Song. Love, Like Cordial Wine

Love, like cordial wine,
Pouring his soul in mine,
Bids me to sing;
Youth's bright glory snatch,
And Time's paces match
With fearless wing.

Now, while breath is bliss,
And dawn wakes me with a kiss,
Ere this rapture flee,
Ere my heart thou claim,
Sorrow, I will aim
A shaft at thee.

Love Of My Love

O Love of my Love, O blue,
Blue sky that over me bends!
The height and the light are you,
And I the lark that ascends,
Trembling ascends and soars,
A heart that pants, a throat
That throbs, a song that pours
The heart out as it sings.
Lo, the dumb world falls remote,
But higher, brighter, the golden height!
Oh, I faint upon my wings!
Lift me, Love, beyond their flight,
Lift me, lose me in the light.

Dear child, thou know'st, I blame not thee;
Thou too, I know, hast shared the smart.
Neither did wrong; 'twas only she,
Nature, that moulded us apart.

But not to have sinned, in Nature's eyes
I find a brittle plea to trust:
She punishes the just unwise
More hardly than the wise unjust.

She placed our souls, like Heaven's lone spheres,
In separate paths, no power can move:
O truth too heart--breaking for tears!
Not even Love, not even Love!

Together by bright water
We sat, my love and I.
Light as a skimming swallow
The perfect hour went by
With words like ripples breaking
On full thoughts softly waking;
With thoughts so dear and shy
That no word dared to follow.

Down by that sunny water
The spring's sweet voice we heard.
The wind, the leaves' young lover,
My love's hair gently stirred.
An hour ago we parted;
I wander heavy--hearted.
Heavily, like a wounded bird,
The day lags, night draws over.

Go now, Love,
Since staying's joy no longer!
Leave me to prove
If Time can make me stronger!
Nay, look not over thy shoulder so,
Pleading so sweetly to remain,
Where thou workest so much pain:
Look not behind thee, haste and go!

Ah, how should I
Deal to thee such hard measure,
As force thee fly,
Who broughtest heavenly pleasure?
Take pity, Love, and be kind
To him that could not refuse thee!
Is it not grief enough to lose thee?
Haste, O haste, nor look behind!

Love grasps my heart in a net
Like the strong roots of a flower;
So surely his root is set
In my spirit, to hold me with power.
Yet to--night, O forgive me, Dear!
I am troubled, my heart trembles.
There flutters within me a fear
That Love in vain dissembles.

O is it that even our trust,
So strongly planted,
How steadfast soever, must
By its own fear be haunted?
As the heart must beat in the breast
If the pulse to its life be true,
Love must tremble and throb in his nest
To be sure of his life--blood anew?

The Lamp Of Greece

Truth incorruptible lives on, though sight
Cloud, and the heart flinch, and the mind askance
Reject. Because she sought that radiance,
Unweariable lover of the light!
History's marvel, Hellas in despite
Of time and interposing circumstance
Still stands above the siege of ignorance,
Serene before the armies of the night.

The mind has flowered where she wooed the seed
Up from the darkness into beauty: there
Love listens, divine music fills the air,
Though we by glimpses only understand
Who in the present anguish of our need
Long for the light as for our native land.

Why hurt so hard by little pricks,
By chasing cares so clouded over,
Heart of mine?
Holding what no storm can unfix
Nor time corrupt, O tender lover!
Why repine?
In you so deep a fountain springs
Of faith and joy beyond all speech,
O happy heart!
How should those meanly thwarting things
Men do, the petty creeds they preach,
In you have part?

It is because, my heart replies,
There is such beauty to adore
Within, for ever,--
Because I dwell in paradise,
That the world's chafing is a sore,
A fret, a fever.
Were there no fountain welling strong
In me, no vision heavenly--rare
Before my eyes,
There'd be for me no world of wrong
Without, lamenting to compare
With paradise.

Where the honeysuckle blows
In the summer night, entwined
With fresh leaves of the rose,
Greenness in gloom divined;
Sweet breaths in a mystery conspire
My soul to ravish in swift desire

Yet I, as the hidden grass
I roam, within me bear
Joys that all these surpass,
And taste diviner air.
I love, I am loved: ah, nothing was ever sweet
As the word my lips to my heart repeat.

To take into my arms
The body of my bliss;
Charm beyond earthly charms,
Thought beyond thought were this.
My bliss not Earth in her ring could hold,
Nor Night, that doth all the stars enfold.

It clothes me and bathes me round:
I find no end nor measure.
I sink, I am lost; drowned
In the wonder and depth of pleasure.
O joy of love, could I plumb with a rod the sea,
My tongue might tell the untellable sweetness of thee.

Earth, I love thee well;
And well dost thou requite me.
I have no tongue to tell
How this day thou hast thrilled
With wonder, to delight me,
My heart, intensely stilled.

On the white--walled knoll I stand
And feel beneath me glowing
The noon--hushed, lovely land:
Hills beyond hills, and few
Far towns a faint crest showing
Faint in the rounding blue.

Blue sea and radiant sky,
Blue sky and mountain marry;
And the mind, raised up on high,
Onward and onward springs;
Where'er she choose to tarry,
On every side are wings.

To the sun the sun--bathed pines
Their strength and sweetness render.
From where the far foam shines
Like the rim of a dazzling shield,
All fervent things and tender
Life, joy, and perfume yield.

Me, too, with mastering charm
From husks of dead days freeing,
The sun draws up, to be warm
And to bloom in this sweet hour;
The stem of all my being
Waited to bear this flower.

Would'st thou this monster, that we name the world,
Who round the envied tree of blissful fruit
Lies like a dragon curled
In jealous watch, our venture to dispute;
Would'st thou that she were smoothly negligent,
By any pleader bent,
A tender judge, to tears and pity prone,
She that on love defeated builds her throne,
The spoiler strong, sanguine with our despairs,
She that the traitor in us holds in fee,
Rich with our woes, with our fears cruel, she
Whose easy wisdom the sad heart ensnares?

Rather rejoice that this immortal foe
To truceless war our ardour challenges.
She hath her task to do,
Her maw to fill, her rages to appease;
Nor less because the noble rebel claims
Exemption from her shames,
Is of her native harshness justified.
Sharp be our swords, trebly our armour tried,
Our hearts enduring and relentless be
To look her 'twixt the eyes as conquering men
And take her worst of wounds. For then, O then,
If we can bear our freedom, we are free.

Deep in these thoughts, more tender than a sky
Whose light ebbs far as in futurity,
Deep, deeper yet my blessed spirit steep,
Singing of you still; you and only you
Gave me to breathe and touch and taste, all true,
Love from the utmost height and deepest deep
In my own heart, as all that summer knows
Of glory and perfume hides in one shut rose.

You and you only gave me, Dearest, this,
A pressure of the hand, a silent kiss,
And all is well; the hurt, the pain--pricks healed;
And rapt and hushed, as from some green recess
Into a golden solitariness,
All ours, we look; and suddenly revealed
Is all that we in our desire might be,
Winged and immortal, fretting to be free.

Then in that large, appeasing air we grow
Near to Love's greatness, and our hearts outflow.
We are as those who traffic with the sea;
Washed from our liberated spirits is all
That the feared world made stagnant, pent or small,
For love has touched us with his majesty:
We grow beyond the bounds of time and pain,
Then in one heart--beat wondering meet again.

When we said ``I am thine'' and ``I am thine,''
We were as children crying a delight
Their hearts indeed divine
But cannot understand
The perfect wholeness of its depth and height;
Urged by a power beyond our reach
Our tongues outran our hearts in speech:
But now, O now, when we together stand
And lay each trusting hand in hand,
At last within our hearts the rose
Of love doth fearfully unclose
To the full meaning of our marriage vow.
We give not to each other only now
But both are given to one spirit that knows
Our hearts more deeply than we know, and lies
A peace within our peace, and beautifies
Hope, and is wronged in our unhappiness,
Weeps with our tears and suffers in our sighs,
And waits to--day our kiss to solemnize.
O my beloved, my Bride,
Lo where we stand, for whom in love and pride
Unnumbered generations wooed and died;
Their prayers are on us and our heads they bless;
And lo, the generations all to come
Wait for us, praying dumb,
That we be true, and from this day may rise
Life's lovely loyalties
To bind us ever nearer: Cicely,
Take all I am, would it were worthy thee!
And in thy love O make it so to be.

We grudged not those that were dearer than all we possessed,
Lovers, brothers, sons.
Our hearts were full, and out of a full heart
We gave our belovèd ones.

Because we loved, we gave. In the hardest hour
When at last--so much unsaid
In the eyes--they went, simply, with tender smile,
Our hearts to the end they read.

They to their deeds! To things that their soul hated,
And yet to splendours won
From smoking hell by the spirit that moved in them:
But we to endure alone.

Their hearts rested on ours; their homing thoughts
Met ours in the still of the night.
We ached with the ache of the long waiting, and throbbed
With the throbs of the surging fight.

O had we failed them, then were we desolate now
And separated indeed.
What should have comforted, what should have helped us then
In the time of our bitter need!

But now, though sorrow be ever fresh, sorrow
Is tender as love; it knows
That of love it was born, and Love with the shining eyes
The hard way chose.

And out of deeps eternal, night and day,
A strength our sorrow frees,
Flooding us, full as the tide up the rivers flows
From the depth of the silent seas;

A strength that is mightier far than we, yet a strength
Whereof our spirit is breath,
Hope of the world, that is strange to hazard and fear,
To the wounds of Time, and Death.

Down In A Shaded Garden

Down in a shaded garden
I laid upon earth my head:
The deep trees murmured, darkly fresh,
Over my bed;
I looked through living leaves to the sky,
Odours and songs were quivering nigh;
The warm grass touched my cheek as I lay
And care from me was far away.
As a child to its mother, to Earth I drew;
I felt her true.

Of Life, sweet Life, enamoured,
I closed my eyes, to feel
The sweetness pierce to the inmost veins
And the whole heart steal;
Sacred Life, more sweet and fair
Than all her children of earth and air,
Fountain dearer than joy in the breast,
In the blue I adored, in the grass I caressed:
Then Earth, my mother, leaned to my ear,
And spoke me clear.

To thee the rose her odour,
Her glory dedicates;
And thee the pink's sweet--budded fringe
Of snow awaits.
For thee is the sprinkled fire of the broom,
For thee the azalea burns her bloom;
O child, does thy heart not tell thee how
Thy joy is answered from every bough?
In the throat of the bird, in the sap of the tree,
'Tis all for thee!

Stricken with joy and wonder
I raised my eyes around,
And saw what mystery flowered for me
In that enchanted ground!
The roses, the roses, rich--entwined,
Heavy with love to me inclined;
Yearning up from the dusk of death
They trembled toward me with living breath.
O none that loved me is dead, I knew,
And each is true.

Present And Future

Look, as a mother bending o'er her boy,
The sleeping boy that in her bosom lies,
Gazes upon him in a trance of joy
With earnest, infinitely tender eyes,
Lost in her deep love, and aware of nought,
Earth and the sunlight, men and trees and skies
Quite faded out from her impassioned thought;
Yet knows one day it will be otherwise,
When, laid alone within the narrow tomb,
Death leaves her none to love; but in youth's bloom,
Or grown to manhood and to strength, her son
Over the same earth that has closed on her
Rejoicing wanders on,
And strikes fresh tracks of thronged and fruitful life,
Nor frets at the sweet need for change and strife,
With eager mind and glowing heart astir
In ardour ever to pursue
Passions and actions, and adventures new:
So is the Present Age,
So strives she for that Age to come, her child.
Which knows not yet the pain, the sacrifice,
She for its sake endures; it knows not yet,
But must one day, the battles it must wage.
And she, if it within its sleep have smiled,
Is happy in her woes: no vain regret
Saps the sad strength with which she labours still
For that imagined bliss she shall not see,
So dear, so deeply hoped--for though it be.
And ever with unconquerable will,
Bearing her burden, toward one distant star
She moves in her desire; and though with pain
She labour, and the goal she dreams be far,
Proud is she in her passionate soul to know
That from her tears, her very sorrows grow
The joy, the hope, the peace of future men.

O you that facing the mirror darkly bright
In the shadowed corner, loiter shyly fond,
To ask of your own sad eyes a comfort slight,
Before you brave the pathless world beyond;

Not first to--night invades your spirit this wild
Despair, when loneliness stabs you! Turned, your face
Trembles, and soft hesitation makes you a child,
The child you were in some far, forgotten place,

Amid things for ever rejected. Dreamed you so
From the blankness of life to escape to a region enjoyed,
Glowing, and strange? Yet blank to--night, I know,
Spreads life, my sister; within you a deeper void.

In all this city, I think, so charged with pain,
None suffers more; desiring what you do
With insupportable longing, and still in vain
Desiring, still condemned to accept, and rue.

Where tarries he, Love, the adored one? In fields unknown
Roams he apart, or in sound of a pleasant stream
Sleeps? Nay, dwells he in cloudy rumour alone,
A name, a vision, a sweet, eluding dream?

He lives, he lives, my sister; yet rarely to men
He appears; they touch but his robe, and believe it is he.
But soft, with inaudible feet, he is flown, nor again
Comes soon; rejoicing still to be wayward and free.

A moment, ev'n now, he was near you: invisible wings
Brushed by you; and infinite longing, to follow, to find
That vision truth, overcomes you,--the heart's sad things
To tell in a trusted ear, on a bosom kind.

Alas! not so he is won: when the last despair
Encamps in the heart, at last when all seems vain,
Then, perchance, he will steal to you unaware,
And loose your tears, and understand your pain.

And were they but for this, those passionate schemes
Of joy, that I have nursed? indeed for this
That longings, day and night, have filled my dreams?
Now it has come, the hour of bliss,
How different it seems!

So thought I bitterly: but on my bed
As I lay lone and restless, in my ear,
Falling from some far place of peace o'erhead
Through the still dark, I seemed to hear
These accents softly shed:

``Wouldst thou then, child, from this invading pain
Find refuge, and relax thy suffering will
In tears? To peace wouldst thou indeed attain?
Remember all thy courage; still
True to thyself remain!

``What is it to thee, if some wished delight.
That from the future beckoned thee, at last
Comes changed, its former glory faded quite?
Fly the perfidious Hours; keep fast
Within, the springs of light!

``What is it to thee, if in some dear mind
Another is remembered, more than thou?
Quench that poor envy; let no gazer find
Aught in thine acts or on thy brow
But what is sweet and kind!

``For how shall that pure spirit, whom vain things flee,
Whom passion's ebbs and floods delight not, Love
The consolation of the world, if he
Out of his course so lightly move,
Immortal and eternal be?

``Take courage! peace at last and joy attend
The true--fixt heart that mocks Time's envious power;
The heart that, tender even to the end,
Exacts not joy from any hour,
Nor love from any friend.''

Alas! how oft I have wished that voice had spared
Its counsel stern, nor pointed me through tears
My path! How oft, to feet stumbling and scarred,
That path impossible appears;
Which yet is only hard.

O hush, sweet birds, that linger in lonely song!
Hold in your evening fragrance, wet May--bloom!
But drooping branches and leaves that greenly throng,
Darken and cover me over in tenderer gloom.
As a water--lily unclosing on some shy pool,
Filled with rain, upon tremulous water lying,
With joy afraid to speak, yet fain to be sighing
Its riches out, my heart is full, too full.

Votaries that have veiled their secret shrine
In veils of incense falteringly that rise,
And stealing in milky clouds of wavering line
Round soaring pillars hang like adoring sighs,
They watch the smoke ascending soft as thought,
Till wide in the fragrant dimness peace is shed,
And out of their perfect vision the world is fled,
Because the heart sees pure when the eye sees not.

I too will veil my joy that is too divine
For my heart to comprehend or tongue to speak.
The whole earth is my temple, and Love the shrine
That all the hearts of the world worship and seek.
But the incense cloud I burn to veil my bliss
Is woven of air and waters and living sun,
Colour and odour and music and light made one.
Come down, O night, and take from me all but this!

I dreamed of wonders strange in a strange air;
But this my joy, my dream, my wonder, is near
As grass to the earth, that clings so close and fair,
Nourished by all it nourishes. O most dear,
I dreamed of beauty pacing enchanted ground,
But you with beauty over my waiting soul,
As the blood steals over the cheek at a heart--throb, stole!
In the beating of my heart I have known you, I have found.

Incredulous world, be far, and tongues profane!
For now in my spirit there burns a steadfast faith.
No longer I fear you, earth's sad bondage vain,
Nor prison walls of Time, nor the gates of Death.
For the marvel that was most marvellous is most true;
To the music that moves the universe moves my heart,
And the song of the starry worlds I sing apart
In the night and shadow and stillness, Love, for you.

In Carissimam Memoriam A.S.P.

To whom but thee, my youth to dedicate,
My youth, which these few leaves have sought to save,
Should I now come, although I come too late,
Alas! and can but lay them on thy grave?

To whom but thee? From thee, I know, they stole
Their happier music, all their finer part:
O could they breathe but something of thy soul,
Something of thine incomparable heart!

What was there lovely, that thou didst not love?
What troubled spirit could ever grasp thy hand,
Nor know what answering springs within thee strove
To soothe his wound; to feel, to understand?

Too much hadst thou of pain, and fret, and care;
Yet surely thou wast meant for joy: to whom
Life, that had given thee days so hard to bear,
Could still yield moments of so rare a bloom.

That longing in me, which can never sleep,
To live my own life, to be bravely free,
What is that longing, but the passion deep,
The sweet endeavour, to be true to thee?

Still in my mind the solemn morning shines;
Still with me, all too clearly pictured, dwell
The day, the hour, with all their mournful signs,
When we bade thee, O friend of friends, farewell.

Austerely fair, the vast cathedral, filled
With February sunshine, marbles old,
Pillar on pillar, arch on arch revealed:
The light, the stillness, on my grief took hold;

Hushed within those gray walls, that could not change,
Where kneeling sorrow heavenly comfort hears;
Appeased by their eternal strength, that, strange
Itself to pain, permitted human tears.

There that worn heart, those arms in longing strained
Beyond, beyond, toward the unknown shore,
Entered repose, their long--loved peace attained.
Sweetly she sleeps. O shall we wish her more?

I climbed the high tower, up steep stairs of stone.
Under the clear sun plains without a wave,
Various and busy, in the morning shone:
The world about me, but below, thy grave.

White flowers marked it. Now, my flowers' poor grace
I bring, to bloom or fade; I little care,
Ah, let them fade, and die in that dear place!
It is enough, if they have faded there.

She was binding the wounds of her enemies when they came—
The lint in her hand unrolled.
They battered the door with their rifle-butts, crashed it in:
She faced them gentle and bold.

They haled her before the judges where they sat
In their places, helmet on head.
With question and menace the judges assailed her, “Yes,
I have broken your law,” she said.

“I have tended the hurt and hidden the hunted, have done
As a sister does to a brother,
Because of a law that is greater than that you have made,
Because I could do none other.

“Deal as you will with me. This is my choice to the end,
To live in the life I vowed.”
“She is self-confessed,” they cried; “she is self-condemned.
She shall die, that the rest may be cowed.”

In the terrible hour of the dawn, when the veins are cold,
They led her forth to the wall.
“I have loved my land,” she said, “but it is not enough:
Love requires of me all.

“I will empty my heart of the bitterness, hating none.”
And sweetness filled her brave
With a vision of understanding beyond the hour
That knelled to the waiting grave.

They bound her eyes, but she stood as if she shone.
The rifles it was that shook
When the hoarse command rang out. They could not endure
That last, that defenceless look.

And the officer strode and pistolled her surely, ashamed
That men, seasoned in blood,
Should quail at a woman, only a woman,—
As a flower stamped in the mud.

And now that the deed was securely done, in the night
When none had known her fate,
They answered those that had striven for her, day by day:
“It is over, you come too late.”

And with many words and sorrowful-phrased excuse
Argued their German right
To kill, most legally; hard though the duty be,
The law must assert its might.

Only a woman! yet she had pity on them,
The victim offered slain
To the gods of fear that they worship. Leave them there,
Red hands, to clutch their gain!

She bewailed not herself, and we will bewail her not,
But with tears of pride rejoice
That an English soul was found so crystal-clear
To be triumphant voice

Of the human heart that dares adventure all
But live to itself untrue,
And beyond all laws sees love as the light in the night,
As the star it must answer to.

The hurts she healed, the thousands comforted—these
Make a fragrance of her fame.
But because she stept to her star right on through death
It is Victory speaks her name.

As a swallow that sits on the roof,
I gaze on the world aloof;

In the silence, when men lie sleeping,
I hear the noise of weeping:

The tears, by Day derided,
To tender Night confided.

Ah, now I listen, I cannot delay
In thoughts apart; I must not stay.

The doors are closed and fast: unseen,
With stealthy feet I glide between.

I see the sleepers asleep in their beds,
Negligent arms, motionless heads;

Beautiful in the bloom of slumber,
Peaceful armies without number.

Not here I linger: the sigh of those
That sleep not, draws me with answered throes.

A mother mapping her day of cares,
On her sleeping baby softly stares.

A youth by shameful sorrow torn,
Thinks on the unendurable morn.

By her husband, a wife unhappy lies,
With bitter heart and open eyes.

An old man hears the voice of the wave,
His dear son's cold unquiet grave.

Alone in the lonely, listening night
A child lies still in dumb affright:

The burden of all dark things unknown
Weighs on his trembling heart like stone.

A man remembers his dead love's smile,
And his tranquil courage is quelled awhile.

My heart is heavy with love and pain;
The tears within me oppress my brain.

What shall I tell you, you that ache
And number the laggard hours awake?

O stabbed and stricken, what soothing art
Shall I use to assuage the wounds that smart?

The consolation that, ere I know
Love and sorrow, I fancied true,

Is faint and helpless, now I find,
As beauty told in the ears of the blind:

And I cannot utter in words the thought
That strengthens me most, when my heart is wrought.

O brother, that cannot the days undo,
Could I but the reckoning pay for you!

O mother, sink your head in peace,
And I will your knot of care release.

Dear child, give me your dread to bear:
I hold your hand, I stroke your hair,

It is I, who love you, that watch and keep
Darkness from you, the while you sleep.

I have no counsel; I know not why
In your breasts the arrows burning lie;

I cannot heal your hurts, nor take
The sharp iron out of souls that ache.

O yet, as I watch, the lashes close
A little, the eyes their lids dispose;

The hand that fondly lies in mine
Relaxes; the wearied heads decline.

And now on wings the sorrows flee
From the happy sleepers, hither to me.

O noiseless sorrows, darkly thronging,
My heart is prepared: my tender longing

You alone can appease, with tears,
With pangs, with passion, with shame, with fears.

Feed on my heart that is open and bare,
Feed your fill, sorrow and care:

Take me, pains of all souls forlorn.
For O too swiftly arrives the morn

The Heather Branch

Out of the pale night air,
From wandering lone in the warm scented wood,
The sighing, shadowy, bright solitude
Of leafy glade, and the rough upland bare,
To thee I come, a branch
Of heather in my hand,--the sprays yet keep
Drops of the dewy moonshine trembling there--
And my heart filled full of a happy mood,
To thee that wakest, while the others sleep.

Dost thou not know me? Yet I know
Thee, and the ache that will not let thee rest.
When thou wast tossing, deep oppressed,
And thy hot eyes the darkness sought in vain,
I saw thee, and I longed to soothe thy pain.
Sorrow it is not that o'erwhelms thee so,
But the perfidious touch, that unperceived
Thy joy and even thy desire has thieved,
Till all at once waking to where thou art,
Upon thy shuddering heart
Look in with dreadful faces the calm Hours,
Advancing to despoil thee utterly.
Thou longest to be free.
But O against thyself didst thou conspire,
And hope grown gray and rusting powers
Tell thee that vain is thy desire,
And counsel thee from all thy care to cease,
Proposing to thy fretting sense outworn
Vacancy absolute and utter peace.

And is peace empty? O look forth
Upon the moonlight spread
In stillness over the reclining earth.
The stillness of a trance profound it seems
And a world bright and uninhabited,
Yet how immortally, how richly teems!
Hush thy senses, and hark,
The silence fills
With sounds unnumbered, as the dark
With worlds, whose coming not the swiftest sight
Affirms, yet in an instant they are bright.
Listen, the whole air thrills
With gentle and perpetual stir of birth,
Softer than sighs, budding and flourishing
Upward of each austere or tender thing;
They pine not to haste back under the ground,
But to embrace their being and to abound.
Send thy thought onward over miles and miles
Of silence, till at last it apprehend
Faintly, the vastness in which thou hast part,
Till the wrought cities melt like shadowy isles
Distant in radiance of the endless main,
And of its solitude be purged thy heart.
All this, dear friend,
A thousand thousand spirits, and deep bliss,
And waves of swelling and subsiding pain
Doth this immensity of peace contain.

But now, O now, give me no grief to bear,
For thou must take my joy; there is no room
For grief, and I from care
Turn thee. The moonlit air
Blows dimly to enchanted sense
Odour and memory, it knows not whence,
And our forgetful souls reminds to bloom!
Does thy heart tremble? I that have not sought
Joy, but have found, I bid thee refuse nought,
But take the whole world welcome to thy breast,
Else in no part possest.
The Hours await thee; ah, they too
Love to be loved: woo them and ever woo.
Give me thy hand, and farewell: see, I break
My branch of heather: this I take
And bear in memory of this night and thee:
But keep this by thee, to remember me.

A Vision Of Resurrection

The Genius of an hour that fading day
Resigned to wide--haired Night's impending brow
Stole me apart, I knew not where nor how,
And from my sense ravished the world away.
Rose in my view a visionary ground,
A rugged plain, beneath uncoloured skies.
There slowly in the midst without a sound
Upheaved a motion as of birth. I gazed,
When lo! a head, with upcast empty eyes
And semblance of dead shoulders' majesties,
Whose fleshless arms a marble breast upraised.

But even as this emerged, nor yet was free,
Behold it ripen into bloom and form,
The shrunk limbs round and into colour warm,
The hair spring new as leaves upon a tree,
And curl like small flames round the forehead fair.
At last the eyelids open wide: it seems
A glorious--statured youth that wakens there,
Casting his eyes in wonder down, to feel
This body that with clear blood newly teems,
How perfect, yet still heavy as from dreams,
And over it the ancient beauty steal.

O lost in musing recollection sweet,
What summoning cry thine age--long slumber stirred?
In that profound grave has thy cold ear heard
From heaven the mailed Archangel call, whose feet
Stand planted in the stream of stars, and whose
Time--shattering trump hath pealed to the world's core?
Yet still doth thy averted head refuse
To lift its eyes up; still thy spread hands lean
On earth, while pensive thou surveyest o'er
This radiant shape that all thy sorrows bore,
Strong now as if no pain had ever been.

What thoughts begin to glide upon thy brain,
And part thy lips with sighs? Is it some fear
'Mid flattering heavenly airs approaching near
This strange unproven peace to entertain?
Musing, ``O rebel flesh, in my hard need
How often didst thou fail me! I know well
How thou didst make me suffer toil and bleed,
At once my prison and my enemy.
Dear body, I fear thee yet: dark rages dwell
Within thee: how shalt thou in peace excel?
How learn to bear perfect felicity?''

Nay, rather that fond wonder in thy look
Is wonder to have lost the thoughts that maim,
The wounds of evilly--invented shame
And fear that each sweet impulse overtook.
Now thou art free, and all thy being whole,
Perceivest in that peril--haunted earth
The fair and primal gestures of thy soul,
And knowest how all thy full completion fed,
The urging hungers, the sun--sweetened mirth;
Yea, finding even in those furies worth,
Which lacking, hardly art thou perfected.

What trees are these whose dim young branches rise
Above thee? Springing waters freshen sweet
New tender green for thee to pace and greet
The growing of the dawn of Paradise.
Thou gazest round thee with a listening face,
Hearkening perhaps to some far--floating song
Unheard of men. Ah, go not ere thy grace,
O glorified, of me be throughly learned!
But as I prayed in supplication strong
The vision faded, and the world, whose wrong
Mocks holy beauty and our desire, returned.

Love’s Portrait

Out of the day--glare, out of all uproar,
Hurrying in ways disquieted, bring me
To silence, and earth's ancient peace restore,
That with profounder vision I may see.
In dew--baptizing dimness let me lose
Tired thoughts; dispeople the world--haunted mind,
With burning of interior fire refined;
Cleanse all my sense: then, Love, mine eyes unclose.

Let it be dawn, and such low light increase,
As when from darkness pure the hills emerge;
And solemn foliage trembles through its peace
As with an ecstasy; and round the verge
Of solitary coppices cold flowers
Freshen upon their clustered stalks; and where
Wafts of wild odour sweeten the blue air,
Drenched mosses dimly sparkle on old towers.

So, for my spirit, let the light be slow
And tender as among those dawning trees,
That on this vision of my heart may grow
The beloved form by delicate degrees,
The desired form that Earth was waiting for,
Her last completion and felicity,
Who through the dewy hush comes, and for me
Sings a new meaning into all Time's lore.

Just--dinted temples, cheek and brow and hair--
Ah, never curve that wind breathed over snow
Could match what the divine hand moulded there,
Or in her lips, where life's own colours glow,
Or in the throat, the sweet well of her speech;
Yet all forgotten, when those eyelids raise
The beam of eyes that hold me in their gaze
Clear with a tenderness no words can reach.

Some silken shred, whose fair embroidery throbbed
Once on a queen's young breast; a mirror dimmed
That has held how much beauty, and all robbed!
One bright tress from a head that poets hymned;
A rent flag that warm blood was spent for: sighs,
Faith, love, have made these fragrant, and sweet pain
Quickens its pangs upon our pulse again,
Charmed at a touch out of old histories.

But thou, whence com'st thou, bringing in thy face
More than all these are charged with? Not faint myrrh
Of embalmed bliss, dead passion's written trace,
Half--faded; but triumphant and astir
Life tinges the cheek's change and the lips' red.
Thy deep compassions, thy long hopes and fears,
Thy joys, thine indignations, and thy tears,
To enrich these, what stormy hearts have bled!

For thine unknown sake, how has life's dear breath
Been cherished past despair: how, lifted fierce
In exultation, has love smiled at death,
For one hope hazarding the universe!
What wisdom has been spelled from sorrow's book,
What anguish in the patient will immured,
What bliss made perfect, what delight abjured,
That in these eyes thine eyes at last might look!

O mystery! out of ravin, strife, and wrong,
Thou comest, Time's last sweetness in the flower,
Life's hope and want, my never--ended song!
Futurity is folded in this hour
With all fruition; joy, and loss and smart;
And death, and birth; the wooed, the feared, the unknown;
And there our lives, mid earth's vast undertone,
Are beatings of one deep and mighty heart.

The wind has fal'n asleep; the bough that tost
Is quiet; the warm sun's gone; the wide light
Sinks and is almost lost;
Yet the April day glows on within my mind
Happy as the white buds in the blue air,
A thousand buds that shone on waves of wind.
Now evening leads me wooingly apart.
The young wood draws me down these shelving ways
Deeper, as if it drew me to its heart.

What stills my spirit? What awaits me here?
So motionless the budded hazels spring,
So shadowy and so near!
My feet make not a sound upon this moss,--
Greenest gloom, scented with cold primroses.
A ripple, shy as almost to be mute,
Secretly wanders among further trees;
Else the clear evening brims with loneliness,
With stillness luminous and absolute.

The pause between sunsetting and moonrise
Exhales a strangeness. It melts out in dream
The experience of the wise.
This purity of sharpened sweet spring smells
Comes like a memory lost since I was born.
My own heart changes into mystery!
There is some presence nears through all these spells
Out of the darkened bosom of the earth:
Not I the leaf, but the leaf touches me.

Who seeks me? What shy lover, whose approach
Makes spiritual the white flowers on the thorn?
Who seems to breathe up round me,--perfume strange!--
June and its bloom unborn?
Shy as a virgin passion is the spring!
I could have Time cease now, so there should live
This blossom in the stillness of my heart,--
Earth's earth, yet immaterial as a sense
Enriched to understand, love, hope, forgive.

Now, now, if ever, could the spirit catch,
Beyond the ear's range, thrills of airy sound.
I tremble, as at the lifting of a latch.
Am I not found?
This magical clear moment in the dusk
Is like a crystal dewy--brimming bowl
Imperilled upon lifting hands: I dread
The breathing of the shadow that shall spill
This wonder, and with it my very soul.

A dead bough cracks under my foot. The charm
Breaks; I am I now, in a gloom aware
Of furtive, flitting wing, and hunted eyes,
And furry feet a--scare.
Fear, it is fear exiles us each apart;
We are all bound and prisoned in our fear;
From the dark shadow of our own selves we flee.
Ah, but that moment, open--eyed, erect,
I had stept out of all fear, and was free.

How sweet it was in youth's shy giving--time
Finding the sudden friend, whose thoughts ran out
With yours in natural chime;
Who knew, before speech, what the lips would tell!
No need to excuse, to hide or to defend
From him, in whom your dearest thought shone new
And not a fancy stirred for him in vain.
So was it, as with a so perfect friend,
In that rare moment I have lost again.

But lo, a whiteness risen beyond the hill:
The moon--dawn! A late bird sings somewhere; hark
The long, low, loitering trill!
Like water--drops it falls into the dark.
The earth--sweetness holds me in its fragrant mesh.
Oh, though I know that I am bound afar,
Yet, where the grass is, there I also grew.
Blood knows more than the brain. Am I perhaps
Most true to earth when I seem most untrue?

The wind has fal'n asleep; the bough that tost
Is quiet; the warm sun's gone; the wide light
Sinks and is almost lost;
Yet the April day glows on within my mind
Happy as the white buds in the blue air,
A thousand buds that shone on waves of wind.
Now evening leads me wooingly apart.
The young wood draws me down these shelving ways
Deeper, as if it drew me to its heart.

What stills my spirit? What awaits me here?
So motionless the budded hazels spring,
So shadowy and so near!
My feet make not a sound upon this moss,--
Greenest gloom, scented with cold primroses.
A ripple, shy as almost to be mute,
Secretly wanders among further trees;
Else the clear evening brims with loneliness,
With stillness luminous and absolute.

The pause between sunsetting and moonrise
Exhales a strangeness. It melts out in dream
The experience of the wise.
This purity of sharpened sweet spring smells
Comes like a memory lost since I was born.
My own heart changes into mystery!
There is some presence nears through all these spells
Out of the darkened bosom of the earth:
Not I the leaf, but the leaf touches me.

Who seeks me? What shy lover, whose approach
Makes spiritual the white flowers on the thorn?
Who seems to breathe up round me,--perfume strange!--
June and its bloom unborn?
Shy as a virgin passion is the spring!
I could have Time cease now, so there should live
This blossom in the stillness of my heart,--
Earth's earth, yet immaterial as a sense
Enriched to understand, love, hope, forgive.

Now, now, if ever, could the spirit catch,
Beyond the ear's range, thrills of airy sound.
I tremble, as at the lifting of a latch.
Am I not found?
This magical clear moment in the dusk
Is like a crystal dewy--brimming bowl
Imperilled upon lifting hands: I dread
The breathing of the shadow that shall spill
This wonder, and with it my very soul.

A dead bough cracks under my foot. The charm
Breaks; I am I now, in a gloom aware
Of furtive, flitting wing, and hunted eyes,
And furry feet a--scare.
Fear, it is fear exiles us each apart;
We are all bound and prisoned in our fear;
From the dark shadow of our own selves we flee.
Ah, but that moment, open--eyed, erect,
I had stept out of all fear, and was free.

How sweet it was in youth's shy giving--time
Finding the sudden friend, whose thoughts ran out
With yours in natural chime;
Who knew, before speech, what the lips would tell!
No need to excuse, to hide or to defend
From him, in whom your dearest thought shone new
And not a fancy stirred for him in vain.
So was it, as with a so perfect friend,
In that rare moment I have lost again.

But lo, a whiteness risen beyond the hill:
The moon--dawn! A late bird sings somewhere; hark
The long, low, loitering trill!
Like water--drops it falls into the dark.
The earth--sweetness holds me in its fragrant mesh.
Oh, though I know that I am bound afar,
Yet, where the grass is, there I also grew.
Blood knows more than the brain. Am I perhaps
Most true to earth when I seem most untrue?

I
Lovely word flying like a bird across the narrow seas,
When winter is over and songs are in the skies,
Peace, with the colour of the dawn upon the name of her,
A music to the ears, a wonder to the eyes;
Peace, bringing husband back to wife and son to mother soon,
And lover to his love, and friend to friend,
Peace, so long awaited and hardly yet believed in,
The answer of faith, enduring to the end;
Tears are in our joy, because the heavy night is gone from us
And morning brings the prisoner's release.
How shall we sing her beauty and her blessedness,
Saying at last to one another, Peace?


II
Guns that boomed from shore to shore
And smote the heart with distant dread
Speak no more.
The terror that bestrode the air,
That under ocean kept his lair,
Now is fled.


III
I see, as on a misty morn
When a great ship towering glides
To anchor, out of battle borne,
And looms above her dinted sides,--
Burning through the mist at last
The sun flames on her splintered mast
And the torn flag that from it floats,
And cheering from a thousand throats
Bursts from her splendour and her scars,--
So I see our England come,
Come at last from all her wars
Proudly home.


IV
Now let us praise the dead that are with us to--day
Who fought and fell before the morning shone,
Happy and brave, an innumerable company;
This day is theirs, the day their deeds have won
Glory to them, and from our hearts a thanksgiving
In humbleness and awe and joy and pride.
We will not say that their place shall know no more of them,
We will not say that they have passed and died:
They are the living, they that bought this hour for us
And spilt their blood to make the world afresh.
One with us, one with our children and their heritage,
They live and move, a spirit in the flesh.


V
With innocence of flowers and grass and dew
Earth covers up her shame, her wounds, her rue.
She pardons and remits; she gives her grace,
Where men had none, and left so foul a trace.
Peace of the earth, peace of the sky, begins
To sweeten and to cleanse our strifes and sins,
The furious thunderings die away and cease.
But what is won, unless the soul win peace?


VI
Not with folding of the hands,
Not with evening fallen wide
Over waste and weary lands,
Peace is come; but as a bride.
It is the trumpets of the dawn that ring;
It is the sunrise that is challenging.


VII
Lovely word, flying like a light across the happy Land,
When the buds break and all the earth is changed,
Bringing back the sailor from his watch upon the perilled seas,
Rejoining shores long severed and estranged,
Peace, like the Spring, that makes the torrent dance afresh
And bursts the bough with sap of beauty pent,
Flower from our hearts into passionate recovery
Of all the mind lost in that banishment.
Come to us mighty as a young and glad deliverer
From wrong's old canker and out--dated lease,
Then will we sing thee in thy triumph and thy majesty,
Then from our throes shall be prepared our peace.

Midsummer Vigil

Night smiles on me with her stars,
Mystic, pure, enchanted, lone.
Light, that only heaven discloses,
Is in heaven that no cloud mars;
Here, through murmuring darkness blown,
Comes the scent of unseen roses.

Now the world is all asleep;
Drowsy man dull rest is taking.
I with whispering trees apart
My deserted vigil keep.
Light leaves in the light wind shaking
Echo back my beating heart.

And the garden's perfumes thrill me
Like a touch or whispered name:
Heliotrope and lavender
Slumber--odoured lilies, fill me
With their breath, like subtlest flame;
Vague desire and yearning stir.

Shadowy elms above me, crowned
With mysterious foliage, dim
Mid the stars, against the skies,
Hidden lawn and alley bound,
Full of voices, full of dream,
Fragrant breathings and long sighs.

Wishes, that with eager tongues
Strive among the soft--blown boughs,
Each an amorous messenger;
Dreams, that glide in noiseless throngs;
Wingèd flight of earnest vows;
Listening with hushed breath I hear.

This intoxicating sweetness
That the perfumed air exhales,
Stir of thoughts and dear desires,
Joys that faint with their own fleetness,
Passion that for utterance fails;
Whither burns it? where aspires?

'Tis for her, whose worshipped hand
Holds my heart, for life, for death.
Ah, could she, could she but come
Hither, where Love's witching wand
Holds the midnight's thoughtful breath,
While the stars are glittering dumb!

Come, that into that sweet ear
I might pour what until now
Never heart brought tongue to tell,
Mistress ne'er had bliss to hear,
Lover with his hundredth vow
Vainly sought to syllable.

Pale with transport when I take
'Twixt my hands her face, and look
Deep into her brimming eyes,
Passionately fain to speak,
How my trembling murmurs mock
Those unuttered ecstacies!

And when cheek to cheek is prest,
And the pulse of her pure being
Throbs from her veins into mine,
Love in torment from my breast
Cries athirst for language, freeing
In sweet speech his pangs divine.

How should language, weak and vain,
Bear the burden of such joy?
How should words the meaning reach
Of that charm's ecstatic pain;
Charm which words would but destroy
Of devotion beyond speech?

But to--night, dear, Love is kind,
And those jealous bonds that mesh
The heart's tongue--tied truth sets free.
Undivided, unconfined
By those walls of human flesh,
Look, my heart is bared to thee!

Seeing, thou shalt want not eyes;
Hearing, thou shalt need not ears;
Purged, our spirits shall burn through
Tedious day's necessities.
O to cast off doubts and fears!
To touch truth, and feel it true!

Thou my tender thought shalt find
Ever, like a quick--eyed slave,
Watching for thy wish unspoken;
In my inmost treasury shrined
Looks and tones thy spirit gave,
Faith's for ever cherished token!

Come, O come, where'er thou art!
Ere this rich hour past reprieve
In the garish daylight die,
Hear me, Sweet, and my heart's heart,
My soul's soul, believe, receive,
Poured into a single sigh!

The Snows Of Spring

O wailing gust, what hast thou brought with thee,
What sting of desolation? But an hour,
And brave was every shy new--opened flower
Smiling in sun beneath a budding tree.
Now over black hills the skies stoop and lour;
Now on this lonely upland the shrill blast
Thrusts under brown dead crumpled leaves to find
Soft primroses that were unfolding fast;
Now the fair Spring cries through the shuddering wood
Lamenting for her darlings to the wind
That ravishes their youth with laughter rude.

The whole air darkens, sweeping up in storm.
What breath is this of what far power that slays?
What God in blank and towering cloud arrays
His muffled, else intolerable form?
What beautiful Medusa's frozen gaze?
Lo, out of gloom the first flakes floating pale,
Lost like a dreamer's thoughts! They shall lie deep
To--morrow on green shoot, on petal frail
And living branches borne down in despair
By the mere weight of that soft--nesting sleep,
Though all the earth look still and white and fair.

Phantasmal and extreme as some blind plain
Upon the far side of the moon, unknown
Deep Polar solitudes of ice enthrone
In the white night of mountain and moraine
The power of that cold Sleep that dwells alone,
Absolute in remotest idleness.
Yet from his fancied lips the freezing breath
Wandering about the world's warm wilderness
Has drifted on the north wind even hither
These gently whispering syllables of death
Among the English flowers, our Spring to wither.

Not only the brief tender flowers, ah me!
Suffer such desolation, but we too
Who boast our godlike liberty to do
Whate'er we will, and range all climes, ev'n we
Must still abide its coming and our rue.
It breathes in viewless winds and gently falls
Over our spirits, till desire grown sere,
Faith frozen into words, custom like walls
Of stone imprison us, and we acquiesce.
More than the raging elements to fear
Is snow--soft death that comes like a caress.

Life lives for ever: Death of her knows naught.
Our souls through radiant mystery are led,
Clothed in fresh raiment as the old is shed.
But Death the unchanging has no aim, no thought,
Deaf, blind, indifferent, feeds not yet is fed,
Moves not yet crushes, is not rent yet rends:
For as from icebergs killing airs are blown,
His cold sleep to our life--warm ardour sends
Frost wreathing round us delicate as rime,
Making most real what should be dream alone
To the free spirit, the gnawing tooth of time.

Who shall escape, since death and life inweave
Their threads so subtly? Yet may truth be wooed
In our own natures, shaken off the brood
Of thoughts not ours, beliefs our lips believe
But our hearts own not,--alien fortitude.
These are of death; and with his realm conspire
Faint souls that drowse in ignorance unjust,
That with the world corrupt their true desire,
And dully hate and stagnantly despise.
Already they begin to die, to rust;
But those that love are always young and wise.

O Love, my Love, the dear light of whose eyes
Shines on the world to show me all things new,
Falsehood the falser and the true more true,
And tenfold precious all my soul must prize,
Since from our life's core love so deeply grew,
O let us cleave fast to the heavenly powers
That brought us this, whose unseen spirit flows
Pure as the wind and sensitive as flowers.
They are with us! Let the storm--gathering night
Cover the bleak earth with these whirling snows,
Our hands are joined, our hearts are brimmed with light.

Shelley’s Pyre

The Spirit of Earth, robed in green;
The Spirit of Air, robed in blue;
The Spirit of Water, robed in silver;
The Spirit of Fire, robed in red.
Each steps forward in turn.

Spirit of Earth
I am the Spirit of Earth.

Spirit of Air
I am the Spirit of Air.

Spirit of Water
I am the Spirit of Water.

Spirit of Fire
I am the Spirit of Fire.

All [together]
This is the shore of the sea. Stillness and hot noon;
Stillness after storm. The sun scorches the sand.
On the sand of the sea is a pyre:
On the pyre a young man's body,
White and naked,

Spirit of Earth
A child of Earth,

Spirit of Water
Out of the sea he is come

Spirit of Earth
To the last shore.

All
Ringed with flames this body lies; flames shining, flames entwining,

Spirit of Fire
Vaulting,

Assaulting,

Spirit of Fire
Dancing,

All
Lancing
On the noon intenser light,
Branding on the air a fierier fire.

Spirit of Water
The slow sea--ripple sparkles up the sand.

All
Afar the mountains look down on the land.

Spirit of Air
He was swiftness.

Spirit of Earth
He is still.

Spirit of Water
A wave breaking; a wave broken.
At the sea's will.

All
His eyes drank of the world's beauty;
His eyes wept for the world's wrong.

Spirit of Fire
His eyes shine on the world no more.

All
Out of his mouth came forth song,
Wondering, trembling, triumphing, lamenting.

Spirit of Earth
His mouth will utter songs no more.

All
A Power breathed, a Power filled, a Power kindled and made strong
The heart this mortal throbbed with. O whence came it? O whence came
Power to frailty, hope to anguish? He was swift and he was strange,
Swift as stream, swift as wind; strange to all he came among.

Spirit of Fire
Leap, my flames! tower and quiver!

All
So into the world he came.

Spirit of Fire
No wind blows, the fire to bend.
It springs right upward to the sun.
Mount, my flames, ascend, ascend!

Spirit of Earth
Out of me this spirit rose,
His cradle green and sleepy earth;
A seed sown in a chance place,
Where--from, who knows?
Yet from my womb was his birth.

Spirit of Water
He was my lover. In river and sea
He plunged his body; his ardour flowed
With the flow of the streams, and the rain and the cloud.
Now I have rendered up my lover.

Spirit of Fire
Higher, higher, higher
In wild dishevelled blaze
Single plumes of light aspire
To be lost in the noon's haze.

All
These flames are your thoughts, these fires your desires, O Mortal!
Speeding before you, as you, the far forerunner
Outstript, O spirit arrayed in the sanguine colour
Of cloud at dawn, the laggard, the lulled and dulled,
Announcing a dawn too dazzling for your kind.

Spirit of Fire
You left them behind!

All
And winged in a radiant mist of love, you flew
Onward, alone: not on earth was a home for you,
Where men oppressed and trafficked, and hope was foiled,
Soiled, despoiled! Yet hope was the breath you drew.

Spirit of Air
The white body is changing: it has taken the swift shape
Of fire, and the fire passes, dazzling the noon,
Shedding all but swiftness and the ecstasy of flight,
Of the light into light.

Spirit of Fire
Sink my flames!

Spirit of Water
As a falling fountain
The flames sink down,

Spirit of Earth
But the heart remains
Unconsumed; it is mine in earth.

All
Out of the fire, O spirit, come forth
To us, who have been from the beginning.
Bond by bond, chain by chain,
Our hands are untwisting what bound you; we free you,
Release you from Time
And the harsh taste of the cold world,
Custom, calumny, ignorance, pain.
Come away! Noon is silent in heat that trembles,
Silent the sea that took you, and all the winds,
Silent the shadowy mountains; they look down;
And the stars that are known but in darkness to men,
They also, the true stars.
They are the silence; you the voice!
And the voice soars upward, singing,
From where the sparks expire
And the embers of fire darken,
A fountain cascading in drops as of light,
Flowing over, invading the silence, in joy to be free.
It ascends in its radiance, singing, singing; and we,
We hearken.

I
Gentle as fine rain falling from the night,
The first beams from the Indian moon at full
Steal through the boughs, and brighter and more bright
Glide like a breath, a fragrance visible.
Asoka round him sees
The gloom ebb into glories half--espied
Of glimmering bowers through wavering traceries:
Pale as a rose by magical degrees
Opening, the air breaks into beauty wide,
And yields a mystic sweet;
And shapes of leaves shadow the pathway side
Around Asoka's feet.

O happy prince! From his own court he steals;
Weary of words is he, weary of throngs.
How this wide ecstasy of stillness heals
His heart of flatteries and the tale of wrongs!
Unseen he climbs the hill,
Unheard he brushes with his cloak the dew,
While the young moonbeams every hollow fill
With hovering flowers, so gradual and so still
As if a joy brimmed where that radiance grew,
Discovering pale gold
Of spikenard balls and champak buds that new
Upon the air unfold.

He gains the ridge. Wide open rolls the night!
Airs from an infinite horizon blow
Down holy Ganges, floating vast and bright
Through old Magadha's forests. Far below
He hears the cool wave fret
On rocky islands; soft as moths asleep
Come moonlit sails; there on a parapet
Of ruined marble, where the moss gleams wet
And from black cedars a lone peacock cries,
Uncloaking rests Asoka, bathing deep
In silence, and his eyes
Of his own realm the wondrous prospect reap;
At last aloud he sighs.


II
``How ennobling it is to taste
Of the breath of a living power!
The shepherd boy on the waste
Whose converse, hour by hour,
Is alone with the stars and the sun,
His days are glorified!
And the steersman floating on
Down this great Ganges tide,
He is blest to be companion of the might
Of waters and unwearied winds that run
With him, by day, by night:
He knows not whence they come, but they his path provide.

``But O more noble far
From the heart of power to proceed
As the beam flows forth from the star,
As the flower unfolds on the reed.
It is not we that are strong
But the cause, the divine desire,
The longing wherewith we long.
O flame far--springing from the eternal fire,
Feed, feed upon my heart till thou consume
These bonds that do me wrong
Of time and chance and doom,
And I into thy radiance grow and glow entire!

``For he who his own strength trusts,
And by violence hungers to tame
Men and the earth to his lusts,
Though mighty, he falls in shame;
As a great fell tiger, whose sound
The small beasts quake to hear,
When he stretches his throat to the shuddering ground
And roars for blood; yet a trembling deer
Brings him at last to his end.
In a winter torrent falls his murderous bound!
His raging claws the unheeding waters rend;
Down crags they toss him sheer,
With sheep ignobly drowned,
And his fierce heart is burst with fury of its fear.


III
``Not so ye deal,
Immortal Powers, with him
Who in his weak hour hath made haste to kneel
Where your divine springs out of mystery brim,
And carries thence through the world's uproar rude
A clear--eyed fortitude;
As the poor diver on the Arabian strand
From the scorched rocky ledges plunging deep,
Glides down the rough dark brine with questing hand
Until he feels upleap
Founts of fresh water, and his goatskin swells
And bears him upward on those buoyant wells
Back with a cool boon for his thirsting land.

``I also thirst,
O living springs, for you:
Would that I might drink now, as when at first
Life shone about me glorious and all true,
And I abounded in your strength indeed,
Which now I sorely need.
You have not failed, 'tis I! Yet this abhorred
Necessity to hate and to despise--
'Twas not for this my youthful longing soared,
Not thus would I grow wise!
Keep my heart tender still, that still is set
To love without foreboding or regret,
Even as this tender moonlight is outpoured.

``Now now, even now,
Sleep doth the sad world take
To peace it knows not. Radiant Sleep, wilt thou
Unveil thy wonder for me too, who wake?
O my soul melts into immensity,
And yet 'tis I, 'tis I!
A wave upon a silent ocean, thrilled
Up from its deepest deeps without a sound,
Without a shore to break on, or a bound,
Until the world be filled.
O mystery of peace, O more profound
Than pain or joy, upbuoy me on thy power!
Stay, stay, adorèd hour,
I am lost, I am found again:
My soul is as a fountain springing in the rain.''

--Long, long upon that cedarn--shadowed height
Musing, Asoka mingled with the night.
At last the moon sank o'er the forest wide.
Within his soul those fountains welled no more,
Yet breathed a balm still, fresh as fallen dew:
The mist coiled upward over Ganges shore;
And he arose and sighed,
And gathered his cloak round him, and anew
Threaded the deep woods to his palace door.

I
``O King Amasis, hail!
News from thy friend, the King Polycrates!
My oars have never rested on the seas
From Samos, nor on land my horse's hoofs,
Till I might tell my tale.''
Sais, the sacred city, basked her roofs
And gardens whispering in the western light;
Men thronged abroad to taste the coming cool of night:
Only the palace closed
Unechoing courts, where by the lake reposed,
Wide--eyed, the enthronèd shapes of Memphian deities;
And King Amasis in the cloistered shade,
That guards them, of a giant colonnade,
Paced musing; there he pondered mysteries
That are the veils of truth;
For mid those gods of grave, ignoring smile
Large auguries he spelled,
Forgot the spears, the tumults of his youth,
And strangled Apries, and the reddened Nile.
Now turning, he beheld,
Half in a golden shadow and half touched with flame,
The white--robed stranger from the Grecian isle,
And heard pronounced his name.


II
``Welcome from Samos, friend!
Good news, I think, thou bearest in thy mien,''
The king spoke welcoming with voice serene.
``How is it with Polycrates, thy lord?
Peace on his name attend!
Would he were here in Egypt, and his sword
Could sheathe, and we at god--like ease discourse
Of counsel no ignoble needs enforce,
And take august regale
Of wisdom from the Powers whose purpose cannot fail.
I, too, O man of Samos, bred to war,
Passed youth, passed manhood, in a life of blood;
But many victories bring the heart no certain good.
Would that he too might tease his fate no more,
And I might see his face
In presence of my land's ancestral Powers,--
See, from their countenance, what a grandeur beams!
Thou know'st I love thy race;
Bright wits ye have, skill in adventurous schemes;
But deeper life is ours:
Fed by these springs, your strength might bless the world. But lo!
The light begins to fade from the high towers.
Thy errand let me know.''


III
``Thus saith Polycrates:
The counsel which thou wrotest me is well;
For, seeing how full crops my granaries swell,
How all winds waft me to prosperity,
How I gain all with ease,
And my raised banner pledges victory,
Thou didst advise me cast away what most
Brought pleasure to my eyes and seemed of rarest cost.
And after heavy thought
I chose the ring which Theodorus wrought,
My famous emerald, where young Phaethon
Shoots headlong with pale limbs through glowing air,
While green waves from beneath toss white drops to his hair.
A long time, very loth, I gazed thereon;
For this cause, thought I, men most envy me;
I took a ship, and fifty beating oars
Bore me far out to sea:
I stood upon the poop--but wherefore tell
What now is rumoured round all Asian shores?
Say only I did well,
Who the world's envy treasured yet in deep waves drowned.
Homeward I came, and mourned within my doors
Three days, nor solace found.''


IV
Amasis without word
Listens, dark--browed: the Samian speaks anew:
``Let not the king this thing so deeply rue;
Truly the gem was of imperial price,
Nay even, men averred,
Coveted more than wealthy satrapies,
Nor twenty talents could its loss redeem:
Yet hear! the Gods are more benignant than men dream.
Thus saith my lord: The moon
Not once had waned, when as I sat at noon
Within my palace court above the Lydian bay,
They led before me with much wondering noise
A fisherman; between two staggering boys
Slung heavily a fish he brought, that day
Caught in his bursting net,
A royal fish for royal destiny!
I marvelled; but amaze broke deeper yet
To recognize Heaven's hand,
When from its cloven belly (surely high
In that large grace I stand)
Dazzled my eyes with light, my heart with joy, the ring
Restored!--Why rendest thou thy robe, and why
Lamentest thou, O king?''


V
``O lamentable news!''
Amasis cried; ``now have the Gods indeed
Doom on thy head, Polycrates, decreed!
I feared already, when I heard thy joy
Must need stoop down to choose
For sacrifice, loss of a shining toy,
Searching the suburbs only of content,
Not thy heart's home: what God this blindness on thee sent?
Gone was thy ring; yet how
Was thy soul cleared, or thou more greatly thou?
Were vain things vainer, or the dear more dear?
Hast thou, bent gazing o'er thy child asleep,
Thoughts springing, tender as new leaves? Deep, deep,
Deep as thy inmost hope, as thy most sacred fear,
Thou shouldst have sought the pain
That changes earth's wide aspect in an hour,
Heaved by abysmal throes!
Ah, then our pleasant refuges are vain;
Yet, thrilled, the soul assembles all her power,
And cleared by peril glows,
Seeing immortal hosts arrayed upon her side!
Blind man, the scornful Gods thy offering slight:
My fears are certified.''


VI
Swift are the thoughts of fear.
But Fate at will rides swifter far; and lo!
Even as Amasis bows to boded woe,
Even as his robe, with a sad cry, he rends,
The accomplishment is here.
The sun that from the Egyptian plain descends,
Blessing with holier shade
Those strange gods dreaming throned by the vast colonnade,
Burns o'er the northern sea,
Firing the peak of Asian Mycale,
Firing a cross raised on the mountain side!
Polycrates the Fortunate hangs there:
The false Oroetes hath him in a snare;
Now with his quivering limbs his soul is crucified;
And in his last hour first
He tastes the extremity of loss; he burns
With ecstasy of thirst;
Nought recks he even of his dearest now,
Moaning for breath; no pity he discerns
On the dark Persian's brow:
Grave on his milk--white horse, in silks of Sidon shawled,
The Satrap smiles, and on his finger turns
The all--envied emerald.

Mediterranean Verses

I
The desert sand at day's swift flight
Drank of the dew--cold vivid night
Where Nile flows as he flowed
When first men reaped and sowed

As though his stream since Time began
Bore all the history of Man,
Vast ages lapsing brief
As noiseless as a leaf.

But when the first high star, concealed
Itself by shadowing boughs, revealed
The glinting ripple, it seemed
As the great water streamed

That ears attuned might hear the strings
Plucked by the harpist for those kings
Who in persistence fond
Would be companion'd

Through the faint under--world, and still
Press the firm--clustered grape, and feel
Wind from the fanning plume
Sweetened with incense--fume;

Still watch the honey--coloured grain
Stiffen to ripeness on the plain,
Or dancers with slim flanks
Circle in chiming ranks.

For Time, so old, must abdicate:
Eyes and a smile that have no date
Respond from chiselled stone
Young as, each day, the dawn;

And pulsings of the carver's wrist
So subtly in those curves persist,
The presence in the form
To touch is almost warm.

But like the pictures dreams make glow
On darkness, that in daylight go
So soon, except they find
Some lodging in the mind,

Only by beauty can these cross
The dark stream of the dead to us.
Only the hot sun dwells
'Mid those long parallels

Of broken pillars, roofed with air,
In temples of unanswered prayer;
And Gods unfeasted own
Naught but a granite throne.


II
Rain and the scolding wind's uproar
And the black cloud befitted more
The towering walls that hem
Teeming Jerusalem;

City of wailing, wrath, and blood,
The city of the grave and shroud,
Whence arose the Word
That brought so sharp a sword.

O city stubbornly enthroned!
The city that the prophets stoned,
Over which Jesus wept,
And proud Rome vainly swept!

But as from heavens of brooding love
A peace unearthly beamed above
The hill--surrounded sea
Of lonely Galilee.

And we beneath those silent skies
Walked among flowers of paradise,
As if their happier seed
Knew peace on earth indeed.

Peace, by the world praised and eschewed,
Lived in that ageless solitude
And with no phrases deckt
Shone richer in neglect.

And under stony hills severe,
Where sounds are few, we still could hear
The shepherd from the rock
Pipe to his wandering flock.

Remote beyond the Syrian bay
At close of a long burning day
Into the dusk still shone
The snows of Lebanon.


III
Morning came dancing, Morning warmed
The blue sea--circle, whence she charmed
Isle after isle to rise
Rock--pointed toward the skies,

Whose names transfigured strand and cape
Into a legendary shape
Re--peopled from afar
But to be brought more near;

As if old ships and oar'd galleys
Still swept along the silent seas;
Sailors of Tyre in quest
Of the remoter West;

Athenians racing to undo
Their own decree, before it slew;
And Cleopatra's sail
From Actium flying pale;

And traffickers with rich Byzance
Past Patmos fading, lost in trance;
And Paul, on fire within
The sad world's soul to win;

And Rudel in love's dear duress
Turned eastward to his Far Princess,
To die for that one bliss,
The first and the last kiss;

And doomed Othello Cyprus--bound.--
The islands rose and sank around,
And when the day declined
Their shadows filled the mind.

Dim in the dawn stood Hector's ghost
Upon the mound where Troy lies lost.
But through the straits we sped
Turned to our dearer dead.


IV
The hills divide, the seas unite
The valleys of a land of light,
But O how bare beside
That Hellas glorified

Which, wasted, clan by warring clan,
Yet made a splendour shine in Man
By that inquiring will
Whose way we follow still;

Built in the mind his palace rare,
Towered high as thought can dare
And thronged with images
Of joys and agonies,

Confronting destiny and wrong
With the high--symbol'd scene, and song
Threading its music through
The tale of wrath and rue.

But Time, so tender to a thought
That branches up from living root,
Has here unbuilt, defaced,
And Beauty dispossessed,

Conniving with men's minds inert,
Brute blows, and stupid skill to hurt,
As if 'twere half their joy
To maim and to destroy.

O Delphi, where all Hellas came
To hear the awful Voice proclaim
Fate, how beneath your steep
Is all--forgetting sleep!

No voice, no votary, no shrine;
Though the long vale be still divine
From that blue bay below
To the far mountain snow,

And soundless noon that idly warms
The scattered stones and shattered forms
Only the shadow brings
Of wheeling eagles' wings.


V
In the last light some column glows
Where once a white perfection rose
Imperfectly divined
By the rebuilding mind,

Which treasures up a shape, a thought,
From footprint or from echo caught;
Hard gleanings, that attest
Oblivion has the best.

Fade coasts and isles, where the seed sown
Still flowers in all we are and own.
A future presses near
Clouds of unshapen fear.

And now the ghostly, vast night--fall
Like an age closing past recall
Seems, and this darkening sea
The wastes of history;

The sea that no proud trophy claims
For sunken ventures, foundered fames,
Dishevelled navies tost,
Ships like a bubble lost;

That keeps no sure abiding form
And rises in unconscious storm
Whipt by an ignorant blast,
And when the fury's past,

Sleeking its waves, mile after mile,
Into the image of a smile.
Is this what Time does still,
Working a witless will?

But through the dark, stopt by no seas,
Pass other Powers and Presences
Unseen from shore to shore,
Armed and at conscious war,

Ideas, mightier than men,
That seize and madden, free or chain.
The things unprophesied
Our prophecies deride;

But end is none, though the storms break
And the mind pale, and the heart shake.
Out of that future ring
Far trumpets challenging.

The dripping of the boughs in silence heard
Softly; the low note of some lingering bird
Amid the weeping vapour; the chill fall
Of solitary evening upon all
That stirs and hopes and apprehends and grieves,
With pining odours of the ruined leaves
Have like a dew distilled upon my heart
The air of death: but now recoiling start
Longing and keen remembrance out of sighs;
And forward the desiring spirit flies
Toward the wild peace of that illumined shore,
Which, left behind her, yet still shines before;
To Douro, rushing through the mighty hills.
Now his great stream with fancied splendour fills
Even this brooding twilight; a swift ghost,
Journeying forever to the glimmering coast,
Where his majestic voice is heard afar,
Exulting dim upon that ocean bar.
O Douro, gliding by dark woods, and fleet
Beneath thy shadowy rocks in the noon heat,
How my heart faints to follow after thee
On one true course to my deep destined sea!
To take no care of dimness or sunshine,
Urged ever by an inward way divine,
Nor falter in this heavy gloom that brings
So thick upon me lamentable things
Of earth, and hinders the swift spirit's wings,
And clouds the steadfast vision that sustains
Alone the trembling heart amid perpetual pains.

Dear friend, who thirstest, even as I, to be
Heir and possessor of sweet liberty,
Once more in memory let us pluck the hour
That bloomed so perfect, and renew the power
Of joy within our wondering breasts, to feel
That freshness of eternal things, and heal
All our unhappy thoughts in those pure rays.
Not yet the last of these delightful days
Into the dark unwillingly has flown,
And thou and I upon a hill o'ergrown,
That indolently shadows Douro stream,
Together watch the wonderful clear dream
Of evening. Under the dark shore of pines
Noiselessly running, the wide water shines.
Curving afar, from where the mountains lift
Their burning heads, through many a forest rift
The River comes, scenting the spaces free
In this broad channel, of his welcoming sea.
No more by silent precipices hewn
Out of the night, murmuring a lonely tune
To craggy Fregeneda; nor where shines
Regoa, throned among her purple vines,
Impetuously seeking valleys new;
But smoothing his broad mirror to the hue
And peace of heaven, unhasting now he flows
And with the sky unfathomably glows,
Even as on yonder shore the woods receive
In their empurpled bosoms the warm eve.
As when a lover gazes tenderly
Upon his loved one, and, as tender, she
Hushes her heart, her joy to realize,
So hushed, so lovely, so contented lies
Earth, by that earnest--gazing glory blest.
But on this hither bank that fervent West
Is hidden behind us, and the stems around
Spring shadowy from the bare and darkling ground.
Only a single pine out of the shade
Emerges, in what splendour soft arrayed!
Magical clearness, warming to the sight
As to the touch it would be: plumed with light,
Motionless upward the tree soars and burns.
But now the dews upon the freshened ferns
In the dim hollow gather, and cool scent
Of herbage with the pine's pure odour blent,
And voices of the villagers below
As home, with music, up the stream they row,
Greet us descending; every blossom sleeps,
And bluer and more blue the evening steeps
Water and fragrant grass and the straight stems
In tender mystery. Down a path that hems
The hollow, to our waiting boat we come.
Pale purple flames shining amid the gloom
Signal the autumn crocus: look, afar,
Betwixt the tree--tops, the first--ventured star!
Soon gliding homeward under shadowy shores
And deepened sky, to the repeated oars'
Strong chime we hasten. Now along pale sand
Our ripple leaps in silver; now the land,
High over the swift water darkly massed,
Echoes our falling blades as we go past;
Until, enthroned upon her hills divine,
The city nears us: lights begin to shine
Scarce from the stars distinguished, so the gloom
Has mingled earth and sky; more steeply loom
The banks on either side, at intervals
Tufted with trees, or crowned with winding walls;
And now at last the river opens large,
Filled with the city's murmur; from his marge,
Slope over slope, the glimmering terraces
Rise, and their scattered lamps' bright images
Cast on the wavering water; and we hear
The sound of soft bells, and cries faint or near
From the dim wharves, or anchored ships, whose spars
Entangle in dark meshes the white stars.
And pale smoke rising blue on the blue air
Sleeps in a thin cloud under heights that bear
Towers and roofs lofty against the west,
Where yet a clearness lingers. Now the breast
Of Douro heaves, foreboding whither bound
His currents hasten, and with joyous sound,
As though the encountering brine new pulses gave,
Lifts, to outrace our speed, his buoyant wave.
For, hearken, up the peaceful evening borne
Out of the wide sea--gates, low thunders warn
Of Ocean beating with his sleepless surge
Along the wild sand--marges: the deep dirge
Of mariners, that wakes the widow's ear
At night, far inland, terrible and near.
Fainter, this eve, he murmurs than as oft
His troubled music: here, by distance soft,
The abrupt volley, the sharp shattering roar,
And seethe of foam flung tumbling up the shore,
Mingle in one wide rumour, that all round
Is heard afar, robing the air with sound.
Deep in my heart I hear it. The still night
Deepens, as we ascend the homeward height,
And loud or low, in following intervals,
Over the hills the sound unwearied falls;
And as upon my bed my heavy eyes
Close up, the drowsing mind re--occupies.

O what a vision floats into my sleep!
As a night--shutting flower, my senses keep
The live day's lingering odours and warm hues,
That thought and motion with themselves transfuse,
Till sound and light and perfume are but one,
Mingled in fires of the embracing sun.
Yet still I am aware of Ocean stirred
Far off, and like a grave rejoicing heard.
Am I awake, or in consenting dreams
Pour thither all my thought's tumultuous streams?
His voice, to meet them, a deep answer sends:
My soul, to listen, her light wing suspends,
And, pillowed upon undulating sound,
For all desire hath satisfaction found.
He calls her thither, where the winds uncage
Vast longing, that the unsounded seas assuage.
Breeze after breeze her wingèd pinnace bears
Over the living water, that prepares
Still widening mystery: she her speed the more
Urges, exulting to have lost the shore,
Supported by the joy that sets her free,
Delighted mistress of her destiny,
Fills the wide night with beating of her wing,
And is content, for ever voyaging
By timeless courses, over worlds unknown,
Lifted and lost, abounding and alone.

The Burning Of The Leaves

I
Now is the time for the burning of the leaves.
They go to the fire; the nostril pricks with smoke
Wandering slowly into a weeping mist.
Brittle and blotched, ragged and rotten sheaves!
A flame seizes the smouldering ruin and bites
On stubborn stalks that crackle as they resist.

The last hollyhock's fallen tower is dust;
All the spices of June are a bitter reek,
All the extravagant riches spent and mean.
All burns! The reddest rose is a ghost;
Sparks whirl up, to expire in the mist: the wild
Fingers of fire are making corruption clean.

Now is the time for stripping the spirit bare,
Time for the burning of days ended and done,
Idle solace of things that have gone before:
Rootless hope and fruitless desire are there;
Let them go to the fire, with never a look behind.
The world that was ours is a world that is ours no more.

They will come again, the leaf and the flower, to arise
From squalor of rottenness into the old splendour,
And magical scents to a wondering memory bring;
The same glory, to shine upon different eyes.
Earth cares for her own ruins, naught for ours.
Nothing is certain, only the certain spring.

II
Never was anything so deserted
As this dim theatre
Now, when in passive grayness the remote
Morning is here,
Daunting the wintry glitter of the pale,
Half--lit chandelier.

Never was anything disenchanted
As this silence!
Gleams of soiled gilding on curved balconies
Empty; immense
Dead crimson curtain, tasselled with its old
And staled pretence.

Nothing is heard but a shuffling and knocking
Of mop and mat,
Where dustily two charwomen exchange
Leisurely chat.
Stretching and settling to voluptuous sleep
Curls a cat.

The voices are gone, the voices
That laughed and cried.
It is as if the whole marvel of the world
Had blankly died,
Exposed, inert as a drowned body left
By the ebb of the tide.

Beautiful as water, beautiful as fire,
The voices came,
Made the eyes to open and the ears to hear,
The hand to lie intent and motionless,
The heart to flame,
The radiance of reality was there,
Splendour and shame.

Slowly an arm dropped, and an empire fell.
We saw, we knew.
A head was lifted, and a soul was freed.
Abysses opened into heaven and hell.
We heard, we drew
Into our thrilled veins courage of the truth
That searched us through.

But the voices are all departed,
The vision dull.
Daylight disconsolately enters
Only to annul.
The vast space is hollow and empty
As a skull.

III
Cold springs among black ruins? Who shall say
Whither or whence they stream?
If it could be that such translated light
As comes about a dreamer when he dreams--
And he believes with a belief intense
What morning will deride--if such a light
Of neither night nor day
Nor moon nor sun
Shone here, it would accord with what it broods upon,--
Disjected fragments of magnificence!
A loneliness of light, without a sound,
Is shattered on wrecked tower and purpled wall
(Fire has been here!)
On arch and pillar and entablature,
As if arrested in the act to fall.
Where a home was, is a misshapen mound
Beneath nude rafters. Still,
Fluent and fresh and pure,
At their own will
Amid this lunar desolation glide
Those living springs, with interrupted gleam,
As if nothing had died:
But who will drink of them?

Stooping and feeble, leaning on a stick,
An old man with his vague feet stirs the dust,
Searching a strange world for he knows not what
Among haphazard stone and crumbled brick.
He cannot adjust
What his eyes see to memory's golden land,
Shut off by the iron curtain of to--day:
The past is all the present he has got.
Now, as he bends to peer
Into the rubble, he picks up in his hand
(Death has been here!)
Something defaced, naked and bruised: a doll,
A child's doll, blankly smiling with wide eyes
And oh, how human in its helplessness!
Pondered in weak fingers
He holds it puzzled: wondering, where is she
The small mother
Whose pleasure was to clothe it and caress,
Who hugged it with a motherhood foreknown,
Who ran to comfort its imagined cries
And gave it pretty sorrows for its own?
No one replies.

IV
Beautiful, wearied head
Leant back against the arm upthrown behind,
Why are your eyes closed? Is it that they fear
Sight of these vast horizons shuddering red
And drawing near and near?
God--like shape, would you be blind
Rather than see the young leaves dropping dead
All round you in foul blasts of scorching wind,
As if the world, O disinherited,
That your own spirit willed
Since upon earth laughter and grief began
Should only in final mockery rebuild
A palace for the proudest ruin, Man?

Or are those eyes closed for the inward eye
To see, beyond the tortures of to--day,
The hills of hope, serene in liquid light
Of reappearing sky--
This black fume and miasma rolled away?
Yet oh how far thought speeds the onward sight!
The unforeshortened vision opens vast.
Hill beyond hill, year upon year amassed,
Age beyond age and still the hills ascend,
Height superseding height,
Though each had seemed (but only seemed) the last,
And still appears no end,
No end, but all an upward path to climb,
To conquer--at what cost!
Labouring on, to be lost
On the mountains of Time.

What are they burning, what are they burning,
Heaping and burning in a thunder--gloom?
Rubbish of the old world, dead things, merely names,
Truth, justice, love, beauty, the human smile,
All flung to the flames!
They are raging to destroy, but first defile;
Maddened, because no furnace will consume
What lives, still lives, impassioned to create.
Ah, your eyes open: open, and dilate.
Transfigured, you behold
The python that was coiled about your feet,
Muscle on muscle, in slow malignant fold,
Tauten and tower, impending opposite,--
A fury of greed, an ecstasy of hate,
Concentred in the small and angry eye.
Your hand leaps out in the action to defy,
And grips the unclean throat, to strangle it.

V
From shadow to shadow the waters are gliding, are gone,
They mirror the ruins a moment, the wounds and the void;
But theirs is the sweetness of silence in places apart:
They retain not a stain, in a moment they shine as they shone,
They stay not for bound or for bar, they have found out a way
Far from the gnawing of greed and the envious heart.

The freshness of leaves is from them, and the springing of grass,
The juice of the apple, the rustle of ripening corn;
They know not the lust of destruction, the frenzy of spite;
They give and pervade, and possess not, but silently pass;
They perish not, though they be broken; continuing streams,
The same in the cloud and the glory, the night and the light.

I
I lay upon my bed in the great night:
The sense of my body drowsed;
But a clearness yet lingered in the spirit,
By soft obscurity housed.

As an inn to a traveller on a long road,
Happy sleep appeared.
I should come there, to the room of waiting dreams,
In the time that slowly neared;

But still amid memory's wane fancy delighted,
Like wings in the afterglow
Dipping to the freshness of the waves of living,
To recover from long--ago

A touch or a voice, then soaring aloft and afar
The free world to range.
At last, on the brink of the dark, by subtle degrees
Came a chilling and a change.

Solitude sank to my marrow and pierced my veins.
Though I roam and though I learn
All the wonder of earth and of men, it is here
In the end I must return,

To the something alone that in each of us breathes and sleeps,
Profound, isolate, still,
And must brave the giant world, and from hour to hour
Must prove its own will;

To this self, unexcused and unglorified, drawn
From its fond shadows, and bare,
Wherein no man that has been, none that is or shall be,
Shares, or can ever share.

And it tingled through me how all use and disguise
Hide nothing: none
Avails to shield, neither pleader nor protector,
But the truth of myself alone.

And the days that have made me, have I not made them also?
Are they not drops of my blood?
What have I done with them? Flower they still within me,
Or lie, trodden in the mud?

Why for god--like freedom an irreplaceable Here,
An irrevocable Now?
They were heavy like strong chains about my bosom,
Like hard bonds upon my brow.

The moments oozing out of the silence seemed
From my very heart lost
In the stream of the worlds: I felt them hot like tears
And of more than riches' cost.

Yet what was it alien in me stood and rebelled
And cried, Nevertheless
My passion is mine, my strength and my frailty; I am not
Thrall unto Time's duress!

Then suddenly rose before me, older than all,
Night of the soft speech,
With murmur of tender winds, yet terrible with stars
Beyond fancy's reach;

Without foundation, without summit, without
Haven or refuge, Night
Palpitating with stars that dizzy thought and desire
In their unimagined flight,

O these most terrible! vast surmises, touching
The pulse of a fear unknown,
Where all experience breaks like a frail bubble,
And the soul is left alone,

Alone and abandoned of all familiar uses,--
Itself the only place
It knows,--a question winged, barbed and burning
In the answerless frost of Space.

I was afraid; but my heart throbbed faster, fiercer.
I trembled, but cried anew:
I am strange to you, O Stars! O Night, I am your exile,
I have no portion in you.

Though you shall array your silences against me,
I know you and defy.
Though I be but a moth in an abyss of ages,
This at least is not yours; it is I.


II
O blessèd be the touch of thought
That marries moments from afar,
That finds the thing it had not sought,
And smells a spice no treasure bought,
And learns what never sages taught,
And sees this earth a dazzling star!

As in the sheen of a lamp unseen,
The lamp of memory shrouded long,
There sprang before me, sweet as song,
The vision of a branch of bloom,
A swaying branch of blossom scented;
And in that bloom amid the gloom
My heart was luminously tented.


III
A score of years was melted, and I was young
And the world young with me,
When in innocence of delight I laid me down
Beneath a certain tree.

The breathing splendour of that remembered May
Had yet seven days to spill
In fragrant showers of fairy white and red
And in notes from the blackbird's bill,

When I laid me down on a bank by the water's edge:
In the glowing shadow I lay.
My very body was drenched in a speechless joy
Whose cause I could not say.

The sky was poured in singing rivers of blue;
The ripple danced in sight;
Close to the marge was a coloured pebble; it burned
Amid kisses of liquid light.

Like a hurry of little flames the tremble of gleams
Shivered up through the leaves and was gone.
Like a shaking of heavenly bells was the sound of the leaves
In the tower of branches blown.

And odours wandering each from its honeyed haunt
Over the air stole,
Like memories out of a world before the world,
Seeking the private soul.

But I knew not where my soul was: in that hour
Neither time nor place it knew!
It was trembling high in the topmost blossom that drank
Of the glory of airy blue;

It was dark in the root that sucked of the plenteous earth;
It was lovely flames of fire;
It was water that murmured round and around the world;
It was poured in the sun's desire.

Not the bird, but the bird's bright, wayward swiftness;
Not the flowers in magic throng,
But the shooting, the breathing and the perfumed breaking;
Not the singer it was, but the song.

I touched the flesh of my body, and it was strange.
It seemed that my spirit knew
It was I no more; yet the earth and the sky answered
And cried aloud, It is you!

Then into my blood the word of my being thrilled,
(Not a nerve but aware)--It is I!
Yet I could not tell my thought from the green of the grass,
My bliss from the blue of the sky

Overbrimmed, overflowing, I rose like one who has drunk
Of a radiance keener than wine.
I stood on the marvellous earth, and felt my blood
As the stream of a power divine.

Laughter of children afar on the air came to me
And touched me softly home.
There were tears in me like trembling dew; I knew not
Where they had stolen from.

Who is not my brother, and who is not my sister?
O wonder of human eyes,
Have I passed you by, nor perceived how luminous in you
All infinity lies?

Love opened my eyes and opened my ears; not one,
But his soul is as mine is to me!
I heard like a ripple around the world breaking
The voices of children in glee;

I saw the beauty, secret as starlit wells,
Treasured in the bosoms of the old.
I heard like the whisper of leaf to leaf in the nightwind
Hopes that the tongue never told.

Was it the grass that quivered about me? I felt
Not that, but the hearts beating
Close to my own, unnumbered as blades of the grass,
And the dead in the quick heart meeting;

And I knew the dreams of wandering sorrow and joy
Breathed in the sleep of the night
From the other side of the earth, that for me was glowing
To the round horizon's light;

The earth that moves through the light and the dark for ever,
As a dancer moves among
The maze of her sister stars, with a silent speed
In a dance that is always young:

And the heart of my body knew that it shared in all;
It was there, not alone nor afraid.
It throbbed in the life that can never be destroyed,
In the things Time never made.

Orpheus In Thrace

I
Dear is the newly won,
But O far dearer the for ever lost!
He that at utmost cost
His utmost deed hath done
The lost one to recover, and in vain,
What shall his heart, his anguished heart, sustain?
Not the warm and youthful sun,
Flowers breathing on the bough,
Nor a voice, nor music now--
Touches of joy, more hard to bear than pain!
These charm not where he is, but only there
Where she is gone, who took with her delight,
Peace, and all things fair,
And left the whole world bare.
And O, what far well's fountain shall requite
Him who hath drunk so deeply of despair?

Orpheus on a stone--strewn slope
High amid the hills of Thrace
Sets to the bleak North his face.
He a traveller from hope,--
As a bird whose mate is stricken
Flies and flies o'er ocean foam
Nor endures to seek a home,--
Seeks a land where no leaves quicken,
Where from gorges to the plain
Iron--tongued the torrent roars
Into troubled streams that strain
Eddying under barren shores;
Where thronged ridges darkly rise,
Shouldering the storms that sweep
Through the winter--loaded skies,
When far up in heavens asleep
For an hour the clouds unclose:--
Throned in peace beyond the bourne
Of their moving vapours torn,
Glimmer the majestic snows,
Whence an eagle slowly sails
O'er the solitary vales.
Such to Orpheus' pilgrim eyes
The unreached far mountains rise.
``Come,'' he groans, ``you storms, and scourge me,
Dull these inward pangs that urge me
Ever into new despair.
Make my flesh endure as steel,
Let me now the utmost feel,
Bring me news of things that bear--
Frozen torrents, naked trees
That abjure the summer's breeze,--
Keen upon this body fall!
O let me feel your fiercest sting or feel no more at all!''
His hand, half--conscious, straying
Over the well--loved lyre,
Strikes; frail notes obeying
Sadly in air expire.
Wingless they falter forth,
As the pale large plumes of snow
From the dim cloud--curdling North,
Unwilling and soft and slow,
That fall on the hands and the hair
Of Orpheus unheeded, and die,
As out of his heart's despair
He speaks to his lyre: ``Ah, why
Would I stir thee from silence now,
When silence is far the best?
As of old I touch thee, but thou
Unwillingly answerest.
Ah, marvellous once was thy power
In the marvellous days of old!
I touched thee, and all hearts heard,
And the snake had no thought to devour,
And the shy fawn stayed and was bold,
And the panther crept near in desire;
And the toppling Symplegades hung
To hearken thy strings as I sung,
And Argo glanced through like a bird,
Like a swallow, to hear thee, my lyre!
And the soul of the dragon was stirred,
Till his vast coil slowly stooped
From the tree where the Fleece glimmered gold,
And his ageless eyelids drooped,
And his strength sank, fold by fold;
And only the dim leaves heard,
As we stept o'er his coils that were cold.
Mighty wast thou indeed;
But O, in my utmost need,
My heart thou couldst not quell,
My heart that loved too well!
I turned on the brink of the light;
Her hand hung fast in my own;
I was sure as a God in my might;
I gazed; she grew pale, she was flown.
Then the dawn turned back to the night,
And I stood in the world alone.
Eurydice, could I have loved thee less,
I had won thee lightly again.
My great joy wrought my wretchedness,
And thee, whom I love, I have slain.''


II
What lights are these that dance,
Like fire--flies clustering on the dusk hillside,
Mingle and then divide,
Swerve and again advance,
Peopling the shadows thick, till Rhodope
Seems rocking all her towering pines in glee?
Maenads of exultant glance,
Thracian maidens, Thracian dames,
Toss these perilous fair flames.
Soon their full tresses roll from neck to knee,
Swift as a dark shower in the sunset poured;
Soon panting bosoms from rent robes shine bare!
Thoughts leap in accord,
Bright as an unsheathed sword,
Tumultuously free, and mad to dare;
And loud they cry on Bacchus, their wild lord.

O can cheeks of white and red,
Lips that love made tremble often,
Eyes an infant's tears can soften,
Alter with a change so dread?
Yea, a deep fire craving fuel,
Like the dungeoned fires of Earth,
Pants from secrecy for birth,
Careless if its way be cruel.
While from tempest faint they stand,
Orpheus 'mid their riot strays,
Silent halts with listless hand
And with sorrow--sunken gaze.
``Who is this?'' in wrath they cry,
``Spectre sprung to mock our glee!
Woe to this pale face, for he
Joins our mirth or he shall die!''--
Singer, touch thy magic lyre!
Thou couldst stay them soft and still,
Tamed and gentle, to thy will.
Ah, in grief is no desire.
Grief in stony bonds hath bound him,
And these bright forms that surround him
With high torches menacing
And light spears in restless ring,
Seem his own thoughts raging, seem
Furies of embodied dream,
Furies whom 'tis vain to flee.
Alas, he hath for shield and sword
Only one defenceless word,
``Eurydice, Eurydice!''
To piercing wound and branding flame
He answers with that piteous name
The world now echoes back alone.
``Eurydice!'' his soul flies forth in that belovèd moan.

Alas, that the hand should deflower
The treasure the heart loves best,
That the will of an alien power
Should blindly the soul have possest!
Proudly our own great woe
We accomplish, and laugh to have done.
Then strength passes from us; we know,
And we hide our heads from the sun.
Behold, as the dawn--flushed air
Glimmers on peak and vale,
To the pines on the upland bare
Come shadowy forms and pale;
Stealing, maiden and mother,
By single paths of dread,
And wondering each at the other
Bend over the piteous dead,
And touching those rent limbs, cry,
With kisses kneeling low,
In sad affrighted moan,
``It was not I!'' ``Nor I!''
What evil God blinded us so
To wound our beloved, our delight?
For our dancing thou hadst not a song,
And now we have none for thy wrong.
Though thy lyre could charm honey from stone,
Yet we pitied not thee, our delight!
Nay, thee who couldst heal us alone
In our grief, at whose magical boon
Peace brooded a dove o'er our pain,
And our hearts with the sun and the moon
Were at peace, that shall be not again,
Nor our hope with the spring be in tune;
Thee, thee, even thee, have we slain!
Woe for the world, woe!
In cherishing fair snow
Let us bury thee whom we marred,
With the lyre that our flame hath charred.
Gentle wast thou as a flower,
But careless as thunder were we;
And our tears, that should be as a shower
To raise and to foster thee,
Drop vainly, and past is our power
With that blindness and fury and glee.
Yea, the solace we wanted not then in our mirth
From our helpless sorrow is taken;
And for ever untuned is the beautiful earth,
And the home of our hearts is forsaken.

Thunder On The Downs

Wide earth, wide heaven, and in the summer air
Silence! The summit of the Down is bare
Between the climbing crests of wood; but those
Great sea--winds, wont, when the wet South--West blows,
To rock tall beeches and strong oaks aloud
And strew torn leaves upon the streaming cloud,
To--day are idle, slumbering far aloof.
Under the solemn height and gorgeous roof
Of cloud--built sky, all earth is indolent.
Wandering hum of bees and thymy scent
Of the short turf enrich pure loneliness;
Scarcely an airy topmost--twining tress
Of bryony quivers where the thorn it wreathes;
Hot fragrance from the honeysuckle breathes,
And sweet the rose floats on the arching briar's
Green fountain, sprayed with delicate frail fires.
For clumps of thicket, dark beneath the blaze
Of the high westering sun, beset the ways
Of smooth grass narrowing where the slope runs steep
Down to green woods, and glowing shadows keep
A freshness round the mossy roots, and cool
The light that sleeps as in a chequered pool
Of golden air. O woods, I love you well,
I love the flowers you hide, your ferny smell;
But here is sweeter solitude, for here
My heart breathes heavenly space; the sky is near
To thought, with heights that fathomlessly glow;
And the eye wanders the wide land below.

And this is England! June's undarkened green
Gleams on far woods; and in the vales between
Gray hamlets, older than the trees that shade
Their ripening meadows, are in quiet laid,
Themselves a part of the warm, fruitful ground.
The little hills of England rise around;
The little streams that wander from them shine
And with their names remembered names entwine
Of old renown and honour, fields of blood
High causes fought on, stubborn hardihood
For freedom spent, and songs, our noblest pride,
That in the heart of England never died,
And burning still make splendour of our tongue.
Glories enacted, spoken, suffered, sung,
You lie emblazoned on this land now sleeping;
And southward, over leagues of forest sweeping
White on the verge glistens the famous sea,
That English wave, on which so haughtily
Towered her sails, and one sail homeward bore
Past capes of silently lamenting shore
Victory's dearest dead. O shores of home,
Since by the vanished watch--fire shields of Rome
Dinted this upland turf, what hearts have ached
To see you far away, what eyes have waked
Ere dawn to watch those cliffs of long desire
One after one rise in their voiceless choir
Out of the twilight over the rough blue
Like music!... But now heavy gleams imbrue
The inland air. Breathless the valleys hold
Their colours in a veil of sultry gold
With mingled shadows that have ceased to crawl;
For far in heaven is thunder! Over all
A single cloud in slow magnificence
Climbs like a mountain, gradual and immense,
With awful head unstirring, and moved on
Against the zenith, towers above the sun.
And still it thickens luminous fold on fold
Of fatal colour, ominously scrolled
And fleeced with fire; above the sun it towers
Like some vast thought quickening a world not ours
Remote in the waste blue, as if behind
Its rim were splendour that could smite us blind,
So doom--piled and intense it crests heaven's height
And mounting makes a menace of the light.
A menace! Yes, for when light comes, we fear.
Light that may touch, as the pure angel--spear,
Us to ourselves, make visible, make start
The apparition of the very heart
And mystery of our thoughts, awaked from under
The mask of cheating habit, and to thunder
Bare in a moment of white fire what we
Have feared and fled, our own reality.

And if a lightning now were loosed in flame
Out of the darkness of the cloud to claim
Thy heart, O England, how wouldst thou be known
In that hour? How to the quick core be shown
And seen? What cry should from thy very soul
Answer the judgment of that thunder--roll?

I hear a voice arraign thee. ``Where is now
The exaltation that once lit thy brow?
Thou countest all thy ocean--sundered lands,
Thou heapest up the labours of thy hands,
Thou seest all thy ships upon the seas.
But in thine own heart mean idolatries
Usurp devotion, choke thee and annul
Noble excess of spirit, and make dull
Thine eyes, enfleshed with much dominion.
Art thou so great and is the glory gone?
Do these bespeak thy freedom who deflower
Time, and make barren every senseless hour,
Who from themselves hurry, like men afraid
Lest what they are be to themselves betrayed?
Or those who in their huddled thousands sweat
To buy the sleep that helps them to forget?--
Life lies unused, life with its loveliness!
While the cry ravens still, ``Possess, Possess!''
And there is no possession. All the lust
Of gainful man is quieted in dust;
His faith, his fear, his joy, his doom he owns,
No more: the rest is parcelled with his bones,
Save what the imagination of his heart
Can to the labour of his hands impart,
Making stones serve his spirit's desire, and breathe.
But thou, what dost thou to the world bequeathe,
Who gatherest riches in a waste of mind
Unto what end, O confidently blind,
Forgetful of the things that grow not old
And alone live and are not bought or sold?''

Speaks that voice truth? Is it for this that great
And tender spirits suffered scorn and hate,
Loved to the utmost, poured themselves, gave all
Nor counted cost, spirits imperial?
Where are they now, they that our memory guard
Among the nations? Shall I say enstarred
And throned aloof? No, not from heavens of thought
Watching our muddied brief procession, not
Judges sublime above us, without share
In our thronged ways of struggle, hope, despair,
But in our blood, our dreams, our deeds they stir,
Strive on our lips for language, shame and spur
The sluggard in us, out of darkness come
Like summoned champions when the world is dumb;
Within our hearts they wait with all they gave:
Woe to us, woe, if we become their grave!
It shall not be. Darken thy pall, and trail,
Thunder of heaven, above the valleys pale!
Another England in my vision glows.
And she is armed within; at last she knows
Herself, and what to her own soul belongs.
Mid the world's irremediable wrongs
She keeps her faith; and nothing of her name
Or of her handiwork but doth proclaim
Her purpose. Her own soul hath made her free,
Not circumstance; she knows no victory
Save of the mind: in her is nothing done,
No wrong, no shame, no glory of any one,
But is the cause of all and each, a thing
Felt like a fire to kindle and to sting
The proud blood of a nation. On her brows
Is hope; her body doth her spirit house
Express and eloquent, not dumb and frore;
And her voice echoes over sea and shore,
And all the lands and isles that are her own
In choric interchange and antiphon
Answer, as fancy hears in yonder cloud
From vale to vale repeated low and loud
The still--suspended thunder. Hearts of Youth,
High--beating, ardent, quick in hope and ruth
And noble anger, O wherever now
You dedicate your uncorrupted vow
To be an energy of Light, a sword
Of the ever--living Will, amid abhorred
Din of the reeking street and populous den
Where under the great stars blind lusts of men
War on each other, or escaped to hills
Where peace the solitary evening fills,
Or far remote on other soils of earth
Keeping the dearness of your fathers' hearth
On vast plains of the West, or Austral strands
Of the warm under--world, or storied lands
Of the orient sun, or over ocean ways
Stemming the wave through blue or stormy days,
Wherever, as the circling light slopes round,
On human lips is heard an English sound,
O scattered, silent, hidden, and unknown,
Be lifted up, for you are not alone!
High--beating hearts, to your deep vows be true!
Live out your dreams, for England lives in you.

Give me your hand, Beloved! I cannot see;
So close from shadowy--branching tree to tree
Dark leaves hang over us. How vast and still
Night sleeps! and yet a murmur, a low thrill,
Sighed out of mystery, steals slowly near,
Solitary as longing or as fear,
Through the faint foliage, stirring it, and shy
Amid the stillness, ere it tremble by,
Touches us on the cheek and on the brow
Light as a dew--dript finger! Listen now,
'Tis not alone the hushings of the bough,
But on the slabbed rock--beaches far beneath
Listen, the liquid breath
Of the vast lake that rustles up all round
Whispering for ever! Soon shall we be where
The trees end, and the promontory bare
Breathes all that wide and water--wandering air
Which shall our foreheads and our lips delight,
Blown darkly through the breadth and depth and height
Of soft, immense, and solitary Night.

Where is the Day,
Bright as a dream, that on this same cliff--way
Fretted light shadows on old olive stems
By whose gray, riven roots like scarlet gems
The little poppies burned? Where those clear hues
Of water, melted to diviner blues
In the deep distance of each radiant bay,
But close beneath us, past the narrowed edge
Of shadow from sheer crag and jutting ledge,
Shallowing upon the low reef into gold,
A ripple of keen light for ever rolled
Up to the frail reed sighing on the shore?
Where are those mountains far--enthroned and hoar
Above the glittering water's slumbrous heat,
With old blanched towns sprinkled about their feet,
Lifting majestic shoulders, that each side
Of that steep misty northern chasm divide,
Where, ambushed in the dim gulf ere they leap,
Wild spirits of the Wind and Thunder sleep?

'Tis flown, that many--coloured dream is flown,
And with the heart of Night we are alone.
This is the verge. The promontory ends.
Now the dim branches cover us no more.
Abrupt the path descends:
But here will we sit, high above the shore,
Here, where we know what wild flowered bushes cloak
Old ruined walls, and crumbling arches choke
With mounded earth, though buried from our eyes
In dark now, as beneath dark centuries
The marble--towered magnificence of Rome,
From whose hot dust the passionate poet fled
Hither, and laid his head
Where these same waters laughed him welcome home!

It is all dark; but how the air breathes free!
Beloved, lean to me!
Feel how the stillness like a bath desired
With happy pressure heals our senses tired;
And drink the keen sweet fragrance from the grass
And wafts from hidden flowers that come and pass,--
None here but we, and we have left behind
The world, and cares confined,
All with the daylight drowned
In darkness on this height of utmost ground,
Where under us the sighing waters cease
And over us are only stars and peace.

O Love, Love, Love, look up! Let your head lean
Back on my shoulder. Ah, I feel the keen
Indrawing of your breath, and your heart beat
Under my own, and sighing through you sweet
The wonder of the Night that widely broods
Over us with her glittering multitudes.
Oh, in Night's garden has a fountain sprung
That over old earth showers forever young
A fairy splendour of still--dropping spray?
Or in mad rapture has enamoured May
Through the warm dusk mounted like wine, and towered
And in far spaces infinitely flowered,
Breaking the deep heaven into milky bloom?
So beautiful in this most tender gloom
Ten thousand thousand stars through height on height
Burn over us, how breathless and how bright!
Some wild, some fevered, some august and large,
Royal and blazing like a hero's targe,
Some faint and secret, from abysses brought,
Lone as an incommunicable thought--
They throng, they reign, they droop, they bloom, they glow
Upon our gaze, and as we gaze they grow
In patience and in glory, till the mind
Is brimmed and to all other being blind;
They hang, they fall towards us, spears of fire,
Piercing us through with joy and with desire.

Ah me, Beloved, comes an alien gust,
A sudden cold thought, blowing bitter dust
Upon this rapture. They are dead, all dead!
'Tis but the beauty of Medusa's head
Gleaming on us in icy masks, that stare
From everlasting winter blind and bare;
They have no answer for our hearts that yearn,
They have no joy in burning, only burn
Upon their senseless motion. Ah, no, no!
Can you not feel the warm truth overflow?
Light to light answers, even as heart to heart,
And by their shining we in them have part.
Lo, the same light that in the tiniest spark
Makes momentary beauty from the dark,
The light that blesses warm earth and inweaves
A million colours in young flowers and leaves,
That our sick thoughts and melancholy eyes
Confounds with magical simplicities,
Yea, that by dawn's beginning shall unfold
Wide glimmering waters, and to glory mould
Frore peaks, wild torrents in the vales between.
And golden mists on lawns of living green,
'Tis the same light that now above us showers
These star--drops, white and fair as falling flowers;
And silent rings a cry from star to sun,
Through all the worlds, Light, life and love are one!

Hush your heart now, Beloved, hush to sink
Your thought down, deep as the still mind can think,
Then climb as high as boldest thought can climb!
Were these dark heavens the unfathomed gulfs of Time,
So might we see bright peopling spirits star
The memoriless ages, burning far,
Splendid or faint, tempestuous or serene,
All quick and fiery spirits that have been,
From whose immortal ecstasies and pains
Drops of red life run sanguine in our veins;
Who lived and loved, and prodigally spent
Their strength, their prayers, upon one pure intent,
In whom no deed was willed, no lonely thought
Attempered and to sword--blade keenness brought,
But it has helped us, even us, for whom
They shine in glory from the ages' gloom.
But oh, it is not only these I see:
Look up, behold unnumbered hosts to be!
What shall we do for them, whose hope endears
Futurity's dark wilderness of years?
Heroes, that shall adventure and attain
What broke our wills in passion and in pain;
Sages, to find all that we vainly seek,
Poets, to utter all we cannot speak!
And they at last shall into strong towers build
The stones we bled to gather, the unfulfilled
House of our dream; what was but fable sung,
Or indignation on a prophet's tongue,
Made form and hue of life's own tissue, wrought
Into the rich reality of thought.
And women, ah, what majesty of fate
Is theirs, for whom the little is made great,
The tender strong; far--off they also wait
The glory of their burden. Love, what deep
Of mystery unfolds! Let your heart leap!
Lo, at your bosom all the world to come,
A child! It waits, it watches, it is dumb,
Yet hearkens and desires; the vision grows
Before us, and behind us overflows,
Mingling, as throng on throng of stars o'erhead,
One undivided host, the mighty dead,
The mightier unborn! Time is rent away;
There is no morrow, no, nor yesterday,
Nor here, nor there, nor sleeping nor awaking;
But, like full waters into ocean breaking,
Lost at this moment in our heart's high beating
The boundless tides of either world are meeting;
And by the love--cry in my heart that rings,
And by the answer in your heart that sings,
We feel, at once exulting and afraid,
Near to the glowing of the Hand that made
And out of earth, with divine fire instinct,
Moulded us for each other's need, and linked
Our brief breath with the eternal will. That light
Shall kindle, in the dulling world's despite,
The inmost of our spirits, burning through
The shadow of all we suffer, dream and do,
As surely as mine eyes, new facultied
In vision to the estranging day denied,
Still shall behold, when this fair night is fled,
All the stars shine round your belovèd head.