Sir Lewis Morris: Verses about Water

THERE is a ceaseless river,
Which flows down evermore
Into a wailing ocean,
A sea without a shore

Broken by laughing ripple,
Foaming with angry swell,
Sweet music as of heaven,
Deep thunder as of hell.

Gay fleets float down upon it,
And sad wrecks, full of pain :
But all alike it hurries
To that unchanging main.

Sometimes 'tis foul and troubled,
And sometimes clear and pure;
But still the river flows, and still
The dull sea doth endure.

And thus 'twill flow for ever,
Till time shall cease to be :
O weary, weary river,
O bitter, barren sea.

ALL travail of high thought,
All secrets vainly sought,
All struggles for right, heroic, perpetually fought.
Faint gleams of purer fire,

Conquests of gross desire,
Whereby the fettered soul ascends continually higher.
Pure cares for love or friend
Which ever upward tend,

Too deep and heavenward and true to have on earth their end.
Vile hearts malign and fell,
Lives which no tongue may tell,
So dark and dread and shameful that they breathe a present hell.

White mountain, deep-set lake,
Sea wastes which surge and break,
Fierce storms which, roaring from the north, the midnight forests shake.
Fair morns of summer days,

Rich harvest eves that raise
The soul and heart o'erburdened to an ecstasy of praise.
Low whispers, vague and strange,
Which through our being range,

Breathing perpetual presage of some mighty coming change.
These in the soul do breed
Thoughts which, at last, shall lead
To some clear, firm assurance of a satis fying creed.

THE silent surfaces sleep
With a sullen viscous flow,
And scarce in the squalid deep
Swing the dead weeds to and fro,
And no living thing is there to swim or creep
In the sunless gulfs below.

And beneath are the ooze and the slime,
Where the corpse lies as it fell,
The hidden secrets of crime
Which no living tongue shall tell,
The shameful story of time,
The old, old burden of hell.

All the grasses upon the bank
Are bitter with scurf and drift,
And the reeds are withered and dank ;
And sometimes, when the smoke clouds shift,
You may see the tall shafts in a hideous rank
Their sulphurous fumes uplift.

From the black blot up the stream
The funeral barges glide,
And the waves part as in a dream,
From broad bow and sunken side ;
And 'tis 'greed, greed!' hisses from coal and from steam,
Foul freightage and turbid tide,

Like the life of a slumb'ring soul
Grown dull in content and health,
Whose dark depths lazily roll,
Whose still currents creep by stealth.
Nor sorrow nor yearning comes to control
The monotonous tide of wealth.

Fair or foul, in life as in death,
One blight and corruption o'er all,
Blow on them, great wind, with thy breath,
Fall, blinding water-floods, fall,
Till the dead life below awakeneth,
And deep unto deep doth call !

PEACE, moaning Sea ; what tale have you to tell ?
What mystic tidings, all unknown before ?
Whether you break in thunder on the shore,
Or whisper like the voice within the shell,
O moaning Sea, I know your burden well,
'Tis but the old dull tale, filled full of pain ;
The finger on tne dial-plate of time,
Advancing slow with pitiless beat sublime,
As stoops the day upon the fading plain ;
And that has been which may not be again.

The voice of yearning, deep but scarce expressed,
For something which is not, but may be yet ;
Too full of sad continuance to forget,
Too troubled with desires to be at rest,
Too self-conflicting ever to be blest.
The voice of hopes and aspirations high,
Swallowed in sand, or shivered on the rock ;
Tumultuous life dashed down with sudden shock ;
And passionate protests, narrowed to a sigh,
From hearts too weak to live, too strong to die.

The voice of old beliefs which long have fled,
Gone with a shriek, and leaving naught behind,
But some vague utterance, cold as wintry wind,
Some dim remembrance of a ghostly dread
Which lingers still when faith itself is dead.
And, above all, through thund'rous wintry roar,
And summer ripple, this, and this alone,
For ever do I make this barren moan :
No end, there is no end, on Time's dull shore
I wail, I beat, I thunder, evermore.

FAIR shines the beacon from its lonely rock,
Stable alone amid the unstable waves :
In vain the surge leaps with continual shock,
In vain around the wintry tempest raves,
And ocean thunders in her sounding caves.

For here is life within the gate of death,
Calm light and warmth amid the storm without ;
Here sleeping love breathes with untroubled breath,
And faith, clear-eyed, pierces the clouds of doubt
And monstrous depths which compass her about.

So calm, so pure, yet prisoned and confined ;
Fenced by white walls from pleasure as from pain.
Not always glooms the sea or shrieks the wind :
Sometimes light zephyrs curl the azure main,
And the sweet sea-nymphs glide with all their train.

Or Aphrodite rises from the foam,
And lies all rosy on the golden sand,
And o'er the purple plains the Nereids roam ;
Sweet laughter comes, borne from the joyous band,
And faint sweet odours from the far-off land.

And straightway the impatient soul within
Loathes its white house which to a jail doth turn ;
Careless of true or false, of right or sin,
Careless of praying hands or eyes that burn,
Or aught that sense can feel or mind discern.

Knowing but this, that the unknown is blest,
Holding delight of free untrammelled air :
Delight of toil sweeter than any rest,
Fierce storms with cores of calm for those who dare
Black rayless nights than fairest noons more fair.

And drifting forth at eve in some frail boat,
Beholds the old light, like a setting star,
Sink in the sea, and still doth fare and float
Adown the night till day-break shows afar,
And hark the faint low thunders of the bar.

Nor if indeed he reach the Blessed Isle,
Nor if those pitiless crests shall plunge him down,
Knows he ; but whether breathless azure smile,
Or furious night and horrible tempests frown,
Living or dying, Freedom wears a crown.

WHO, without fear
Piercing the inmost deeps of silent thought,
Has won the prize with lonely labour sought,
And many a bitter tear,
He in his breast doth hold
A rarer thing than gold,
And a fair treasure greater than in words is told.

For he shall learn,
Not from another's lore, but his own soul,
Whither life's hidden ocean currents roll,
And with sure helm shall turn
Into a haven fair,
Where, on the breathless air,
Nor wave nor storm shall break, but peace is everywhere.

There, in light boat
Laid on the soft breast of the summer sea,
Lapt day by day in great tranquillity,
He carelessly shall float.
He scarce shall see or hear
A sight or sound of fear,
Only a low-voiced siren always gliding near.

Without the bar
The enormous surges leap from sea to sky.
Upon the ghostly inland summits high
The avalanche thunders far.
On the dull plains below,
In long successions slow
The toiling generations sow, and reap, and sow.

Dream-like, he sees
The lurid smoke blot the beleaguered town,
Or the great earthquake shake the city down ;
Labours and miseries ;
Fire takes thenv famine, flood,
And fever's hideous brood.
By night the black skies redden with a glare like blood.

For him, meanwhile,
Laid in the shelter of his silken sail,
Tho' wind and storm on sea and land prevail,
The enchanted waters smile.
Always in that calm deep,
Wherein life's currents sleep,
He sees high heaven reflected, tho' all men may weep.

Yet now and then
Between the stars and him, sunk deep below,
He starts to see a strange dead semblance grow,
Gone from the eyes of men.
Some thin and pale-eyed ghost,
By marred reflections crost,
Of thoughts, and faiths, and yearnings long since lost.

And if these fade
Betimes, he slowly gains to peace again ;
But if too long they tarry, such a pain
Those clear depths doth invade,
That for sheer terror he,
And utter misery,
Flies to the storm-wrapt hills and hungry calling sea.

BRIGHT with unnumbered laughters, and swollen by a thousand tears,
Rushes along, through upland and lowland, the river of life ;
Sometimes foaming and broken, and sometimes silent and slumbrous,
Sometimes down rocky glens, and sometimes through flowery plains.
Sometimes the mountains draw near, and the black depths swirl at their bases,
Sometimes the limitless meads fade on the verge of the sky,
Sometimes the forests stand round, and the great trees cast mystical shadows,
Sometimes the golden wheat waves, and girls fill their pitchers and sing.

Always the same strange flow, through changes and chances unchanging,
Always—in youth and in age, in calm and in tempest the same—
Whether it sparkle transparent and give back the blue like a mirror,
Or sweep on turbid with flood, or black with the garbage of towns—
Whether the silvery scale of the minnow flash on the pebbles,
Or whether the poisonous ooze cling like a shroud round the dead—
Whether it struggle through shoals of white blooms and feathery grasses,
Or bear on its bosom the hulls of oceantost navies—the same.

Flow on, O mystical river, flow on through desert and city ;
Broken or smooth, flow onward into the Infinite sea.
Who knows what urges thee on, what dark laws and cosmical forces
Stain thee or keep thee pure, and bring thee at last to thy goal ?
What is the cause of thy rest or unrest, of thy foulness or pureness ?
What is the secret of life, or the painful riddle of death ?
Why is it better to be than to cease, to flow on than to stagnate ?
Why is the river-stream sweet, while the sea is as bitter as gall ?

Surely we know not at all, but the cycle of Being is eternal,
Life is eternal as death, tears are eternal as joy.
As the stream flowed, it will flow; though 'tis sweet, yet the sea will be bitter :
Foul it with filth, yet the deltas grow green and the ocean is clear.
Always the sun and the winds will strike its broad surface and gather
Some purer drops from its depths, to float in the clouds of the sky;—
Soon these shall fall once again, and replenish the full-flowing river.
Roll round then, O mystical cycle ! flow onward, ineffable stream !

Two ships which meet upon the ocean waste,
And stay a little while, and interchange
Tidings from two strange lands, which lie beneath
Each its own heaven and particular stars,

And fain would tarry ; but the impatient surge
Calls, and a cold wind from the setting sun
Divides them, and they sadly drift apart,
And fade, and sink, and vanish, 'neath the verge—

One to the parching plains and seething seas
Smitten by the tyrannous Sun, where Mind alone
Withers amid the bounteous outerworld,
And prodigal Nature dwarfs and chains the man—

One to cold rains, rude winds, and hungry waves
Split on the frowning granite, niggard suns.
And snows and mists which starve the vine and palm,
But nourish to more glorious growth the man.

One to the scentless flowers and songless birds,
Swift storms and poison stings and ravening jaws :
One to spring violets and nightingales,
Sleek-coated kine and honest gray-eyed skies.

One to lie helpless on the stagnant sea,
Or sink in sleep beneath the hurricane :
One to speed on, white-winged, through summer airs,
Or sow the rocks with ruin—who shall tell ?

So with two souls which meet on life's broad deep,
And cling together but may not stay ; for Time
And Age and chills of Absence wear the links
Which bind them, and they part for evermore—

One to the tropic lands of fame and gold,
And feverish thirst and weariness of soul ;
One to long struggles and a wintry life,
Decked with one sweet white bloom of happy love.

For each, one fate, to live and die apart,
Save for some passing smile of kindred souls ;
Then drift away alone, on opposite tides,
To one dark harbour and invisible goal

'TIME flies too fast, too fast our life decays.'
Ah, faithless ! in the present lies our being ;
And not in lingering love for vanished days !

'Come, happy future, when my soul shall live.'
Ah, fool ! thy life is now, and not again ;
The future holds not joy nor pain to give !

' Live for what is : future and past are naught.'
Ah, blind ! a flash, and what shall be, has been.
Where, then, is that for which thou takest thought ?

Not in what has been, is, or is to be,
The wise soul lives, but in a wider time,
Which is not any, but contains the three !

SALT sprays deluge it, wild waves buffet it, hurricanes rave ;
Summer and winter, the depths of the ocean girdle it round ;
In leaden dawns, in golden noon-tides, in silvery moonlight
Never it ceases to hear the old sea's mystical sound.
Surges vex it evermore
By gray cave and sounding shore,

Think of the numberless far-away centuries, long before man,
When the hot earth with monsters teemed, and with monsters the deep,
And the red sun loomed faint, and the moon was caught fast in the motionless air,
And the warm waves seethed through the haze in a secular sleep.
Rock was here and headland then,
Ere the little lives of men.

Over it long the mastodons crashed through the tropical forest,
And the great bats swooped overhead through the half-defined blue ;
Then they passed, and the hideous ape-man, speechless and half-erect,
Through weary ages of time tore and gibbered and slew.
Grayer skies and chiller air,
But the self-same rock was there.

Then the savage came and went, and Briton and Roman and Saxon,
Till our England grew rich and great, and her white sails covered the sea ;
Thus through all this long story of ours, civil progress and vanquished foeman,
From Crecy to Trafalgar, from the bondsman down to the free,
Still those dark rocks, and beneath
Keeps the sea its face of death.

So it shall be when the tide of our greatness has ebbed to the shallows ;
So when there floats not a ship on this storm-tossed westerly main,
Hard by, the minster crumbles, the city has shrunk to a village ;
Thus shall we shrink one day, and our forests be pathless again ;
And the headland stern shall stand,
Guarding an undiscovered land.

Vex it, O changeless ocean ; rave round it, tempests unceasing ;
Sink it, great earthquakes, deep in the depths of the fathomless sea ;
Bum them, fierce fires of the centre, burn rock and ocean together,
Till the red globe flare throughout space, through the ages to be.
Cease, make an end, dull world, begone
How shall I cease while you roll on ?

Time, oh, horrible ! Space, oh, terrible ! Infinite Void !
Dreadful abysses of Being ! blighting a finite brain ;
How shall the creatures of thought subsist, when the thinker ceases ?
Begone, dull figments, be done ! not alone shall you dare to remain.
Without me you yourselves must fall ;
I hold the measure of you all.

A LITTLE country churchyard,
On the verge of a cliff by the sea ;
Ah ! the thoughts of the long years past and gone
That the vision brings back to me.

For two ways led from the village,
One, by the rippled sands,
With their pink shells fresh from the ebbing wave ?
For childish little hands.

And one by the breezy cliff-side,
All splendid with purple and gold,
With its terrible humble-bees trumpeting deep,
And butterflies fair to behold.

And the boom of the waves on the shingle,
And hymn of the lark to the sun ;
Made Sabbath sounds of their own, ere the chime
Of the church-going bell had begun.

I remember the churchyard studded
With peasants who loitered and read
The sad little legends, half effaced,
On the moss-grown tombs of the dead.

And the gay graves of little children,
Fashioned like tiny cots ;
With their rosemary and southernwood,
And blue-eyed forget-me-nots.

Till the bell by degrees grew impatient,
Then ceased as the parsonage door
Opened wide for the surpliced vicar,
And we loitered and talked no more.

I remember the cool, dim chancel,
The drowsy hum of the prayers :
And the rude psalms vollied from seafaring throats
As if to take heaven unawares.

Till, when sermon-time came, by permission
We stole out among the graves,
And saw the great ocean a-blaze in the sun,
And heard the deep roar of the waves.

And clung very close together,
As we spelt out with pitying tears,
How a boy lay beneath who was drowned long ago,
And was 'Aged eleven years.'

And heard, with a new-born wonder,
The voice of the infinite Sea,
Whose hither-shore is the shore of Death,
And whose further, the Life to be.

'Did the sea swallow up little children?
Could God see the wickedness done?
Nor spare one swift-winged seraph to save
From the thousands around His throne ?'

'Was he still scarce older than we were,
Still only a boy of eleven ?
Were child-angels children always
In the sorrowless courts of heaven ?'

Ah me ! of those childish dreamers,
One has solved the last riddle since then:
And knows the dread secret which none may know
Who walk in the ways of men.

The other has seen the splendour
And mystery fading away ;
Too wise or too dull to take thought or care
For aught but the needs of the day.

BENEATH the feathery fronds of palm
The white stone of a double grave,
And on the horizon, blue and calm,
The tropic ocean wave.

'Twas three years since, no more, that thou,
Dear friend, with us, in daily round,
Didst labour where we labour now,
'Mid London's surge of sound.

Treading the dull slow paths of law,
With little of reward or gain,
To feel a high ambition gnaw
Thy heart with tooth of pain,

And mark with scant content the crowd
Fulfil the immemorial rule
Which drives the fool with plaudits loud
To glorify the fool.

And so with patient scorn didst gain
To winnow from the growing heap
Of barren precedent the grain
Which hides there buried deep.

Till last, congenial labour came,
To call thee o'er the tropic sea,
And exile, gilt by toil and fame,
Severed thy friends from thee.

Brief as we hoped, but ah, how long !
Though lit by news of days well spent,
Of rights defined, of law made strong,
Of rebels grown content,

Of ordered codes so reasoned out,
Speaking with voice so true and clear,
That none who hear them still may doubt
' 'Tis Justice speaketh here.'

Yet not the less thou barest part
In the old talk we loved before ;
The newest growths of thought or art
Delighted more and more,

And all the marvels of thy isle,
The lavish wealth of sea and land,
The skies with their too constant smile,
Loud surf on breathless strand,

The shallow nature fierce, yet gay,
Of our dark brethren ; thou didst learn,
Noting but gazing, far away,
With eyes that still would yearn,

For that fair time when, toil being done,
The happy day at length should come,
When with our kindly autumn sun
Thou should'st revisit home.

* * * *

It was this very year ; and then
The plague, which long time, dealing death,
Had vexed the shores of kindred men,
On those breathed deadly breath.

And one, I know not who, their guest,
Sickening, Love drew them forth to tend,
Careless of needful food and rest,
Their fever-stricken friend,

Who owed to them life's refluent power ;
While for those duteous martyrs twain,
Brother and Sister, one blest hour
Brought one release from pain.

Too generous natures ! kindred souls !
And now, round those twin tombs the wave,
Forgetful of their story, rolls,
And the palms shade their grave.

* * * *

And we what shall we say of thee ?
Thou hast thy due reward, oh, friend
We serve a High Necessity,
To an Invisible End.

That waste nor halting comes at all
In all the scheme is all we know ;
The force was formed that bade thee fall,
Millions of years ago.

The clouds of circumstance unite,
The winds of fate together roll ;
They meet ; there bursts a sudden light,
And consecrates a soul !

I SAW Sleep stand by an enchanted wood,
Thick lashes drooping o'er her heavy eyes :
Leaning against a flower-cupped tree she stood,
The night air gently breathed with slumbrous sighs.
Such cloak of silence o'er the world was spread,
As on Nile sands enshrouds the mighty dead.

About her birds were dumb, and blooms were bowed,
And a thick heavy sweetness filled the air ;
White robed she seemed ; and hidden as in a cloud,
A star-like jewel in her raven hair.
Downward to earth her cold torch would she turn
With feeble fires that might no longer burn.

And in her languid limbs and loosened zone
Such beauty dwelt ; and in her rippling hair,
As of old time was hers, and hers alone,
The mother of gods and men.divinely fair ;
When whiter than white foam or sand she lay,
The fairest thing beneath the eye of day.

To her came Love, a comely youth and strong,
Fair as the morning of a day in June;
Around him breathed a jocund air of song,
And his limbs moved as to a joyous tune :
With golden locks blown back, and eyes aflame,
To where the sleeping maiden leant, he came.

Then they twain passed within that mystic grove
Together, and with them I, myself unseen.
Oh, strange, sweet land ! wherein all men may prove
The things they would, the things which might have been ;
Hopeless hopes blossom, withered youth revives,
And sunshine comes again to darkened lives.

What sights were theirs in that blest wonder-land ?
See, the white mountain-summits, framed in cloud,
Redden with sunset ; while below them stand
The solemn pine-woods like a funeral crowd ;
And lower still the vineyards twine, and make
A double vintage in the tranquil lake.

Or, after storm-tost nights, on some sea isle
The sudden tropical morning bursts ; and lo !
Bright birds and feathery palms, the green hills smile,
Strange barks, with swarthy crews, dart to and fro ;
And on the blue bay, glittering like a crown,
The white domes of some fair historic town.

Or, they fare northward ever, northward still,
At midnight, under the unsetting sun ;
O'er endless snows, from hill to icy hill,
Where silence reigns with death, and life is done :
Till from the North a sweet wind suddenly;
And hark ! the warm waves of the fabulous sea.

Or, some still eve, when summer days are long,
And the mown hay is sweet, and wheat is green,
They hear some wood-bird sing the old fair song
Of joys to be, greater than yet have been;
Stretched 'neath the snowy hawthorn, till the star,
Hung high in heaven, warns them that home is far.

Or, on the herbless, sun-struck hills, by night,
Under the silent peaks, they hear the loud
Wild flutes ; and onward, by the ghostly light,
Whirled in nude dances, sweeps the maddened crowd ;
Till the fierce eddy seize them, and they prove
The shame, the rapture, of unfettered love.

Or, by the sacred hearth they seem to sit,
While firelight gleams on many a sunny head ;
At that fair hour, before the lamp is lit,
When hearts are fullest, though no word be said,—
When the world fades, and rank and wealth and fame,
Seem, matched with this, no better than a name.

All these they knew ! and then a breeze of day
Stirred the dark wood ; and then they seemed to come
Forth with reluctant feet among the
Bare fields, unfanciful ; and all the flame
Was burnt from out Love's eyes, and from his hair,
And his smooth cheek was marked with lines of care.

And paler showed the maid, more pure and white
And holier than before. But when I said,
' Sweet eyes, be opened ;' lo, the unveiled sight
Was as the awful vision of the dead !
Then knew I, breathing slow, with difficult breath,
That Love was one with Life, and Sleep with Death.