-tree. The mowers mark by Newbury How low the swallows fly, They glance across the southern roads All white and fever-dry, And the river, anxious at the bend, Beneath a thinking sky. But there is one abroad was born To disbelieve and dare: Along the highway furiously He cuts the purple air. The wind leaps on the startled world As hounds upon a hare; With brawl and glare and shudder ope The sluices of the storm; The woods break down, the sand upblows In blinding volleys warm; The yellow floods in frantic surge Familiar fields deform. From evening until morning His skill will not avail, And as he cheers his youngest born, His cheek is spectre-pale; For the bonnie mare from courses known Has drifted like a sail! III On some wild crag he sees the dawn Unsheathe her scimitar. “Oh, if it be my mother-earth, And not a foreign star, Tell me the way to Boston, And is it near or far?” One watchman lifts his lamp and laughs: “Ye’ve many a league to wend.” The next doth bless the sleeping boy From his mad father’s end; A third upon a drawbridge growls: “Bear ye to larboard, friend.” Forward and backward, like a stone The tides have in their hold, He dashes east, and then distraught Darts west as he is told, (Peter Rugg the Bostonian, That knew the land of old!) And journeying, and resting scarce A melancholy space, Turns to and fro, and round and round, The frenzy in his face, And ends alway in angrier mood, And in a stranger place, Lost! lost in bayberry thickets Where Plymouth plovers run, And where the masts of Salem Look lordly in the sun; Lost in the Concord vale, and lost By rocky Wollaston! Small thanks have they that guide him, Awed and aware of blight; To hear him shriek denial It sickens them with fright: “They lied to me a month ago With thy same lie to-night!” To-night, to-night, as nights succeed, He swears at home to bide, Until, pursued with laughter Or fled as soon as spied, The weather-drenchèd man is known Over the country side! IV The seventh noon ’s a memory, And autumn ’s closing in; The quince is fragrant on the bough, And barley chokes the bin. “O Boston, Boston, Boston! And O my kith and kin!” The snow climbs o’er the pasture wall, It crackles ’neath the moon; And now the rustic sows the seed, Damp in his heavy shoon; And now the building jays are loud In canopies of June. For season after season The three are whirled along, Misled by every instinct Of light, or scent, or song; Yea, put them on the surest trail, The trail is in the wrong. Upon those wheels in any path The rain will follow loud, And he who meets that ghostly man Will meet a thunder-cloud, And whosoever speaks with him May next bespeak his shroud. Tho’ nigh two hundred years have gone, Doth Peter Rugg the more A gentle answer and a true Of living lips implore: “Oh, show me to my own town, And to my open door!” V Where shall he see his own town Once dear unto his feet? The psalms, the tankard to the King, The beacon’s cliffy seat, The gabled neighborhood, the stocks Set in the middle street? How shall he know his own town If now he clatters thro’? Much men and cities change that have Another love to woo; And things occult, incredible, They find to think and do. With such new wonders since he went A broader gossip copes, Across the crowded triple hills, And up the harbor slopes, Tradition’s self for him no more Remembers, watches, hopes. But ye, O unborn children! (For many a race must thrive And drip away like icicles Ere Peter Rugg arrive,) If of a sudden to your ears His plaint is blown alive; If nigh the city, folding in A little lad that cries, A wet and weary traveller Shall fix you with his eyes, And from the crazy carriage lean To spend his heart in sighs:-- “That I may enter Boston, Oh, help it to befall! There would no fear encompass me, No evil craft appall; Ah, but to be in Boston, GOD WILLING, after all!”-- Ye children, tremble not, but go And lift his bridle brave In the one Name, the dread Name, That doth forgive and save, And lead him home to Copp’s Hill ground, And to his fathers’ grave. [Illustration] _A Ballad of Kenelm_ “In Clent cow-batch, Kenelm King born Lieth under a thorn.” IT was a goodly child, Sweet as the gusty May; It was a knight that broke On his play, A fair and coaxing knight: “O little liege!” said he, “Thy sister bids thee come After me. “A pasture rolling west Lies open to the sun, Bright-shod with primroses Doth it run; And forty oaks be nigh, Apart, and face to face, And cow-bells all the morn In the space. “And there the sloethorn bush Beside the water grows, And hides her mocking head Under snows; Black stalks afoam with bloom, And never a leaf hath she: Thou crystal of the realm, Follow me!” Uplooked the undefiled: “All things, ere I was born My sister found; now find Me the thorn.” They travelled down the lane, An hour’s dust they made: The belted breast of one Bore a blade. The primroses were out, The aislèd oaks were green, The cow-bells pleasantly Tinked between; The brook was beaded gold, The thorn was burgeoning, Where evil Ascobert Slew the King. He hid him in the ground, Nor washed away the dyes, Nor smoothed the fallen curls From his eyes. No father had the babe To bless his bed forlorn; No mother now to weep By the thorn. There fell upon that place A shaft of heavenly light; The thorn in Mercia spake Ere the night: “Beyond, a sister sees Her crownèd period, But at my root a lamb Seeth God.” Unto each, even so. As dew before the cloud, The guilty glory passed Of the proud. Boy Kenelm has the song, Saint Kenelm has the bower; His thorn a thousand years Is in flower! [Illustration] _Vergniaud in the Tumbril_ I THE wheels are silent, the cords are slack, The terrible faces are surging back. France, they too love thee! bid that keep plain; The wrath and carnage I stayed afar Colleagues of my white conscience are: Accept my slayers, accept me slain! Shed for days, in its olden guise The quiet delicate snake-skin lies To cheat a boy on his woodland stroll: What if he crush it? Others see Beauty’s miracle under a tree Supple in mail, and adroit, and whole; The shaper rid of a shape, and thence (Growth of an outgrown excellence), Mounted with infinite might and speed, Freed like a soul to the heaven it dreamed; Over life that was, and death that seemed A victory and a revenge indeed! As the serpent moves to the open spring, The while a mock, a delusive thing Sole in sight of the crowd may be, So ye, my martyrs, arise, advance! For what is left at the feet of France It is our failure, it is not we. II Not to ourselves our strength we brought: Inexpiable the Hand that wrought In us the ruin of no redress, The storm, the effort, the pang, the fire, The premonition, the vast desire, The primal passion of righteousness! Scarce by the pitiful thwarted plan, The haste, or the studious fears of man Drawing a discord from best delight, The measure is meted of God most wise; Nor the future, with her adjusted eyes, Shall speak us false in our dying fight. But e’en to me now some use is clear In the builded truth down-beaten here For any along the way to spurn, Since ever our broken task may stand Disaster’s college in one saved land, Whence many a stripling state shall learn. Out of the human shoots the divine: Be the Republic our only sign, For whose life’s glory our lives have been Ambassadors on a noble way Tempest-driven, and sent astray The first and the final good between. Close to the vision undestroyed, The hope not compassed and yet not void, We perish so; but the world shall mark On the hilltop of our work we died, With joy of the groom before the bride, With a dawn-cry thro’ the battle’s dark. III O last save me on the scaffold’s round! Take heart, that after a thirst profound The cup of delicious death is near, And whoso hold it, or whence it flow, O drink it to France, to France! and know For the gift thou givest, thou hast her tear. True seed thou wert of the sunnier hour, Honorable, and burst to flower Late in a hell-pit poison-walled: Farewell, mortality lopped and pale, Thou body that wast my friend! and Hail, Dear spirit already!... My name is called. [Illustration] _Winter Boughs_ HOW tender and how slow, in sunset’s cheer, Far on the hill, our quiet treetops fade! A broidery of northern 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 fall, to bring this wonder here. O ye forgetting and outliving boughs, With not a plume, gay in the jousts 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. [Illustration] _M. A. 1822-1888_ GOOD oars, for Arnold’s sake By Laleham lightly bound, And near the bank, O soft, Darling swan! Let not the o’erweary wake From this his natal ground, But where he slumbered oft, Slumber on. [Illustration] _W. H. 1778-1830_ BETWEEN the wet trees and the sorry steeple, Keep, Time, in dark Soho, what once was Hazlitt, Seeker of Truth, and finder oft of Beauty; Beauty ’s a sinking light, ah, none too faithful; But Truth, who leaves so here her spent pursuer, Forgets not her great pawn: herself shall claim it. Therefore sleep safe, thou dear and battling spirit, Safe also on our earth, begetting ever Some one love worth the ages and the nations! Nothing falls under to thine eyes eternal. Sleep safe in dark Soho: the stars are shining, Titian and Wordsworth live; the People marches. [Illustration] _The Vigil-at-Arms_ KEEP holy watch with silence, prayer, and fasting Till morning break, and all the bugles 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! [Illustration] _A Madonna of Domenico Ghirlandajo_ LET thoughts go hence as from a mountain spring, Of the great dust of battle clean and whole, And the wild birds that have no nest nor goal Fold in a young man’s breast their trancèd wing; For thou art made of purest Light, a thing Art gave, beyond her own devout control; And Light upon thy seeing, suffering soul Hath wrought a sign for many journeying; Our sign. As up a wayside, after rain, When the blown beeches purple all the height And clouds sink to the sea-marge, suddenly The autumn sun (how soft, how solemn-bright!) Moves to the vacant dial, so is lain God’s meaning Hand, thou chosen, upon thee. [Illustration] _Spring Nightfall_ APRIL is sad, as if the end she knew. The maple’s misty red, the willow’s gold Face-deep in nimble water, seem to hold In hope’s own weather their autumnal hue. There is no wind, no star, no sense of dew, But the thin vapors gird the mountain old, And the moon, risen before the west is cold, Pale with compassion slopes into the blue. Under the shining dark the day hath passed Shining; so even of thee was home bereaved, Thou dear and pensive spirit! overcast Hardly at all, but drawn from light to light, Who in the doubtful hour, and unperceived, Rebuked adoring hearts with change and flight. [Illustration] _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, The one inexorable thing!) In rocky hollows cool and deep, The bees our boyhood hunted sleep; The early moon from Ida’s steep Comes to the empty wrestling-ring. (Alas, alas, The one inexorable thing!) Upon the widowed wind recede No echoes of the shepherd’s reed, And children without laughter lead The war-horse to the watering. (Alas, alas, The one inexorable thing!) Thou stranger Ajax Telamon! What to the loveliest hast thou done, That ne’er with him a maid may run Across the marigolds in spring? (Alas, alas, The one inexorable thing!) With footstep separate and slow The father and the mother go, Not now upon an urn they know To mingle tears for comforting. (Alas, alas, The one inexorable thing!) The world to me has nothing dear Beyond the namesake river here: O Simois is wild and clear! And to his brink my heart I bring; (Alas, alas, The one inexorable thing!) My heart no more, if that might be, Would stay his waters from the sea, To cover Troy, to cover me, To save us from the perishing. (Alas, alas, The one inexorable thing!) [Illustration] _Athassel Abbey_ FOLLY and Time have fashioned Of thee a songless reed; O not-of-earth-impassioned! Thy music ’s mute indeed. Red from the chantry crannies The orchids burn and swing, And where the arch began is Rest for a raven’s wing; And up the bossy column Quick tails of squirrels wave, And black, prodigious, solemn, A forest fills the nave. Still faithfuller, still faster, To ruin give thy heart: Perfect before the Master Aye as thou wert, thou art. But I am wind that passes In ignorant wild tears, Uplifted from the grasses, Blown to the void of years, Blown to the void, yet sighing In thee to merge and cease, Last breath of beauty’s dying, Of sanctity, of peace! Tho’ use nor place forever Unto my soul befall, By no belovèd river Set in a saintly wall, Do thou by builders given Speech of the dumb to be, Beneath thine open heaven, Athassel! pray for me. [Illustration] _Florentin_ HEART all full of heavenly haste, too like the bubble bright On loud little water 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, thro’ troubled valleys, we also follow thee. [Illustration] _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 arts we win, 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 sceptic 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 Thro’ a long avenue, and voices kind Idle, and indeterminate, and blind As rumors 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, honorable 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. [Illustration] _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! And 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; O 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. [Illustration] _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 valor: 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. [Illustration] _The Cherry Bough_ IN a new poet’s and a new friend’s honor, 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. O naught is absent, O 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 revels 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 color, And you, and you that burst 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.” [Illustration] _Two Irish Peasant Songs_ I I KNEAD and I spin, but my life is low the while, Oh, I long to be alone, and walk abroad a mile, Yet if I walk alone, and think of naught at all, Why from me that ’s young should the wild tears fall? The shower-stricken earth, the earth-colored 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 ’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 little angry spray that is the under-white of leaves; And from the thorn in companies the foamy petals fall, And waves of jolly ivy wink along a windy wall. ’Tis the time o’ the year the marsh is full of sound, And good and glorious it is to smell the living ground. The crimson-headed catkin shakes above the pasture-bars, The daisy takes the middle field and spangles it with stars, And down the bank into the lane the primroses do crowd, All colored 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 downs are dripping nightly, the breathèd damps arise, Deliciously the freshets cool the grayling’s golden eyes, And lying in a row against the chilly north, the sheep Inclose a place without a wind for 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. [Illustration] _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 in a bower: But low by the wall is my odorless 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 ardors 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, tho’ resumed by the Giver, And dead long ago, being lovely for ever. [Illustration] _Tryste Noel_ THE Ox he openeth wide the Doore And from the Snowe he calls her inne, And he hath seen her Smile therefore, Our Ladye without Sinne. Now soone from Sleepe 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 husht his voyce and bent Trewe eyes of Pitty ore the Mow, And on his lovelie Neck, forspent, The Blessed lays 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 Juda’s 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! [Illustration] _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 anything sweet The art to lay it aside! [Illustration] _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 honor 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 thro’ gods not inaccessible. [Illustration] _For Izaak Walton_ WHAT trout shall coax the rod of yore In Itchen stream to dip? What lover of her banks restore That sweet Socratic lip? Old fishing and wishing Are over many a year. O hush thee, O hush thee! heart innocent and dear. Again the foamy shallows fill, The quiet clouds amass, And soft as bees by Catherine Hill At dawn the anglers pass, And follow the hollow, In boughs to disappear. O hush thee, O hush thee! heart innocent and dear. Nay, rise not now, nor with them take One silver-freckled fool! Thy sons to-day bring each an ache For ancient arts to cool. But, father, lie rather Unhurt and idle near; O hush thee, O hush thee! heart innocent and dear. While thought of thee to men is yet A sylvan playfellow, Ne’er by thy marble they forget In pious cheer to go. As air falls, the prayer falls O’er kingly Winchester: O hush thee, O hush thee! heart innocent and dear. [Illustration] _Sherman: “An Horatian Ode”_ THIS was the truest man of men, The early-armored citizen, Who had, with most of sight, Most passion for the right; Who first forecasting treason’s scope Able to sap the Founders’ hope, First to the laic arm Cried ultimate alarm; Who bent upon his guns the while A misconceived and aching smile, And felt, thro’ havoc’s part, A torment of the heart, Sure, when he cut the moated South From Shiloh to Savannah’s mouth, Braved grandly to the end, To conquer like a friend; In whom the Commonwealth withstood Again the Carolinian blood, The beautiful proud line Beneath an evil sign, And taught his foes and doubters still How fatal is a good man’s will, That like a sun or sod Thinks not itself, but God! Many the captains of our wrath Sought thus the pious civic path, Knowing in what a land Their destiny was planned, And after, with a forward sense, A simple Roman excellence, Pledge in their spirit bore That war should be no more. Thrice Roman he, who saw the shock (Calm as a weather-wrinkled rock,) Roll in the Georgian fen; And steadfast aye as then In plenitude of old control That asked, secure of his own soul, No pardon and no aid, If clear his way were made, Would have nor seat nor bays, nor bring The Cæsar in him to be king, But with abstracted ear Rode pleased without a cheer. Now he declines from peace and age, And home, his triple heritage, The last and dearest head Of all our perfect dead, O what if sorrow cannot reach Far in the shallow fords of speech, But leads us silent round The sad Missouri ground, Where on her hero Freedom lays The scroll and blazon of her praise, And bids to him belong Arms trailing, and a song, And broken flags with ruined dyes (Bright once in young and dying eyes), Against the morn to shake For love’s familiar sake? The blessèd broken flags unfurled Above a healed and happier world! There let them droop, and be His tent of victory; There, in each year’s auguster light, Lean in, and loose their red and white, Like apple-blossoms strewn Upon his burial-stone. For nothing more, the ages thro’, Can nature or the nation do For him who helped retrieve Our life, as we believe, Save that we also, trooping by In sound yet of his battle-cry, Safeguard with general mind Our pact as brothers kind, And, ever nearer to our star, Adore indeed not what we are, But wise reprovings hold Thankworthier than gold; And bear in faith and rapture such As can eternal issues touch, Whole from the final field, Our father Sherman’s shield. [Illustration] _When on the Marge of Evening_ WHEN on the marge of evening the last blue light is broken, And winds of dreamy odor are loosened from afar, Or when my lattice opens, before the lark has spoken, On dim laburnum-blossoms, and morning’s dying star, I think of thee, (O mine the more if other eyes be sleeping!) Whose great and noonday splendor the many share and see, While sacred and forever, some perfect law is keeping The late and early twilight alone and sweet for me. [Illustration] _Rooks in New College Gardens_ THRO’ rosy cloud, and over thorny towers, Their wings with all the autumn distance filled, From Isis’ valley border hundred-hilled, The rooks are crowding home as evening lowers: Not for men only and their musing hours, By battled walls did gracious Wykeham build These dewy spaces early sown and stilled, These dearest inland melancholy bowers. Blest birds! A book held open on the knee Below, is all they know of Adam’s blight: With surer art the while, and simpler rite, They follow Truth in some monastic tree, Where breathe against their innocent breasts by night The scholar’s star, the star of sanctity. [Illustration] _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 has done with roofs and men. Open, Time, and let him pass, Vague and innocent again, Into country grass. [Illustration] _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, Honor at eventide. Let claws of lightning clutch me From summer’s groaning cloud, Or ever malice touch me, And glory make me proud. O 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 armor gay! The passion for perfection Redeem my failing way! The arrows of the tragic time From sudden ambush cast, With calm angelic touches 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! [Illustration] _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 thro’ 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 odors of the sappy orchard-bough, And brooks begin to brawl along the march; The late frost steams from hollow sedges high; The finch is come, the flame-blue dragon-fly, The cowslip’s common gold 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. [Illustration] _A Seventeenth-Century Song_ SHE alone of Shepherdesses With her blue disdayning eyes, Wo’d not hark a Kyng that dresses All his lute in sighes: Yet to winne Katheryn, I elect for mine Emprise. None is like her, none above her, Who so lifts my youth in me, That a littel more to love her Were to leave her free! But to winne Katheryn, Is mine utmost love’s degree. Distaunce, cold, delay, and danger, Build the four walles of her bower; She ’s noe Sweete for any stranger, She ’s noe valley flower: And to winne Katheryn, To her height my heart can Tower! Uppe to Beautie’s promontory I will climb, nor loudlie call Perfect and escaping glory Folly, if I fall: Well to winne Katheryn! To be worth her is my all. [Illustration] _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 Wytham wall That doth upon adoring ivies lean; Meek Binsey; Dorchester where streams convene Bidding on graves her solemn shadow fall; Clear Cassington that soars perpetual; Holton and Hampton, and ye towers between: If one of all in your sad courts that come, Belovèd and disparted! be your own, Kin to the souls ye had, while time endures, Known to each exiled, each estrangèd stone Home in the 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 spirit sinks away; And under English eaves, more still than they, Far-off, incoming, wonderful, he hears The long-arrested and believing years Carry the sea-wall! Shall he, sighing, say, “Farewell to Faith, for she is dead at best Who had such beauty”? or with kisses lain For witness on her darkened doors, go by With a new psalm: “O banished light so nigh! Of them was I who bore thee and who blest; Even here remember me when thou shalt reign.” [Illustration] _The Still of the Year_ UP from the willow-root Subduing agonies leap; The squirrel and the purple moth Turn over amid their sleep; The icicled rocks aloft Burn saffron and blue alway, And trickling and tinkling The snows of the drift decay. O 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 the little trillium-blossom Tucked under her leaf to think; 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. [Illustration] _A Foot-note to a Famous Lyric_ TRUE love’s own talisman, which here Shakespeare and Sidney failed to teach, A steel-and-velvet Cavalier Gave to our Saxon speech: Chief miracle of theme and touch That upstart enviers 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 of the supremest thing A poet might have said!” Young knight and wit and beau, who won Mid war’s adventure, ladies’ praise, Was’t well of you, ere you had done, To blight our modern bays? O yet to you, whose random hand Struck from the dark whole gems like these, Archaic beauty, never planned Nor reared by wan degrees, Which leaves an artist poor, and art An earldom richer all her years; To you, dead on your shield apart, Be “Ave!” passed in tears. How shall this singing era spurn Her master, and in lauds be loath? Your worth, your work, bid us discern Light exquisite in both. ’T was virtue’s breath inflamed your lyre, Heroic from the heart it ran; Nor for the shedding of such fire Lives since a manlier man. And till your strophe sweet and bold So lovely aye, so lonely long, Love’s self outdo, dear Lovelace! hold The pinnacles of song. [Illustration] _T. W. P. 1819-1892_ 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. [Illustration] _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, tho’ 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!” [Illustration] _Saint Florent-le-Vieil_ THE spacious open vale, the vale of doom, Is full of autumn sunset; blue and strong The semicirque of water sweeps among Her lofty acres, each a martyr’s tomb; And slowly, slowly, melt into the gloom Two little idling clouds, that look for long Like roseleaf bodies of two babes in song Correggio left to flush a convent room. Dear hill deflowered in the frantic war! In my day, rather, have I seen thee blest With pastoral roofs to break the darker crest Of apple-woods by many-islèd Loire, And fires that still suffuse the lower west, Blanching the beauty of thine evening star. [Illustration] _Hylas_ JAR in arm, they bade him rove Thro’ the alder’s long alcove, Where the hid spring musically Gushes to the ample valley. (There ’s a bird on the under bough Fluting evermore and now: “Keep--young!” but who knows how?) Down the woodland corridor, Odors deepened more and more; Blossomed dogwood, in the briers, 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 Noisy ploughmen drinking, drinking, On his drownèd cheek down-sinking; 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-gray, their eyes adore him. (There ’s a bird on the under bough Fluting evermore and now: “Keep--young!” but who knows how?) [Illustration] _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 pausing boat in shallows drifted, Alone her plaintive form ascends the sky. O sing! the water-golds are deepening now, A hush is come upon the beechen bough; She shines the while on thee, as saint to saint Sweet interchanged adorings may allow: Sing, dearest, with that lily throat uplifted; They are so like, the holy Moon and thou! [Illustration] _The Kings_ A MAN said unto his angel: “My spirits are fallen thro’, And I cannot carry this battle, O brother! what shall I do? “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, foolish 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 very, the only, The solemn event of things; The weakest of hearts defying Is stronger than all these Kings. “Tho’ 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!” ALEXANDRIANA _Alexandriana_ I I LAID the strewings, sweetest, 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 wild 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 flag I 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 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. V Upon thy level tomb, till windy winter dawn, 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 shout forth: “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 ardors are But a cinder in a jar? X 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! XI As wind that wasteth the unmarried rose, And mars the golden breakers in the bay, Hurtful and sweet from heaven forever 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 Praise thou the Mighty Mother for what is wrought, not me, A nameless nothing-caring head asleep against her knee. LONDON: TWELVE SONNETS _On First Entering Westminster Abbey_ THABOR of England! since my light is short And faint, O rather by the sun anew Of timeless passion set my dial true, That with thy saints and thee I may consort, And wafted in the calm Chaucerian 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 holy isle, Above the stormy sea of ended kings. [Illustration] _Fog_ LIKE bodiless water passing in a sigh, Thro’ 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 Hebrew bugles blow, Black and dissolved; nor could the founders know How what was built so bright should daily die. Thy mood with man’s is broken and blent in, City of Stains! and ache of thought doth drown The primitive 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, tho’ the dark visor ’s down. [Illustration] _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 hateful garden-row Of ruined roses hanging from the stem, Where winds of old defeat yet batter them, Infects me: suddenly must I depart, Ere thought of men’s injustice then and now Add to these aisles one other broken heart. [Illustration] _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, Thro’ 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. [Illustration] _Changes in the Temple_ THE cry is at thy gates, thou darling ground, Again; for oft ere now thy children went Beggared and wroth, and parting greeting sent Some red old alley with a dial crowned; Some house of honor, in a glory bound With lives and deaths of spirits excellent; Some tree rude-taken from his kingly tent Hard by a little fountain’s friendly sound. O for Virginius’ hand, if only that Maintain the whole, and spoil these spoilings soon! Better the scowling Strand should lose, alas, Her peopled oasis, and where it was All mournful in the cleared quadrangle sat Echo, and ivy, and the loitering moon. [Illustration] _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 sudden gleam, London, one moment fallen and forgot. Her booths begin to flare; and gases bright Prick door and window; all her streets obscure Sparkle and swarm with nothing true nor sure, Full as a marsh of mist and winking light; Heaven thickens over, Heaven that cannot cure Her tear by day, her fevered smile by night. [Illustration] _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, The 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.” [Illustration] _In the Reading-Room of the British Museum_ PRAISED be the moon of books! that doth above A world of men, the fallen Past behold, And fill the spaces else so 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. [Illustration] _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! Tho’ no man heed, they shower A subtle beauty on the empty hour, From all their dark throats aching and outblown; Aye in the prayerless places welcome most, Like the last gull that up a naked coast Deploys her white and steady wing, alone. [Illustration] _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 not have been for evermore. [Illustration] _York Stairs_ MANY a musing eye returns to thee, Against the lurid 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. [Illustration] _In the Docks_ WHERE the bales thunder till the day is done, And the wild sounds with wilder odors 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 colors bound, Away, away from this too thoughtful ground, Sated with human trespass and despair, Thee only, from the desert, from the storm, A sick mind follows into Eden air. *** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 54822 ***