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Title: Poetical Works of Robert Bridges, Volume 2

Author: Robert Bridges

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POETICAL WORKS OF ROBERT BRIDGES, VOLUME 2 ***

POETICAL WORKS

of

ROBERT BRIDGES

Volume II

London

Smith, Elder & Co

15 Waterloo Place

1898

OXFORD: HORACE HART

PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY

POETICAL WORKS OF

ROBERT BRIDGES

VOLUME THE SECOND

CONTAINING

SHORTER POEMS

p.

5

NEW POEMS

209

NOTES

291

INDEX OF FIRST LINES

295

Links added by the transcriber.

BOOK

I

II

III

IV

V

LIST OF PREVIOUS EDITIONS

SHORTER POEMS.

1. Bks. I-IV. Clarendon Press. Geo. Bell & Sons, Oct. 1890. Reprinted, Nov. 1890, 1891, 1894.

2. Bks. I-V. Private Press of H. Daniel. Oxford, 1894.

3. Do. do. Clarendon Press. George Bell & Sons, 1896.

4. Cheap issue of 3. 1899. Reprinted, 1899.

NEW POEMS.

Collected here for the first time.

For account of earlier issues of first four books of Shorter Poems, and of some of the poems contained in the New Poems, see notes at end of this volume.

THE

SHORTER

POEMS

IN FOUR BOOKS

SHORTER POEMS

BOOK I

DEDICATED TO

H. E. W.

1

ELEGY

CLEAR and gentle stream!

Known and loved so long

That hast heard the song,

And the idle dream

Of my boyish day;

While I once again

Down thy margin stray,

In the selfsame strain

Still my voice is spent,

With my old lament

And my idle dream,

Clear and gentle stream!

Where my old seat was

Here again I sit,

Where the long boughs knit

Over stream and grass

A translucent eaves:

Where back eddies play

Shipwreck with the leaves,

And the proud swans stray,

Sailing one by one

Out of stream and sun,

And the fish lie cool

In their chosen pool.

Many an afternoon

Of the summer day

Dreaming here I lay;

And I know how soon,

Idly at its hour,

First the deep bell hums

From the minster tower,

And then evening comes,

Creeping up the glade,

With her lengthening shade,

And the tardy boon,

Of her brightening moon.

Clear and gentle stream!

Ere again I go

Where thou dost not flow,

Well does it beseem

Thee to hear again

Once my youthful song,

That familiar strain

Silent now so long:

Be as I content

With my old lament

And my idle dream,

Clear and gentle stream.

2

ELEGY

The wood is bare: a river-mist is steeping

The trees that winter’s chill of life bereaves:

Only their stiffened boughs break silence, weeping

Over their fallen leaves;

That lie upon the dank earth brown and rotten,

Miry and matted in the soaking wet:

Forgotten with the spring, that is forgotten

By them that can forget.

Yet it was here we walked when ferns were springing,

And through the mossy bank shot bud and blade:—

Here found in summer, when the birds were singing,

A green and pleasant shade.

’Twas here we loved in sunnier days and greener;

And now, in this disconsolate decay,

I come to see her where I most have seen her,

And touch the happier day.

For on this path, at every turn and corner,

The fancy of her figure on me falls:

Yet walks she with the slow step of a mourner,

Nor hears my voice that calls.

So through my heart there winds a track of feeling,

A path of memory, that is all her own:

Whereto her phantom beauty ever stealing

Haunts the sad spot alone.

About her steps the trunks are bare, the branches

Drip heavy tears upon her downcast head;

And bleed unseen wounds that no sun staunches,

For the year’s sun is dead.

And dead leaves wrap the fruits that summer planted:

And birds that love the South have taken wing.

The wanderer, loitering o’er the scene enchanted,

Weeps, and despairs of spring.

3

Poor withered rose and dry,

Skeleton of a rose,

Risen to testify

To love’s sad close:

Treasured for love’s sweet sake,

That of joy past

Thou might’st again awake

Memory at last.

Yet is thy perfume sweet;

Thy petals red

Yet tell of summer heat,

And the gay bed:

Yet, yet recall the glow

Of the gazing sun,

When at thy bush we two

Joined hands in one.

But, rose, thou hast not seen,

Thou hast not wept

The change that passed between,

Whilst thou hast slept.

To me thou seemest yet

The dead dream’s thrall:

While I live and forget

Dream, truth and all.

Thou art more fresh than I,

Rose, sweet and red:

Salt on my pale cheeks lie

The tears I shed.

4

THE CLIFF-TOP

The cliff-top has a carpet

Of lilac, gold and green:

The blue sky bounds the ocean

The white clouds scud between.

A flock of gulls are wheeling

And wailing round my seat;

Above my head the heaven,

The sea beneath my feet.

THE OCEAN.

Were I a cloud I’d gather

My skirts up in the air,

And fly I well know whither,

And rest I well know where.

As pointed the star surely,

The legend tells of old,

Where the wise kings might offer

Myrrh, frankincense, and gold;

Above the house I’d hover

Where dwells my love, and wait

Till haply I might spy her

Throw back the garden-gate.

There in the summer evening

I would bedeck the moon;

I would float down and screen her

From the sun’s rays at noon;

And if her flowers should languish,

Or wither in the drought,

Upon her tall white lilies

I’d pour my heart’s blood out:

So if she wore one only,

And shook not out the rain,

Were I a cloud, O cloudlet,

I had not lived in vain.

[A cloud speaks.

A CLOUD.

But were I thou, O ocean,

I would not chafe and fret

As thou, because a limit

To thy desires is set.

I would be blue, and gentle,

Patient, and calm, and see

If my smiles might not tempt her,

My love, to come to me.

I’d make my depths transparent,

And still, that she should lean

O’er the boat’s edge to ponder

The sights that swam between.

I would command strange creatures,

Of bright hue and quick fin,

To stir the water near her,

And tempt her bare arm in.

I’d teach her spend the summer

With me: and I can tell,

That, were I thou, O ocean,

My love should love me well.

But on the mad cloud scudded,

The breeze it blew so stiff;

And the sad ocean bellowed,

And pounded at the cliff.

5

I heard a linnet courting

His lady in the spring:

His mates were idly sporting,

Nor stayed to hear him sing

His song of love.—

I fear my speech distorting

His tender love.

The phrases of his pleading

Were full of young delight;

And she that gave him heeding

Interpreted aright

His gay, sweet notes,—

So sadly marred in the reading,—

His tender notes.

And when he ceased, the hearer

Awaited the refrain,

Till swiftly perching nearer

He sang his song again,

His pretty song:—

Would that my verse spake clearer

His tender song!

Ye happy, airy creatures!

That in the merry spring

Think not of what misfeatures

Or cares the year may bring;

But unto love

Resign your simple natures,

To tender love.

6

Dear lady, when thou frownest,

And my true love despisest,

And all thy vows disownest

That sealed my venture wisest;

I think thy pride’s displeasure

Neglects a matchless treasure

Exceeding price and measure.

But when again thou smilest,

And love for love returnest,

And fear with joy beguilest,

And takest truth in earnest;

Then, though I sheer adore thee,

The sum of my love for thee

Seems poor, scant, and unworthy.

7

I will not let thee go.

Ends all our month-long love in this?

Can it be summed up so,

Quit in a single kiss?

I will not let thee go.

I will not let thee go.

If thy words’ breath could scare thy deeds,

As the soft south can blow

And toss the feathered seeds,

Then might I let thee go.

I will not let thee go.

Had not the great sun seen, I might;

Or were he reckoned slow

To bring the false to light,

Then might I let thee go.

I will not let thee go.

The stars that crowd the summer skies

Have watched us so below

With all their million eyes,

I dare not let thee go.

I will not let thee go.

Have we not chid the changeful moon,

Now rising late, and now

Because she set too soon,

And shall I let thee go?

I will not let thee go.

Have not the young flowers been content,

Plucked ere their buds could blow,

To seal our sacrament?

I cannot let thee go.

I will not let thee go.

I hold thee by too many bands:

Thou sayest farewell, and lo!

I have thee by the hands,

And will not let thee go.

8

I found to-day out walking

The flower my love loves best.

What, when I stooped to pluck it,

Could dare my hand arrest?

Was it a snake lay curling

About the root’s thick crown?

Or did some hidden bramble

Tear my hand reaching down?

There was no snake uncurling,

And no thorn wounded me;

’Twas my heart checked me, sighing

She is beyond the sea.

9

A poppy grows upon the shore,

Bursts her twin cup in summer late:

Her leaves are glaucous-green and hoar,

Her petals yellow, delicate.

Oft to her cousins turns her thought,

In wonder if they care that she

Is fed with spray for dew, and caught

By every gale that sweeps the sea.

She has no lovers like the red,

That dances with the noble corn:

Her blossoms on the waves are shed,

Where she stands shivering and forlorn.

10

Sometimes when my lady sits by me

My rapture’s so great, that I tear

My mind from the thought that she’s nigh me,

And strive to forget that she’s there.

And sometimes when she is away

Her absence so sorely does try me,

That I shut to my eyes, and assay

To think she is there sitting by me.

11

Long are the hours the sun is above,

But when evening comes I go home to my love.

I’m away the daylight hours and more,

Yet she comes not down to open the door.

She does not meet me upon the stair,—

She sits in my chamber and waits for me there.

As I enter the room she does not move:

I always walk straight up to my love;

And she lets me take my wonted place

At her side, and gaze in her dear dear face.

There as I sit, from her head thrown back

Her hair falls straight in a shadow black.

Aching and hot as my tired eyes be,

She is all that I wish to see.

And in my wearied and toil-dinned ear,

She says all things that I wish to hear.

Dusky and duskier grows the room,

Yet I see her best in the darker gloom.

When the winter eves are early and cold,

The firelight hours are a dream of gold.

And so I sit here night by night,

In rest and enjoyment of love’s delight.

But a knock at the door, a step on the stair

Will startle, alas, my love from her chair.

If a stranger comes she will not stay:

At the first alarm she is off and away.

And he wonders, my guest, usurping her throne,

That I sit so much by myself alone.

12

Who has not walked upon the shore,

And who does not the morning know,

The day the angry gale is o’er,

The hour the wind has ceased to blow?

The horses of the strong south-west

Are pastured round his tropic tent,

Careless how long the ocean’s breast

Sob on and sigh for passion spent.

The frightened birds, that fled inland

To house in rock and tower and tree,

Are gathering on the peaceful strand,

To tempt again the sunny sea;

Whereon the timid ships steal out

And laugh to find their foe asleep,

That lately scattered them about,

And drave them to the fold like sheep.

The snow-white clouds he northward chased

Break into phalanx, line, and band:

All one way to the south they haste,

The south, their pleasant fatherland.

From distant hills their shadows creep,

Arrive in turn and mount the lea,

And flit across the downs, and leap

Sheer off the cliff upon the sea;

And sail and sail far out of sight.

But still I watch their fleecy trains,

That piling all the south with light,

Dapple in France the fertile plains.

13

I made another song,

In likeness of my love:

And sang it all day long,

Around, beneath, above;

I told my secret out,

That none might be in doubt.

I sang it to the sky,

That veiled his face to hear

How far her azure eye

Outdoes his splendid sphere;

But at her eyelids’ name

His white clouds fled for shame.

I told it to the trees,

And to the flowers confest,

And said not one of these

Is like my lily drest;

Nor spathe nor petal dared

Vie with her body bared.

I shouted to the sea,

That set his waves a-prance;

Her floating hair is free,

Free are her feet to dance;

And for thy wrath, I swear

Her frown is more to fear.

And as in happy mood

I walked and sang alone,

At eve beside the wood

I met my love, my own:

And sang to her the song

I had sung all day long.

14

ELEGY

ON A LADY, WHOM GRIEF FOR THE DEATH OF HER BETROTHED KILLED

Assemble, all ye maidens, at the door,

And all ye loves, assemble; far and wide

Proclaim the bridal, that proclaimed before

Has been deferred to this late eventide:

For on this night the bride,

The days of her betrothal over,

Leaves the parental hearth for evermore;

To-night the bride goes forth to meet her lover.

Reach down the wedding vesture, that has lain

Yet all unvisited, the silken gown:

Bring out the bracelets, and the golden chain

Her dearer friends provided: sere and brown

Bring out the festal crown,

And set it on her forehead lightly:

Though it be withered, twine no wreath again;

This only is the crown she can wear rightly.

Cloke her in ermine, for the night is cold,

And wrap her warmly, for the night is long,

In pious hands the flaming torches hold,

While her attendants, chosen from among

Her faithful virgin throng,

May lay her in her cedar litter,

Decking her coverlet with sprigs of gold,

Roses, and lilies white that best befit her.

Sound flute and tabor, that the bridal be

Not without music, nor with these alone;

But let the viol lead the melody,

With lesser intervals, and plaintive moan

Of sinking semitone;

And, all in choir, the virgin voices

Rest not from singing in skilled harmony

The song that aye the bridegroom’s ear rejoices.

Let the priests go before, arrayed in white,

And let the dark-stoled minstrels follow slow,

Next they that bear her, honoured on this night,

And then the maidens, in a double row,

Each singing soft and low,

And each on high a torch upstaying:

Unto her lover lead her forth with light,

With music, and with singing, and with praying.

’Twas at this sheltering hour he nightly came,

And found her trusty window open wide,

And knew the signal of the timorous flame,

That long the restless curtain would not hide

Her form that stood beside;

As scarce she dared to be delighted,

Listening to that sweet tale, that is no shame

To faithful lovers, that their hearts have plighted.

But now for many days the dewy grass

Has shown no markings of his feet at morn:

And watching she has seen no shadow pass

The moonlit walk, and heard no music borne

Upon her ear forlorn.

In vain has she looked out to greet him;

He has not come, he will not come, alas!

So let us bear her out where she must meet him.

Now to the river bank the priests are come:

The bark is ready to receive its freight:

Let some prepare her place therein, and some

Embark the litter with its slender weight:

The rest stand by in state,

And sing her a safe passage over;

While she is oared across to her new home,

Into the arms of her expectant lover.

And thou, O lover, that art on the watch,

Where, on the banks of the forgetful streams,

The pale indifferent ghosts wander, and snatch

The sweeter moments of their broken dreams,—

Thou, when the torchlight gleams,

When thou shalt see the slow procession,

And when thine ears the fitful music catch,

Rejoice, for thou art near to thy possession.

15

RONDEAU

His poisoned shafts, that fresh he dips

In juice of plants that no bee sips,

He takes, and with his bow renown’d

Goes out upon his hunting ground,

Hanging his quiver at his hips.

He draws them one by one, and clips

Their heads between his finger-tips,

And looses with a twanging sound

His poisoned shafts.

But if a maiden with her lips

Suck from the wound the blood that drips,

And drink the poison from the wound,

The simple remedy is found

That of their deadly terror strips

His poisoned shafts.

16

TRIOLET

When first we met we did not guess

That Love would prove so hard a master;

Of more than common friendliness

When first we met we did not guess.

Who could foretell this sore distress,

This irretrievable disaster

When first we met?—We did not guess

That Love would prove so hard a master.

17

TRIOLET

All women born are so perverse

No man need boast their love possessing.

If nought seem better, nothing’s worse:

All women born are so perverse.

From Adam’s wife, that proved a curse

Though God had made her for a blessing,

All women born are so perverse

No man need boast their love possessing.

SHORTER POEMS

BOOK II

TO

THE MEMORY OF

G. M. H.

1

MUSE.

WILL Love again awake,

That lies asleep so long?

POET.

O hush! ye tongues that shake

The drowsy night with song.

MUSE.

It is a lady fair

Whom once he deigned to praise,

That at the door doth dare

Her sad complaint to raise.

POET.

She must be fair of face,

As bold of heart she seems,

If she would match her grace

With the delight of dreams.

MUSE.

Her beauty would surprise

Gazers on Autumn eves,

Who watched the broad moon rise

Upon the scattered sheaves.

POET.

O sweet must be the voice

He shall descend to hear,

Who doth in Heaven rejoice

His most enchanted ear.

MUSE.

The smile, that rests to play

Upon her lip, foretells

What musical array

Tricks her sweet syllables.

POET.

And yet her smiles have danced

In vain, if her discourse

Win not the soul entranced

In divine intercourse.

MUSE.

She will encounter all

This trial without shame,

Her eyes men Beauty call,

And Wisdom is her name.

POET.

Throw back the portals then,

Ye guards, your watch that keep,

Love will awake again

That lay so long asleep.

2

A PASSER-BY

Whither, O splendid ship, thy white sails crowding,

Leaning across the bosom of the urgent West,

That fearest nor sea rising, nor sky clouding,

Whither away, fair rover, and what thy quest?

Ah! soon, when Winter has all our vales opprest,

When skies are cold and misty, and hail is hurling,

Wilt thóu glíde on the blue Pacific, or rest

In a summer haven asleep, thy white sails furling.

I there before thee, in the country that well thou knowest,

Already arrived am inhaling the odorous air:

I watch thee enter unerringly where thou goest,

And anchor queen of the strange shipping there,

Thy sails for awnings spread, thy masts bare:

Nor is aught from the foaming reef to the snow-capped, grandest

Peak, that is over the feathery palms more fair

Than thou, so upright, so stately, and still thou standest.

And yet, O splendid ship, unhailed and nameless,

I know not if, aiming a fancy, I rightly divine

That thou hast a purpose joyful, a courage blameless,

Thy port assured in a happier land than mine.

But for all I have given thee, beauty enough is thine,

As thou, aslant with trim tackle and shrouding,

From the proud nostril curve of a prow’s line

In the offing scatterest foam, thy white sails crowding.

3

LATE SPRING EVENING

I saw the Virgin-mother clad in green,

Walking the sprinkled meadows at sundown;

While yet the moon’s cold flame was hung between

The day and night, above the dusky town:

I saw her brighter than the Western gold,

Whereto she faced in splendour to behold.

Her dress was greener than the tenderest leaf

That trembled in the sunset glare aglow:

Herself more delicate than is the brief,

Pink apple-blossom, that May showers lay low,

And more delicious than’s the earliest streak

The blushing rose shows of her crimson cheek.

As if to match the sight that so did please,

A music entered, making passion fain:

Three nightingales sat singing in the trees,

And praised the Goddess for the fallen rain;

Which yet their unseen motions did arouse,

Or parting Zephyrs shook out from the boughs.

And o’er the treetops, scattered in mid air,

The exhausted clouds, laden with crimson light

Floated, or seemed to sleep; and, highest there,

One planet broke the lingering ranks of night;

Daring day’s company, so he might spy

The Virgin-queen once with his watchful eye.

And when I saw her, then I worshipped her,

And said,—O bounteous Spring, O beauteous Spring,

Mother of all my years, thou who dost stir

My heart to adore thee and my tongue to sing,

Flower of my fruit, of my heart’s blood the fire,

Of all my satisfaction the desire!

How art thou every year more beautiful,

Younger for all the winters thou hast cast:

And I, for all my love grows, grow more dull,

Decaying with each season overpast!

In vain to teach him love must man employ thee,

The more he learns the less he can enjoy thee.

4

WOOING

I know not how I came,

New on my knightly journey,

To win the fairest dame

That graced my maiden tourney.

Chivalry’s lovely prize

With all men’s gaze upon her,

Why did she free her eyes

On me, to do me honour?

Ah! ne’er had I my mind

With such high hope delighted,

Had she not first inclined,

And with her eyes invited.

But never doubt I knew,

Having their glance to cheer me,

Until the day joy grew

Too great, too sure, too near me.

When hope a fear became,

And passion, grown too tender,

Now trembled at the shame

Of a despised surrender;

And where my love at first

Saw kindness in her smiling,

I read her pride, and cursed

The arts of her beguiling.

Till winning less than won,

And liker wooed than wooing,

Too late I turned undone

Away from my undoing;

And stood beside the door,

Whereto she followed, making

My hard leave-taking more

Hard by her sweet leave-taking.

Her speech would have betrayed

Her thought, had mine been colder:

Her eyes distress had made

A lesser lover bolder.

But no! Fond heart, distrust,

Cried Wisdom, and consider:

Go free, since go thou must;—

And so farewell I bid her.

And brisk upon my way

I smote the stroke to sever,

And should have lost that day

My life’s delight for ever:

But when I saw her start

And turn aside and tremble;—

Ah! she was true, her heart

I knew did not dissemble.

5

There is a hill beside the silver Thames,

Shady with birch and beech and odorous pine:

And brilliant underfoot with thousand gems

Steeply the thickets to his floods decline.

Straight trees in every place

Their thick tops interlace,

And pendant branches trail their foliage fine

Upon his watery face.

Swift from the sweltering pasturage he flows:

His stream, alert to seek the pleasant shade,

Pictures his gentle purpose, as he goes

Straight to the caverned pool his toil has made.

His winter floods lay bare

The stout roots in the air:

His summer streams are cool, when they have played

Among their fibrous hair.

A rushy island guards the sacred bower,

And hides it from the meadow, where in peace

The lazy cows wrench many a scented flower,

Robbing the golden market of the bees:

And laden barges float

By banks of myosote;

And scented flag and golden flower-de-lys

Delay the loitering boat.

And on this side the island, where the pool

Eddies away, are tangled mass on mass

The water-weeds, that net the fishes cool,

And scarce allow a narrow stream to pass;

Where spreading crowfoot mars

The drowning nenuphars,

Waving the tassels of her silken grass

Below her silver stars.

But in the purple pool there nothing grows,

Not the white water-lily spoked with gold;

Though best she loves the hollows, and well knows

On quiet streams her broad shields to unfold:

Yet should her roots but try

Within these deeps to lie,

Not her long reaching stalk could ever hold

Her waxen head so high.

Sometimes an angler comes, and drops his hook

Within its hidden depths, and ’gainst a tree

Leaning his rod, reads in some pleasant book,

Forgetting soon his pride of fishery;

And dreams, or falls asleep,

While curious fishes peep

About his nibbled bait, or scornfully

Dart off and rise and leap.

And sometimes a slow figure ’neath the trees,

In ancient-fashioned smock, with tottering care

Upon a staff propping his weary knees,

May by the pathway of the forest fare:

As from a buried day

Across the mind will stray

Some perishing mute shadow,—and unaware

He passeth on his way.

Else, he that wishes solitude is safe,

Whether he bathe at morning in the stream:

Or lead his love there when the hot hours chafe

The meadows, busy with a blurring steam;

Or watch, as fades the light,

The gibbous moon grow bright,

Until her magic rays dance in a dream,

And glorify the night.

Where is this bower beside the silver Thames?

O pool and flowery thickets, hear my vow!

O trees of freshest foliage and straight stems,

No sharer of my secret I allow:

Lest ere I come the while

Strange feet your shades defile;

Or lest the burly oarsman turn his prow

Within your guardian isle.

6

A WATER-PARTY

Let us, as by this verdant bank we float,

Search down the marge to find some shady pool

Where we may rest awhile and moor our boat,

And bathe our tired limbs in the waters cool.

Beneath the noonday sun,

Swiftly, O river, run!

Here is a mirror for Narcissus, see!

I cannot sound it, plumbing with my oar.

Lay the stern in beneath this bowering tree!

Now, stepping on this stump, we are ashore.

Guard, Hamadryades,

Our clothes laid by your trees!

How the birds warble in the woods! I pick

The waxen lilies, diving to the root.

But swim not far in the stream, the weeds grow thick,

And hot on the bare head the sunbeams shoot.

Until our sport be done,

O merry birds, sing on!

If but to-night the sky be clear, the moon

Will serve us well, for she is near the full.

We shall row safely home; only too soon,—

So pleasant ’tis, whether we float or pull.

To guide us through the night,

O summer moon, shine bright!

7

THE DOWNS

O bold majestic downs, smooth, fair and lonely;

O still solitude, only matched in the skies:

Perilous in steep places,

Soft in the level races,

Where sweeping in phantom silence the cloudland flies;

With lovely undulation of fall and rise;

Entrenched with thickets thorned,

By delicate miniature dainty flowers adorned!

I climb your crown, and lo! a sight surprising

Of sea in front uprising, steep and wide:

And scattered ships ascending

To heaven, lost in the blending

Of distant blues, where water and sky divide,

Urging their engines against wind and tide,

And all so small and slow

They seem to be wearily pointing the way they would go.

The accumulated murmur of soft plashing,

Of waves on rocks dashing and searching the sands,

Takes my ear, in the veering

Baffled wind, as rearing

Upright at the cliff, to the gullies and rifts he stands;

And his conquering surges scour out over the lands;

While again at the foot of the downs

He masses his strength to recover the topmost crowns.

8

SPRING

ODE I

INVITATION TO THE COUNTRY

Again with pleasant green

Has Spring renewed the wood,

And where the bare trunks stood

Are leafy arbours seen;

And back on budding boughs

Come birds, to court and pair,

Whose rival amorous vows

Amaze the scented air.

The freshets are unbound,

And leaping from the hill,

Their mossy banks refill

With streams of light and sound:

And scattered down the meads,

From hour to hour unfold

A thousand buds and beads

In stars and cups of gold.

Now hear, and see, and note,

The farms are all astir,

And every labourer

Has doffed his winter coat;

And how with specks of white

They dot the brown hillside,

Or jaunt and sing outright

As by their teams they stride.

They sing to feel the Sun

Regain his wanton strength;

To know the year at length

Rewards their labour done;

To see the rootless stake

They set bare in the ground,

Burst into leaf, and shake

Its grateful scent around.

Ah now an evil lot

Is his, who toils for gain,

Where crowded chimneys stain

The heavens his choice forgot;

’Tis on the blighted trees

That deck his garden dim,

And in the tainted breeze,

That sweet spring comes to him.

Far sooner I would choose

The life of brutes that bask,

Than set myself a task,

Which inborn powers refuse:

And rather far enjoy

The body, than invent

A duty, to destroy

The ease which nature sent;

And country life I praise,

And lead, because I find

The philosophic mind

Can take no middle ways;

She will not leave her love

To mix with men, her art

Is all to strive above

The crowd, or stand apart.

Thrice happy he, the rare

Prometheus, who can play

With hidden things, and lay

New realms of nature bare;

Whose venturous step has trod

Hell underfoot, and won

A crown from man and God

For all that he has done.—

That highest gift of all,

Since crabbèd fate did flood

My heart with sluggish blood,

I look not mine to call;

But, like a truant freed,

Fly to the woods, and claim

A pleasure for the deed

Of my inglorious name:

And am content, denied

The best, in choosing right;

For Nature can delight

Fancies unoccupied

With ecstasies so sweet

As none can even guess,

Who walk not with the feet

Of joy in idleness.

Then leave your joyless ways,

My friend, my joys to see.

The day you come shall be

The choice of chosen days:

You shall be lost, and learn

New being, and forget

The world, till your return

Shall bring your first regret.

9

SPRING

ODE II

REPLY

Behold! the radiant Spring,

In splendour decked anew,

Down from her heaven of blue

Returns on sunlit wing:

The zephyrs of her train

In fleecy clouds disport,

And birds to greet her reign

Summon their silvan court.

And here in street and square

The prisoned trees contest

Her favour with the best,

To robe themselves full fair:

And forth their buds provoke,

Forgetting winter brown,

And all the mire and smoke

That wrapped the dingy town.

Now he that loves indeed

His pleasure must awake,

Lest any pleasure take

Its flight, and he not heed;

For of his few short years

Another now invites

His hungry soul, and cheers

His life with new delights.

And who loves Nature more

Than he, whose painful art

Has taught and skilled his heart

To read her skill and lore?

Whose spirit leaps more high,

Plucking the pale primrose,

Than his whose feet must fly

The pasture where it grows?

One long in city pent

Forgets, or must complain:

But think not I can stain

My heaven with discontent;

Nor wallow with that sad,

Backsliding herd, who cry

That Truth must make man bad,

And pleasure is a lie.

Rather while Reason lives

To mark me from the beast,

I’ll teach her serve at least

To heal the wound she gives:

Nor need she strain her powers

Beyond a common flight,

To make the passing hours

Happy from morn till night.

Since health our toil rewards,

And strength is labour’s prize,

I hate not, nor despise

The work my lot accords;

Nor fret with fears unkind

The tender joys, that bless

My hard-won peace of mind,

In hours of idleness.

Then what charm company

Can give, know I,—if wine

Go round, or throats combine

To set dumb music free.

Or deep in wintertide

When winds without make moan,

I love my own fireside

Not least when most alone.

Then oft I turn the page

In which our country’s name,

Spoiling the Greek of fame,

Shall sound in every age:

Or some Terentian play

Renew, whose excellent

Adjusted folds betray

How once Menander went.

Or if grave study suit

The yet unwearied brain,

Plato can teach again,

And Socrates dispute;

Till fancy in a dream

Confront their souls with mine,

Crowning the mind supreme,

And her delights divine.

While pleasure yet can be

Pleasant, and fancy sweet,

I bid all care retreat

From my philosophy;

Which, when I come to try

Your simpler life, will find,

I doubt not, joys to vie

With those I leave behind.

10

ELEGY

AMONG THE TOMBS

Sad, sombre place, beneath whose antique yews

I come, unquiet sorrows to control;

Amid thy silent mossgrown graves to muse

With my neglected solitary soul;

And to poetic sadness care confide,

Trusting sweet Melancholy for my guide:

They will not ask why in thy shades I stray,

Among the tombs finding my rare delight,

Beneath the sun at indolent noonday,

Or in the windy moon-enchanted night,

Who have once reined in their steeds at any shrine,

And given them water from the well divine.—

The orchards are all ripened, and the sun

Spots the deserted gleanings with decay;

The seeds are perfected: his work is done,

And Autumn lingers but to outsmile the May;

Bidding his tinted leaves glide, bidding clear

Unto clear skies the birds applaud the year.

Lo, here I sit, and to the world I call,

The world my solemn fancy leaves behind,

Come! pass within the inviolable wall,

Come pride, come pleasure, come distracted mind;

Within the fated refuge, hither, turn,

And learn your wisdom ere ’tis late to learn.

Come with me now, and taste the fount of tears;

For many eyes have sanctified this spot,

Where grief’s unbroken lineage endears

The charm untimely Folly injures not,

And slays the intruding thoughts, that overleap

The simple fence its holiness doth keep.

Read the worn names of the forgotten dead,

Their pompous legends will no smile awake;

Even the vainglorious title o’er the head

Wins its pride pardon for its sorrow’s sake;

And carven Loves scorn not their dusty prize,

Though fallen so far from tender sympathies.

Here where a mother laid her only son,

Here where a lover left his bride, below

The treasured names their own are added on

To those whom they have followed long ago:

Sealing the record of the tears they shed,

That ’where their treasure there their hearts are fled.’

Grandfather, father, son, and then again

Child, grandchild, and great-grandchild laid beneath,

Numbered in turn among the sons of men,

And gathered each one in his turn to death:

While he that occupies their house and name

To-day,—to-morrow too their grave shall claim.

And where are all their spirits? Ah! could we tell

The manner of our being when we die,

And see beyond the scene we know so well

The country that so much obscured doth lie!

With brightest visions our fond hopes repair,

Or crown our melancholy with despair;

From death, still death, still would a comfort come:

Since of this world the essential joy must fall

In all distributed, in each thing some,

In nothing all, and all complete in all;

Till pleasure, ageing to her full increase,

Puts on perfection, and is throned in peace.

Yea, sweetest peace, unsought-for, undesired,

Loathed and misnamed, ’tis thee I worship here:

Though in most black habiliments attired,

Thou art sweet peace, and thee I cannot fear.

Nay, were my last hope quenched, I here would sit

And praise the annihilation of the pit.

Nor quickly disenchanted will my feet

Back to the busy town return, but yet

Linger, ere I my loving friends would greet,

Or touch their hands, or share without regret

The warmth of that kind hearth, whose sacred ties

Only shall dim with tears my dying eyes.

11

DEJECTION

Wherefore to-night so full of care,

My soul, revolving hopeless strife,

Pointing at hindrance, and the bare

Painful escapes of fitful life?

Shaping the doom that may befall

By precedent of terror past:

By love dishonoured, and the call

Of friendship slighted at the last?

By treasured names, the little store

That memory out of wreck could save

Of loving hearts, that gone before

Call their old comrade to the grave?

O soul, be patient: thou shalt find

A little matter mend all this;

Some strain of music to thy mind,

Some praise for skill not spent amiss.

Again shall pleasure overflow

Thy cup with sweetness, thou shalt taste

Nothing but sweetness, and shalt grow

Half sad for sweetness run to waste.

O happy life! I hear thee sing,

O rare delight of mortal stuff!

I praise my days for all they bring,

Yet are they only not enough.

12

MORNING HYMN

O golden Sun, whose ray

My path illumineth:

Light of the circling day,

Whose night is birth and death:

That dost not stint the prime

Of wise and strong, nor stay

The changeful ordering time,

That brings their sure decay:

Though thou, the central sphere,

Dost seem to turn around

Thy creature world, and near

As father fond art found;

Thereon, as from above

To shine, and make rejoice

With beauty, life, and love,

The garden of thy choice,

To dress the jocund Spring

With bounteous promise gay

Of hotter months, that bring

The full perfected day;

To touch with richest gold

The ripe fruit, ere it fall;

And smile through cloud and cold

On Winter’s funeral.

Now with resplendent flood

Gladden my waking eyes,

And stir my slothful blood

To joyous enterprise.

Arise, arise, as when

At first God said LIGHT BE!

That He might make us men

With eyes His light to see.

Scatter the clouds that hide

The face of heaven, and show

Where sweet Peace doth abide,

Where Truth and Beauty grow.

Awaken, cheer, adorn,

Invite, inspire, assure

The joys that praise thy morn,

The toil thy noons mature:

And soothe the eve of day,

That darkens back to death;

O golden Sun, whose ray

Our path illumineth!

13

I have loved flowers that fade,

Within whose magic tents

Rich hues have marriage made

With sweet unmemoried scents:

A honeymoon delight,—

A joy of love at sight,

That ages in an hour:—

My song be like a flower!

I have loved airs, that die

Before their charm is writ

Along a liquid sky

Trembling to welcome it.

Notes, that with pulse of fire

Proclaim the spirit’s desire,

Then die, and are nowhere:—

My song be like an air!

Die, song, die like a breath,

And wither as a bloom:

Fear not a flowery death,

Dread not an airy tomb!

Fly with delight, fly hence!

’Twas thine love’s tender sense

To feast; now on thy bier

Beauty shall shed a tear.

SHORTER POEMS

BOOK III

TO

R. W. D.

1

O MY vague desires!

Ye lambent flames of the soul, her offspring fires:

That are my soul herself in pangs sublime

Rising and flying to heaven before her time:

What doth tempt you forth

To drown in the south or shiver in the frosty north?

What seek ye or find ye in your random flying,

Ever soaring aloft, soaring and dying?

Joy, the joy of flight!

They hide in the sun, they flare and dance in the night;

Gone up, gone out of sight: and ever again

Follow fresh tongues of fire, fresh pangs of pain.

Ah! they burn my soul,

The fires, devour my soul that once was whole:

She is scattered in fiery phantoms day by day,

But whither, whither? ay whither? away, away!

Could I but control

These vague desires, these leaping flames of the soul:

Could I but quench the fire: ah! could I stay

My soul that flieth, alas, and dieth away!

2

LONDON SNOW

When men were all asleep the snow came flying,

In large white flakes falling on the city brown,

Stealthily and perpetually settling and loosely lying,

Hushing the latest traffic of the drowsy town;

Deadening, muffling, stifling its murmurs failing;

Lazily and incessantly floating down and down:

Silently sifting and veiling road, roof and railing;

Hiding difference, making unevenness even,

Into angles and crevices softly drifting and sailing.

All night it fell, and when full inches seven

It lay in the depth of its uncompacted lightness,

The clouds blew off from a high and frosty heaven;

And all woke earlier for the unaccustomed brightness

Of the winter dawning, the strange unheavenly glare:

The eye marvelled—marvelled at the dazzling whiteness;

The ear hearkened to the stillness of the solemn air;

No sound of wheel rumbling nor of foot falling,

And the busy morning cries came thin and spare.

Then boys I heard, as they went to school, calling,

They gathered up the crystal manna to freeze

Their tongues with tasting, their hands with snowballing;

Or rioted in a drift, plunging up to the knees;

Or peering up from under the white-mossed wonder,

’O look at the trees!’ they cried, ’O look at the trees!’

With lessened load a few carts creak and blunder,

Following along the white deserted way,

A country company long dispersed asunder:

When now already the sun, in pale display

Standing by Paul’s high dome, spread forth below

His sparkling beams, and awoke the stir of the day.

For now doors open, and war is waged with the snow;

And trains of sombre men, past tale of number,

Tread long brown paths, as toward their toil they go:

But even for them awhile no cares encumber

Their minds diverted; the daily word is unspoken,

The daily thoughts of labour and sorrow slumber

At the sight of the beauty that greets them, for the charm they have broken.

3

THE VOICE OF NATURE

I stand on the cliff and watch the veiled sun paling

A silver field afar in the mournful sea,

The scourge of the surf, and plaintive gulls sailing

At ease on the gale that smites the shuddering lea:

Whose smile severe and chaste

June never hath stirred to vanity, nor age defaced.

In lofty thought strive, O spirit, for ever:

In courage and strength pursue thine own endeavour.

Ah! if it were only for thee, thou restless ocean

Of waves that follow and roar, the sweep of the tides;

Wer’t only for thee, impetuous wind, whose motion

Precipitate all o’errides, and turns, nor abides:

For you sad birds and fair,

Or only for thee, bleak cliff, erect in the air;

Then well could I read wisdom in every feature,

O well should I understand the voice of Nature.

But far away, I think, in the Thames valley,

The silent river glides by flowery banks:

And birds sing sweetly in branches that arch an alley

Of cloistered trees, moss-grown in their ancient ranks:

Where if a light air stray,

’Tis laden with hum of bees and scent of may.

Love and peace be thine, O spirit, for ever:

Serve thy sweet desire: despise endeavour.

And if it were only for thee, entrancèd river,

That scarce dost rock the lily on her airy stem,

Or stir a wave to murmur, or a rush to quiver;

Wer’t but for the woods, and summer asleep in them:

For you my bowers green,

My hedges of rose and woodbine, with walks between,

Then well could I read wisdom in every feature,

O well should I understand the voice of Nature.

4

ON A DEAD CHILD

Perfect little body, without fault or stain on thee,

With promise of strength and manhood full and fair!

Though cold and stark and bare,

The bloom and the charm of life doth awhile remain on thee.

Thy mother’s treasure wert thou;—alas! no longer

To visit her heart with wondrous joy; to be

Thy father’s pride;—ah, he

Must gather his faith together, and his strength make stronger.

To me, as I move thee now in the last duty,

Dost thou with a turn or gesture anon respond;

Startling my fancy fond

With a chance attitude of the head, a freak of beauty.

Thy hand clasps, as ’twas wont, my finger, and holds it:

But the grasp is the clasp of Death, heartbreaking and stiff;

Yet feels to my hand as if

’Twas still thy will, thy pleasure and trust that enfolds it.

So I lay thee there, thy sunken eyelids closing,—

Go lie thou there in thy coffin, thy last little bed!—

Propping thy wise, sad head,

Thy firm, pale hands across thy chest disposing.

So quiet! doth the change content thee?—Death, whither hath he taken thee?

To a world, do I think, that rights the disaster of this?

The vision of which I miss,

Who weep for the body, and wish but to warm thee and awaken thee?

Ah! little at best can all our hopes avail us

To lift this sorrow, or cheer us, when in the dark,

Unwilling, alone we embark,

And the things we have seen and have known and have heard of, fail us.

5

THE PHILOSOPHER TO HIS MISTRESS

Because thou canst not see,

Because thou canst not know

The black and hopeless woe

That hath encompassed me:

Because, should I confess

The thought of my despair,

My words would wound thee less

Than swords can hurt the air:

Because with thee I seem

As one invited near

To taste the faery cheer

Of spirits in a dream;

Of whom he knoweth nought

Save that they vie to make

All motion, voice and thought

A pleasure for his sake:

Therefore more sweet and strange

Has been the mystery

Of thy long love to me,

That doth not quit, nor change,

Nor tax my solemn heart,

That kisseth in a gloom,

Knowing not who thou art

That givest, nor to whom.

Therefore the tender touch

Is more; more dear the smile:

And thy light words beguile

My wisdom overmuch:

And O with swiftness fly

The fancies of my song

To happy worlds, where I

Still in thy love belong.

6

Haste on, my joys! your treasure lies

In swift, unceasing flight.

O haste: for while your beauty flies

I seize your full delight.

Lo! I have seen the scented flower,

Whose tender stems I cull,

For her brief date and meted hour

Appear more beautiful.

O youth, O strength, O most divine

For that so short ye prove;

Were but your rare gifts longer mine,

Ye scarce would win my love.

Nay, life itself the heart would spurn,

Did once the days restore

The days, that once enjoyed return,

Return—ah! nevermore.

7

INDOLENCE

We left the city when the summer day

Had verged already on its hot decline,

And charmed Indolence in languor lay

In her gay gardens, ’neath her towers divine:

’Farewell,’ we said, ’dear city of youth and dream!’

And in our boat we stepped and took the stream.

All through that idle afternoon we strayed

Upon our proposed travel well begun,

As loitering by the woodland’s dreamy shade,

Past shallow islets floating in the sun,

Or searching down the banks for rarer flowers

We lingered out the pleasurable hours.

Till when that loveliest came, which mowers home

Turns from their longest labour, as we steered

Along a straitened channel flecked with foam,

We lost our landscape wide, and slowly neared

An ancient bridge, that like a blind wall lay

Low on its buried vaults to block the way.

Then soon the narrow tunnels broader showed,

Where with its arches three it sucked the mass

Of water, that in swirl thereunder flowed,

Or stood piled at the piers waiting to pass;

And pulling for the middle span, we drew

The tender blades aboard and floated through.

But past the bridge what change we found below!

The stream, that all day long had laughed and played

Betwixt the happy shires, ran dark and slow,

And with its easy flood no murmur made:

And weeds spread on its surface, and about

The stagnant margin reared their stout heads out.

Upon the left high elms, with giant wood

Skirting the water-meadows, interwove

Their slumbrous crowns, o’ershadowing where they stood

The floor and heavy pillars of the grove:

And in the shade, through reeds and sedges dank,

A footpath led along the moated bank.

Across, all down the right, an old brick wall,

Above and o’er the channel, red did lean;

Here buttressed up, and bulging there to fall,

Tufted with grass and plants and lichen green;

And crumbling to the flood, which at its base

Slid gently nor disturbed its mirrored face.

Sheer on the wall the houses rose, their backs

All windowless, neglected and awry,

With tottering coins, and crooked chimney stacks;

And here and there an unused door, set high

Above the fragments of its mouldering stair,

With rail and broken step led out on air.

Beyond, deserted wharfs and vacant sheds,

With empty boats and barges moored along,

And rafts half-sunken, fringed with weedy shreds,

And sodden beams, once soaked to season strong.

No sight of man, nor sight of life, no stroke,

No voice the somnolence and silence broke.

Then I who rowed leant on my oar, whose drip

Fell without sparkle, and I rowed no more;

And he that steered moved neither hand nor lip,

But turned his wondering eye from shore to shore;

And our trim boat let her swift motion die,

Between the dim reflections floating by.

8

I praise the tender flower,

That on a mournful day

Bloomed in my garden bower

And made the winter gay.

Its loveliness contented

My heart tormented.

I praise the gentle maid

Whose happy voice and smile

To confidence betrayed

My doleful heart awhile:

And gave my spirit deploring

Fresh wings for soaring.

The maid for very fear

Of love I durst not tell:

The rose could never hear,

Though I bespake her well:

So in my song I bind them

For all to find them.

9

A winter’s night with the snow about:

’Twas silent within and cold without:

Both father and mother to bed were gone:

The son sat yet by the fire alone.

He gazed on the fire, and dreamed again

Of one that was now no more among men:

As still he sat and never aware

How close was the spirit beside his chair.

Nay, sad were his thoughts, for he wept and said

Ah, woe for the dead! ah, woe for the dead!

How heavy the earth lies now on her breast,

The lips that I kissed, and the hand I pressed.

The spirit he saw not, he could not hear

The comforting word she spake in his ear:

His heart in the grave with her mouldering clay

No welcome gave—and she fled away.

10

My bed and pillow are cold,

My heart is faint with dread,

The air hath an odour of mould,

I dream I lie with the dead:

I cannot move,

O come to me, love,

Or else I am dead.

The feet I hear on the floor

Tread heavily overhead:

O Love, come down to the door,

Come, Love, come, ere I be dead:

Make shine thy light,

O Love, in the night;

Or else I am dead.

11

O thou unfaithful, still as ever dearest,

That in thy beauty to my eyes appearest,

In fancy rising now to re-awaken

My love unshaken;

All thou’st forgotten, but no change can free thee,

No hate unmake thee; as thou wert I see thee,

And am contented, eye from fond eye meeting

Its ample greeting.

O thou my star of stars, among things wholly

Devoted, sacred, dim and melancholy,

The only joy of all the joys I cherished

That hast not perished,

Why now on others squand’rest thou the treasure,

That to be jealous of is still my pleasure:

As still I dream ’tis me whom thou invitest,

Me thou delightest?

But day by day my joy hath feebler being,

The fading picture tires my painful seeing,

And faery fancy leaves her habitation

To desolation.

Of two things open left for lovers parted

’Twas thine to scorn the past and go lighthearted:

But I would ever dream I still possess it,

And thus caress it.

12

Thou didst delight my eyes:

Yet who am I? nor first

Nor last nor best, that durst

Once dream of thee for prize;

Nor this the only time

Thou shalt set love to rhyme.

Thou didst delight my ear:

Ah! little praise; thy voice

Makes other hearts rejoice,

Makes all ears glad that hear;

And short my joy: but yet,

O song, do not forget.

For what wert thou to me?

How shall I say? The moon,

That poured her midnight noon

Upon his wrecking sea;—

A sail, that for a day

Has cheered the castaway.

13

Joy, sweetest lifeborn joy, where dost thou dwell?

Upon the formless moments of our being

Flitting, to mock the ear that heareth well,

To escape the trainèd eye that strains in seeing,

Dost thou fly with us whither we are fleeing;

Or home in our creations, to withstand

Blackwingèd death, that slays the making hand?

The making mind, that must untimely perish

Amidst its work which time may not destroy,

The beauteous forms which man shall love to cherish,

The glorious songs that combat earth’s annoy?

Thou dost dwell here, I know, divinest Joy:

But they who build thy towers fair and strong,

Of all that toil, feel most of care and wrong.

Sense is so tender, O and hope so high,

That common pleasures mock their hope and sense;

And swifter than doth lightning from the sky

The ecstasy they pine for flashes hence,

Leaving the darkness and the woe immense,

Wherewith it seems no thread of life was woven,

Nor doth the track remain where once ’twas cloven.

And heaven and all the stable elements

That guard God’s purpose mock us, though the mind

Be spent in searching: for his old intents

We see were never for our joy designed:

They shine as doth the bright sun on the blind,

Or like his pensioned stars, that hymn above

His praise, but not toward us, that God is Love.

For who so well hath wooed the maiden hours

As quite to have won the worth of their rich show,

To rob the night of mystery, or the flowers

Of their sweet delicacy ere they go?

Nay, even the dear occasion when we know,

We miss the joy, and on the gliding day

The special glories float and pass away.

Only life’s common plod: still to repair

The body and the thing which perisheth:

The soil, the smutch, the toil and ache and wear,

The grinding enginry of blood and breath,

Pain’s random darts, the heartless spade of death;

All is but grief, and heavily we call

On the last terror for the end of all.

Then comes the happy moment: not a stir

In any tree, no portent in the sky:

The morn doth neither hasten nor defer,

The morrow hath no name to call it by,

But life and joy are one,—we know not why,—

As though our very blood long breathless lain

Had tasted of the breath of God again.

And having tasted it I speak of it,

And praise him thinking how I trembled then

When his touch strengthened me, as now I sit

In wonder, reaching out beyond my ken,

Reaching to turn the day back, and my pen

Urging to tell a tale which told would seem

The witless phantasy of them that dream.

But O most blessèd truth, for truth thou art,

Abide thou with me till my life shall end.

Divinity hath surely touched my heart;

I have possessed more joy than earth can lend:

I may attain what time shall never spend.

Only let not my duller days destroy

The memory of thy witness and my joy.

14

The full moon her cloudless skies

Turneth her face, I think, on me;

And from the hour when she doth rise

Till when she sets, none else will see.

One only other ray she hath,

That makes an angle close with mine,

And glancing down its happy path

Upon another spot doth shine.

But that ray too is sent to me,

For where it lights there dwells my heart:

And if I were where I would be,

Both rays would shine, love, where thou art.

15

Awake, my heart, to be loved, awake, awake!

The darkness silvers away, the morn doth break,

It leaps in the sky: unrisen lustres slake

The o’ertaken moon. Awake, O heart, awake!

She too that loveth awaketh and hopes for thee;

Her eyes already have sped the shades that flee,

Already they watch the path thy feet shall take:

Awake, O heart, to be loved, awake, awake!

And if thou tarry her,—if this could be,—

She cometh herself, O heart, to be loved, to thee;

For thee would unashamèd herself forsake:

Awake to be loved, my heart, awake, awake!

Awake, the land is scattered with light, and see,

Uncanopied sleep is flying from field and tree:

And blossoming boughs of April in laughter shake;

Awake, O heart, to be loved, awake, awake!

Lo all things wake and tarry and look for thee:

She looketh and saith, ’O sun, now bring him to me.

Come more adored, O adored, for his coming’s sake,

And awake my heart to be loved: awake, awake!’

16

SONG

I love my lady’s eyes

Above the beauties rare

She most is wont to prize,

Above her sunny hair,

And all that face to face

Her glass repeats of grace.

For those are still the same

To her and all that see:

But oh! her eyes will flame

When they do look on me:

And so above the rest

I love her eyes the best.

Now say, [Say, O say! saith the music]

who likes my song?—

I knew you by your eyes,

That rest on nothing long,

And have forgot surprise;

And stray [Stray, O stray! saith the music]

as mine will stray,

The while my love’s away.

17

Since thou, O fondest and truest,

Hast loved me best and longest,

And now with trust the strongest

The joy of my heart renewest;

Since thou art dearer and dearer

While other hearts grow colder,

And ever, as love is older,

More lovingly drawest nearer:

Since now I see in the measure

Of all my giving and taking,

Thou wert my hand in the making,

The sense and soul of my pleasure;

The good I have ne’er repaid thee

In heaven I pray be recorded,

And all thy love rewarded

By God, thy master that made thee.

18

The evening darkens over.

After a day so bright

The windcapt waves discover

That wild will be the night.

There’s sound of distant thunder.

The latest sea-birds hover

Along the cliff’s sheer height;

As in the memory wander

Last flutterings of delight,

White wings lost on the white.

There’s not a ship in sight;

And as the sun goes under

Thick clouds conspire to cover

The moon that should rise yonder.

Thou art alone, fond lover.

19

O youth whose hope is high,

Who dost to Truth aspire,

Whether thou live or die,

O look not back nor tire.

Thou that art bold to fly

Through tempest, flood and fire,

Nor dost not shrink to try

Thy heart in torments dire:

If thou canst Death defy,

If thy Faith is entire,

Press onward, for thine eye

Shall see thy heart’s desire.

Beauty and love are nigh,

And with their deathless quire

Soon shall thine eager cry

Be numbered and expire.

SHORTER POEMS

BOOK IV

TO

L. B. C. L. M.

1

I LOVE all beauteous things,

I seek and adore them;

God hath no better praise,

And man in his hasty days

Is honoured for them.

I too will something make

And joy in the making;

Altho’ to-morrow it seem

Like the empty words of a dream

Remembered on waking.

2

My spirit sang all day

O my joy.

Nothing my tongue could say,

Only My joy!

My heart an echo caught—

O my joy—

And spake, Tell me thy thought,

Hide not thy joy.

My eyes gan peer around,—

O my joy—

What beauty hast thou found?

Shew us thy joy.

My jealous ears grew whist;—

O my joy—

Music from heaven is’t,

Sent for our joy?

She also came and heard;

O my joy,

What, said she, is this word?

What is thy joy?

And I replied, O see,

O my joy,

’Tis thee, I cried, ’tis thee:

Thou art my joy.

3

The upper skies are palest blue

Mottled with pearl and fretted snow:

With tattered fleece of inky hue

Close overhead the stormclouds go.

Their shadows fly along the hill

And o’er the crest mount one by one:

The whitened planking of the mill

Is now in shade and now in sun.

4

The clouds have left the sky,

The wind hath left the sea,

The half-moon up on high

Shrinketh her face of dree.

She lightens on the comb

Of leaden waves, that roar

And thrust their hurried foam

Up on the dusky shore.

Behind the western bars

The shrouded day retreats,

And unperceived the stars

Steal to their sovran seats.

And whiter grows the foam,

The small moon lightens more;

And as I turn me home,

My shadow walks before.

5

LAST WEEK OF FEBRUARY, 1890

Hark to the merry birds, hark how they sing!

Although ’tis not yet spring

And keen the air;

Hale Winter, half resigning ere he go,

Doth to his heiress shew

His kingdom fair.

In patient russet is his forest spread,

All bright with bramble red,

With beechen moss

And holly sheen: the oak silver and stark

Sunneth his aged bark

And wrinkled boss.

But neath the ruin of the withered brake

Primroses now awake

From nursing shades:

The crumpled carpet of the dry leaves brown

Avails not to keep down

The hyacinth blades.

The hazel hath put forth his tassels ruffed;

The willow’s flossy tuft

Hath slipped him free:

The rose amid her ransacked orange hips

Braggeth the tender tips

Of bowers to be.

A black rook stirs the branches here and there,

Foraging to repair

His broken home:

And hark, on the ash-boughs! Never thrush did sing

Louder in praise of spring,

When spring is come.

6

APRIL, 1885

Wanton with long delay the gay spring leaping cometh;

The blackthorn starreth now his bough on the eve of May:

All day in the sweet box-tree the bee for pleasure hummeth:

The cuckoo sends afloat his note on the air all day.

Now dewy nights again and rain in gentle shower

At root of tree and flower have quenched the winter’s drouth:

On high the hot sun smiles, and banks of cloud up-tower

In bulging heads that crowd for miles the dazzling south.

7

Gáy Róbin is seen no more:

He is gone with the snow,

For winter is o’er

And Robin will go.

In need he was fed, and now he is fled

Away to his secret nest.

No more will he stand

Begging for crumbs,

No longer he comes

Beseeching our hand

And showing his breast

At window and door:—

Gay Robin is seen no more.

Blithe Robin is heard no more:

He gave us his song

When summer was o’er

And winter was long:

He sang for his bread and now he is fled

Away to his secret nest.

And there in the green

Early and late

Alone to his mate

He pipeth unseen

And swelleth his breast;

For us it is o’er:—

Blithe Robin is heard no more.

8

Spring goeth all in white,

Crowned with milk-white may:

In fleecy flocks of light

O’er heaven the white clouds stray:

White butterflies in the air;

White daisies prank the ground:

The cherry and hoary pear

Scatter their snow around.

9

My eyes for beauty pine,

My soul for Goddës grace:

No other care nor hope is mine;

To heaven I turn my face.

One splendour thence is shed

From all the stars above:

’Tis namèd when God’s name is said,

’Tis Love, ’tis heavenly Love.

And every gentle heart,

That burns with true desire,

Is lit from eyes that mirror part

Of that celestial fire.

10

O Love, my muse, how was’t for me

Among the best to dare,

In thy high courts that bowed the knee

With sacrifice and prayer?

Their mighty offerings at thy shrine

Shamed me, who nothing bore:

Their suits were mockeries of mine,

I sued for so much more.

Full many I met that crowned with bay

In triumph home returned,

And many a master on the way

Proud of the prize I scorned.

I wished no garland on my head

Nor treasure in my hand;

My gift the longing that me led,

My prayer thy high command,

My love, my muse; and when I spake

Thou mad’st me thine that day,

And more than hundred hearts could take

Gav’st me to bear away.

11

Love on my heart from heaven fell,

Soft as the dew on flowers of spring,

Sweet as the hidden drops that swell

Their honey-throated chalicing.

Now never from him do I part,

Hosanna evermore I cry:

I taste his savour in my heart,

And bid all praise him as do I.

Without him noughtsoever is,

Nor was afore, nor e’er shall be:

Nor any other joy than his

Wish I for mine to comfort me.

12

The hill pines were sighing,

O’ercast and chill was the day:

A mist in the valley lying

Blotted the pleasant May.

But deep in the glen’s bosom

Summer slept in the fire

Of the odorous gorse-blossom

And the hot scent of the brier.

A ribald cuckoo clamoured,

And out of the copse the stroke

Of the iron axe that hammered

The iron heart of the oak.

Anon a sound appalling,

As a hundred years of pride

Crashed, in the silence falling:

And the shadowy pine-trees sighed.

13

THE WINDMILL

The green corn waving in the dale,

The ripe grass waving on the hill:

I lean across the paddock pale

And gaze upon the giddy mill.

Its hurtling sails a mighty sweep

Cut thro’ the air: with rushing sound

Each strikes in fury down the steep,

Rattles, and whirls in chase around.

Beside his sacks the miller stands

On high within the open door:

A book and pencil in his hands,

His grist and meal he reckoneth o’er.

His tireless merry slave the wind

Is busy with his work to-day:

From whencesoe’er, he comes to grind;

He hath a will and knows the way.

He gives the creaking sails a spin,

The circling millstones faster flee,

The shuddering timbers groan within,

And down the shoot the meal runs free.

The miller giveth him no thanks,

And doth not much his work o’erlook:

He stands beside the sacks, and ranks

The figures in his dusty book.

14

When June is come, then all the day

I’ll sit with my love in the scented hay:

And watch the sunshot palaces high,

That the white clouds build in the breezy sky.

She singeth, and I do make her a song,

And read sweet poems the whole day long:

Unseen as we lie in our haybuilt home.

O life is delight when June is come.

15

The pinks along my garden walks

Have all shot forth their summer stalks,

Thronging their buds ’mong tulips hot,

And blue forget-me-not.

Their dazzling snows forth-bursting soon

Will lade the idle breath of June:

And waken thro’ the fragrant night

To steal the pale moonlight.

The nightingale at end of May

Lingers each year for their display;

Till when he sees their blossoms blown,

He knows the spring is flown.

June’s birth they greet, and when their bloom

Dislustres, withering on his tomb,

Then summer hath a shortening day;

And steps slow to decay.

16

Fire of heaven, whose starry arrow

Pierces the veil of timeless night:

Molten spheres, whose tempests narrow

Their floods to a beam of gentle light,

To charm with a moon-ray quenched from fire

The land of delight, the land of desire!

Smile of love, a flower planted,

Sprung in the garden of joy that art:

Eyes that shine with a glow enchanted,

Whose spreading fires encircle my heart,

And warm with a noon-ray drenched in fire

My land of delight, my land of desire!

17

The idle life I lead

Is like a pleasant sleep,

Wherein I rest and heed

The dreams that by me sweep.

And still of all my dreams

In turn so swiftly past,

Each in its fancy seems

A nobler than the last.

And every eve I say,

Noting my step in bliss,

That I have known no day

In all my life like this.

18

Angel spirits of sleep,

White-robed, with silver hair,

In your meadows fair,

Where the willows weep,

And the sad moonbeam

On the gliding stream

Writes her scattered dream:

Angel spirits of sleep,

Dancing to the weir

In the hollow roar

Of its waters deep;

Know ye how men say

That ye haunt no more

Isle and grassy shore

With your moonlit play;

White-robed spirits of sleep,

All the summer night

Threading dances light?

19

ANNIVERSARY

What is sweeter than new-mown hay,

Fresher than winds o’er-sea that blow,

Innocent above children’s play,

Fairer and purer than winter snow,

Frolic as are the morns of May?

—If it should be what best I know!

What is richer than thoughts that stray

From reading of poems that smoothly flow?

What is solemn like the delay

Of concords linked in a music slow

Dying thro’ vaulted aisles away?

—If it should be what best I know!

What gives faith to me when I pray,

Setteth my heart with joy aglow,

Filleth my song with fancies gay,

Maketh the heaven to which I go,

The gladness of earth that lasteth for aye?

—If it should be what best I know!

But tell me thou—’twas on this day

That first we loved five years ago—

If ’tis a thing that I can say,

Though it must be what best we know.

20

The summer trees are tempest-torn,

The hills are wrapped in a mantle wide

Of folding rain by the mad wind borne

Across the country side.

His scourge of fury is lashing down

The delicate-rankèd golden corn,

That never more shall rear its crown

And curtsey to the morn.

There shews no care in heaven to save

Man’s pitiful patience, or provide

A season for the season’s slave,

Whose trust hath toiled and died.

So my proud spirit in me is sad,

A wreck of fairer fields to mourn,

The ruin of golden hopes she had,

My delicate-rankèd corn.

21

The birds that sing on autumn eves

Among the golden-tinted leaves,

Are but the few that true remain

Of budding May’s rejoicing train.

Like autumn flowers that brave the frost,

And make their show when hope is lost,

These ’mong the fruits and mellow scent

Mourn not the high-sunned summer spent.

Their notes thro’ all the jocund spring

Were mixed in merry musicking:

They sang for love the whole day long,

But now their love is all for song.

Now each hath perfected his lay

To praise the year that hastes away:

They sit on boughs apart, and vie

In single songs and rich reply:

And oft as in the copse I hear

These anthems of the dying year,

The passions, once her peace that stole,

With flattering love my heart console.

22

When my love was away,

Full three days were not sped,

I caught my fancy astray

Thinking if she were dead,

And I alone, alone:

It seemed in my misery

In all the world was none

Ever so lone as I.

I wept; but it did not shame

Nor comfort my heart: away

I rode as I might, and came

To my love at close of day.

The sight of her stilled my fears,

My fairest-hearted love:

And yet in her eyes were tears:

Which when I questioned of,

O now thou art come, she cried,

’Tis fled: but I thought to-day

I never could here abide,

If thou wert longer away.

23

The storm is over, the land hushes to rest:

The tyrannous wind, its strength fordone,

Is fallen back in the west

To couch with the sinking sun.

The last clouds fare

With fainting speed, and their thin streamers fly

In melting drifts of the sky.

Already the birds in the air

Appear again; the rooks return to their haunt,

And one by one,

Proclaiming aloud their care,

Renew their peaceful chant.

Torn and shattered the trees their branches again reset,

They trim afresh the fair

Few green and golden leaves withheld the storm,

And awhile will be handsome yet.

To-morrow’s sun shall caress

Their remnant of loveliness:

In quiet days for a time

Sad Autumn lingering warm

Shall humour their faded prime.

But ah! the leaves of summer that lie on the ground!

What havoc! The laughing timbrels of June,

That curtained the birds’ cradles, and screened their song,

That sheltered the cooing doves at noon,

Of airy fans the delicate throng,—

Torn and scattered around:

Far out afield they lie,

In the watery furrows die,

In grassy pools of the flood they sink and drown,

Green-golden, orange, vermilion, golden and brown,

The high year’s flaunting crown

Shattered and trampled down.

The day is done: the tired land looks for night:

She prays to the night to keep

In peace her nerves of delight:

While silver mist upstealeth silently,

And the broad cloud-driving moon in the clear sky

Lifts o’er the firs her shining shield,

And in her tranquil light

Sleep falls on forest and field.

Sée! sléep hath fallen: the trees are asleep:

The night is come. The land is wrapt in sleep.

24

Ye thrilled me once, ye mournful strains,

Ye anthems of plaintive woe,

My spirit was sad when I was young;

Ah sorrowful long-ago!

But since I have found the beauty of joy

I have done with proud dismay:

For howsoe’er man hug his care

The best of his art is gay.

And yet if voices of fancy’s choir

Again in mine ear awake

Your old lament, ’tis dear to me still,

Nor all for memory’s sake:

’Tis like the dirge of sorrow dead,

Whose tears are wiped away;

Or drops of the shower when rain is o’er,

That jewel the brightened day.

25

Say who is this with silvered hair,

So pale and worn and thin,

Who passeth here, and passeth there,

And looketh out and in?

That useth not our garb nor tongue,

And knoweth things untold:

Who teacheth pleasure to the young,

And wisdom to the old?

No toil he maketh his by day,

No home his own by night;

But wheresoe’er he take his way,

He killeth our delight.

Since he is come there’s nothing wise

Nor fair in man or child,

Unless his deep divining eyes

Have looked on it and smiled.

Whence came he hither all alone

Among our folk to spy?

There’s nought that we can call our own,

Till he shall hap to die.

And I would dig his grave full deep

Beneath the churchyard yew,

Lest thence his wizard eyes might peep

To mark the things we do.

26

Crown Winter with green,

And give him good drink

To physic his spleen

Or ever he think.

His mouth to the bowl,

His feet to the fire;

And let him, good soul,

No comfort desire.

So merry he be,

I bid him abide:

And merry be we

This good Yuletide.

27

The snow lies sprinkled on the beach,

And whitens all the marshy lea:

The sad gulls wail adown the gale,

The day is dark and black the sea.

Shorn of their crests the blighted waves

With driven foam the offing fleck:

The ebb is low and barely laves

The red rust of the giant wreck.

On such a stony, breaking beach

My childhood chanced and chose to be:

’Twas here I played, and musing made

My friend the melancholy sea.

He from his dim enchanted caves

With shuddering roar and onrush wild

Fell down in sacrificial waves

At feet of his exulting child.

Unto a spirit too light for fear

His wrath was mirth, his wail was glee:—

My heart is now too fixed to bow

Tho’ all his tempests howl at me:

For to the gain life’s summer saves,

My solemn joy’s increasing store,

The tossing of his mournful waves

Makes sweetest music evermore.

28

My spirit kisseth thine,

My spirit embraceth thee:

I feel thy being twine

Her graces over me,

In the life-kindling fold

Of God’s breath; where on high,

In furthest space untold

Like a lost world I lie:

And o’er my dreaming plains

Lightens, most pale and fair,

A moon that never wanes;

Or more, if I compare,

Like what the shepherd sees

On late mid-winter dawns,

When thro’ the branchèd trees,

O’er the white-frosted lawns,

The huge unclouded sun,

Surprising the world whist,

Is all uprisen thereon,

Golden with melting mist.

29

Ariel, O,—my angel, my own,—

Whither away then art thou flown

Beyond my spirit’s dominion?

That makest my heart run over with rhyme,

Renewing at will my youth for a time,

My servant, my pretty minion.

Now indeed I have cause to mourn,

Now thou returnest scorn for scorn:

Leave me not to my folly:

For when thou art with me is none so gay

As I, and none when thou’rt away

Was ever so melancholy.

30

LAUS DEO

Let praise devote thy work, and skill employ

Thy whole mind, and thy heart be lost in joy.

Well-doing bringeth pride, this constant thought

Humility, that thy best done is nought.

Man doeth nothing well, be it great or small,

Save to praise God; but that hath savèd all:

For God requires no more than thou hast done,

And takes thy work to bless it for his own.

SHORTER POEMS

BOOK V

TO

M. G. K.

1

THE WINNOWERS

BETWIXT two billows of the downs

The little hamlet lies,

And nothing sees but the bald crowns

Of the hills, and the blue skies.

Clustering beneath the long descent

And grey slopes of the wold,

The red roofs nestle, oversprent

With lichen yellow as gold.

We found it in the mid-day sun

Basking, what time of year

The thrush his singing has begun,

Ere the first leaves appear.

High from his load a woodman pitched

His faggots on the stack:

Knee-deep in straw the cattle twitched

Sweet hay from crib and rack:

And from the barn hard by was borne

A steady muffled din,

By which we knew that threshèd corn

Was winnowing, and went in.

The sunbeams on the motey air

Streamed through the open door,

And on the brown arms moving bare,

And the grain upon the floor.

One turns the crank, one stoops to feed

The hopper, lest it lack,

One in the bushel scoops the seed,

One stands to hold the sack.

We watched the good grain rattle down,

And the awns fly in the draught;

To see us both so pensive grown

The honest labourers laughed:

Merry they were, because the wheat

Was clean and plump and good,

Pleasant to hand and eye, and meet

For market and for food.

It chanced we from the city were,

And had not gat us free

In spirit from the store and stir

Of its immensity:

But here we found ourselves again.

Where humble harvests bring

After much toil but little grain,

’Tis merry winnowing.

2

THE AFFLICTION OF RICHARD

Love not too much. But how,

When thou hast made me such,

And dost thy gifts bestow,

How can I love too much?

Though I must fear to lose,

And drown my joy in care,

With all its thorns I choose

The path of love and prayer.

Though thou, I know not why,

Didst kill my childish trust,

That breach with toil did I

Repair, because I must:

And spite of frighting schemes,

With which the fiends of Hell

Blaspheme thee in my dreams,

So far I have hoped well.

But what the heavenly key,

What marvel in me wrought

Shall quite exculpate thee,

I have no shadow of thought.

What am I that complain?

The love, from which began

My question sad and vain,

Justifies thee to man.

3

Since to be loved endures,

To love is wise:

Earth hath no good but yours,

Brave, joyful eyes:

Earth hath no sin but thine,

Dull eye of scorn:

O’er thee the sun doth pine

And angels mourn.

4

THE GARDEN IN SEPTEMBER

Now thin mists temper the slow-ripening beams

Of the September sun: his golden gleams

On gaudy flowers shine, that prank the rows

Of high-grown hollyhocks, and all tall shows

That Autumn flaunteth in his bushy bowers;

Where tomtits, hanging from the drooping heads

Of giant sunflowers, peck the nutty seeds;

And in the feathery aster bees on wing

Seize and set free the honied flowers,

Till thousand stars leap with their visiting:

While ever across the path mazily flit,

Unpiloted in the sun,

The dreamy butterflies

With dazzling colours powdered and soft glooms,

White, black and crimson stripes, and peacock eyes,

Or on chance flowers sit,

With idle effort plundering one by one

The nectaries of deepest-throated blooms.

With gentle flaws the western breeze

Into the garden saileth,

Scarce here and there stirring the single trees,

For his sharpness he vaileth:

So long a comrade of the bearded corn,

Now from the stubbles whence the shocks are borne,

O’er dewy lawns he turns to stray,

As mindful of the kisses and soft play

Wherewith he enamoured the light-hearted May,

Ere he deserted her;

Lover of fragrance, and too late repents;

Nor more of heavy hyacinth now may drink,

Nor spicy pink,

Nor summer’s rose, nor garnered lavender,

But the few lingering scents

Of streakèd pea, and gillyflower, and stocks

Of courtly purple, and aromatic phlox.

And at all times to hear are drowsy tones

Of dizzy flies, and humming drones,

With sudden flap of pigeon wings in the sky,

Or the wild cry

Of thirsty rooks, that scour ascare

The distant blue, to watering as they fare

With creaking pinions, or—on business bent,

If aught their ancient polity displease,—

Come gathering to their colony, and there

Settling in ragged parliament,

Some stormy council hold in the high trees.

5

So sweet love seemed that April morn,

When first we kissed beside the thorn,

So strangely sweet, it was not strange

We thought that love could never change.

But I can tell—let truth be told—

That love will change in growing old;

Though day by day is nought to see,

So delicate his motions be.

And in the end ’twill come to pass

Quite to forget what once he was,

Nor even in fancy to recall

The pleasure that was all in all.

His little spring, that sweet we found,

So deep in summer floods is drowned,

I wonder, bathed in joy complete,

How love so young could be so sweet.

6

LARKS

What voice of gladness, hark!

In heaven is ringing?

From the sad fields the lark

Is upward winging.

High through the mournful mist that blots our day

Their songs betray them soaring in the grey.

See them! Nay, they

In sunlight swim; above the furthest stain

Of cloud attain; their hearts in music rain

Upon the plain.

Sweet birds, far out of sight

Your songs of pleasure

Dome us with joy as bright

As heaven’s best azure.

7

THE PALM WILLOW

See, whirling snow sprinkles the starvèd fields,

The birds have stayed to sing;

No covert yet their fairy harbour yields.

When cometh Spring?

Ah! in their tiny throats what songs unborn

Are quenched each morn.

The lenten lilies, through the frost that push,

Their yellow heads withhold:

The woodland willow stands a lonely bush

Of nebulous gold;

There the Spring-goddess cowers in faint attire

Of frightened fire.

8

ASIAN BIRDS

In this May-month, by grace

of heaven, things shoot apace.

The waiting multitude

of fair boughs in the wood,

How few days have arrayed

their beauty in green shade

What have I seen or heard?

it was the yellow bird

Sang in the tree: he flew

a flame against the blue;

Upward he flashed. Again,

hark! ’tis his heavenly strain.

Another! Hush! Behold,

many, like boats of gold,

From waving branch to branch

their airy bodies launch.

What music is like this,

where each note is a kiss?

The golden willows lift

their boughs the sun to sift:

Their sprays they droop to screen

the sky with veils of green,

A floating cage of song,

where feathered lovers throng.

How the delicious notes

come bubbling from their throats!

Full and sweet how they are shed

like round pearls from a thread!

The motions of their flight

are wishes of delight.

Hearing their song I trace

the secret of their grace.

Ah, could I this fair time

so fashion into rhyme,

The poem that I sing

would be the voice of spring.

9

JANUARY

Cold is the winter day, misty and dark:

The sunless sky with faded gleams is rent;

And patches of thin snow outlying, mark

The landscape with a drear disfigurement.

The trees their mournful branches lift aloft:

The oak with knotty twigs is full of trust,

With bud-thronged bough the cherry in the croft;

The chestnut holds her gluey knops upthrust.

No birds sing, but the starling chaps his bill

And chatters mockingly; the newborn lambs

Within their strawbuilt fold beneath the hill

Answer with plaintive cry their bleating dams.

Their voices melt in welcome dreams of spring,

Green grass and leafy trees and sunny skies:

My fancy decks the woods, the thrushes sing,

Meadows are gay, bees hum and scents arise.

And God the Maker doth my heart grow bold

To praise for wintry works not understood,

Who all the worlds and ages doth behold,

Evil and good as one, and all as good.

10

A ROBIN

Flame-throated robin on the topmost bough

Of the leafless oak, what singest thou?

Hark! he telleth how—

’Spring is coming now; Spring is coming now.

Now ruddy are the elm-tops against the blue sky,

The pale larch donneth her jewelry;

Red fir and black fir sigh,

And I am lamenting the year gone by.

The bushes where I nested are all cut down,

They are felling the tall trees one by one,

And my mate is dead and gone,

In the winter she died and left me lone.

She lay in the thicket where I fear to go;

For when the March-winds after the snow

The leaves away did blow,

She was not there, and my heart is woe:

And sad is my song, when I begin to sing,

As I sit in the sunshine this merry spring:

Like a withered leaf I cling

To the white oak-bough, while the wood doth ring.

Spring is coming now, the sun again is gay;

Each day like a last spring’s happy day.’—

Thus sang he; then from his spray

He saw me listening and flew away.

11

I never shall love the snow again

Since Maurice died:

With corniced drift it blocked the lane,

And sheeted in a desolate plain

The country side.

The trees with silvery rime bedight

Their branches bare.

By day no sun appeared; by night

The hidden moon shed thievish light

In the misty air.

We fed the birds that flew around

In flocks to be fed:

No shelter in holly or brake they found.

The speckled thrush on the frozen ground

Lay frozen and dead.

We skated on stream and pond; we cut

The crinching snow

To Doric temple or Arctic hut;

We laughed and sang at nightfall, shut

By the fireside glow.

Yet grudged we our keen delights before

Maurice should come.

We said, In-door or out-of-door

We shall love life for a month or more,

When he is home.

They brought him home; ’twas two days late

For Christmas day:

Wrapped in white, in solemn state,

A flower in his hand, all still and straight

Our Maurice lay.

And two days ere the year outgave

We laid him low.

The best of us truly were not brave,

When we laid Maurice down in his grave

Under the snow.

12

NIGHTINGALES

Beautiful must be the mountains whence ye come,

And bright in the fruitful valleys the streams, wherefrom

Ye learn your song:

Where are those starry woods? O might I wander there,

Among the flowers, which in that heavenly air

Bloom the year long!

Nay, barren are those mountains and spent the streams:

Our song is the voice of desire, that haunts our dreams,

A throe of the heart,

Whose pining visions dim, forbidden hopes profound,

No dying cadence nor long sigh can sound,

For all our art.

Alone, aloud in the raptured ear of men

We pour our dark nocturnal secret; and then,

As night is withdrawn

From these sweet-springing meads and bursting boughs of May,

Dream, while the innumerable choir of day

Welcome the dawn.

13

A song of my heart, as the sun peered o’er the sea,

Was born at morning to me:

And out of my treasure-house it chose

A melody, that arose

Of all fair sounds that I love, remembered together

In one; and I knew not whether

From waves of rustling wheat it was,

Recoveringly that pass:

Or a hum of bees in the queenly robes of the lime:

Or a descant in pairing time

Of warbling birds: or watery bells

Of rivulets in the hills:

Or whether on blazing downs a high lark’s hymn

Alone in the azure dim:

Or a sough of pines, when the midnight wold

Is solitary and cold:

Or a lapping river-ripple all day chiding

The bow of my wherry gliding

Down Thames, between his flowery shores

Re-echoing to the oars:

Or anthem notes, wherever in archèd quires

The unheeded music twires,

And, centuries by, to the stony shade

Flies following and to fade:

Or a homely prattle of children’s voices gay

’Mong garden joys at play:

Or a sundown chaunting of solemn rooks:

Or memory of my books,

Which hold the words that poets in many a tongue

To the irksome world have sung:

Or the voice, my happy lover, of thee

Now separated from me.

A ruby of fire in the burning sleep of my brain

Long hid my thought had lain,

Forgotten dreams of a thousand days

Ingathering to its rays,

The light of life in darkness tempering long;

Till now a perfect song,

A jewel of jewels it leapt above

To the coronal of my love.

14

FOUNDER’S DAY. A SECULAR ODE

ON THE NINTH JUBILEE OF

ETON COLLEGE

Christ and his Mother, heavenly maid,

Mary, in whose fair name was laid

Eton’s corner, bless our youth

With truth, and purity, mother of truth!

O ye, ’neath breezy skies of June,

By silver Thames’s lulling tune,

In shade of willow or oak, who try

The golden gates of poesy;

Or on the tabled sward all day

Match your strength in England’s play,

Scholars of Henry, giving grace

To toil and force in game or race;

Exceed the prayer and keep the fame

Of him, the sorrowful king, who came

Here in his realm a realm to found,

Where he might stand for ever crowned.

Or whether with naked bodies flashing

Ye plunge in the lashing weir; or dashing

The oars of cedar skiffs, ye strain

Round the rushes and home again;—

Or what pursuit soe’er it be

That makes your mingled presence free,

When by the schoolgate ’neath the limes

Ye muster waiting the lazy chimes;

May Peace, that conquereth sin and death,

Temper for you her sword of faith;

Crown with honour the loving eyes,

And touch with mirth the mouth of the wise.

Here is eternal spring: for you

The very stars of heaven are new;

And aged Fame again is born,

Fresh as a peeping flower of morn.

For you shall Shakespeare’s scene unroll,

Mozart shall steal your ravished soul,

Homer his bardic hymn rehearse,

Virgil recite his maiden verse.

Now learn, love, have, do, be the best;

Each in one thing excel the rest:

Strive; and hold fast this truth of heaven—

To him that hath shall more be given.

Slow on your dial the shadows creep,

So many hours for food and sleep,

So many hours till study tire,

So many hours for heart’s desire.

These suns and moons shall memory save,

Mirrors bright for her magic cave;

Wherein may steadfast eyes behold

A self that groweth never old.

O in such prime enjoy your lot,

And when ye leave regret it not;

With wishing gifts in festal state

Pass ye the angel-sworded gate.

Then to the world let shine your light,

Children in play be lions in fight,

And match with red immortal deeds

The victory that made ring the meads:

Or by firm wisdom save your land

From giddy head and grasping hand:

IMPROVE THE BEST; so shall your sons

Better what ye have bettered once.

Send them here to the court of grace

Bearing your name to fill your place:

Ye in their time shall live again

The happy dream of Henry’s reign:

And on his day your steps be bent

Where, saint and king, crowned with content,

He biddeth a prayer to bless his youth

With truth, and purity, mother of truth.

15

The north wind came up yesternight

With the new year’s full moon,

And rising as she gained her height,

Grew to a tempest soon.

Yet found he not on heaven’s face

A task of cloud to clear;

There was no speck that he might chase

Off the blue hemisphere,

Nor vapour from the land to drive:

The frost-bound country held

Nought motionable or alive,

That ’gainst his wrath rebelled.

There scarce was hanging in the wood

A shrivelled leaf to reave;

No bud had burst its swathing hood

That he could rend or grieve:

Only the tall tree-skeletons,

Where they were shadowed all,

Wavered a little on the stones,

And on the white church-wall.

—Like as an artist in his mood,

Who reckons all as nought,

So he may quickly paint his nude,

Unutterable thought:

So Nature in a frenzied hour

By day or night will show

Dim indications of the power,

That doometh man to woe.

Ah, many have my visions been,

And some I know full well:

I would that all that I have seen

Were fit for speech to tell.—

And by the churchyard as I came,

It seemed my spirit passed

Into a land that hath no name,

Grey, melancholy and vast;

Where nothing comes: but Memory,

The widowed queen of Death,

Reigns, and with fixed, sepulchral eye

All slumber banisheth.

Each grain of writhen dust, that drapes

That sickly, staring shore,

Its old chaotic change of shapes

Remembers evermore.

And ghosts of cities long decayed,

And ruined shrines of Fate

Gather the paths, that Time hath made

Foolish and desolate.

Nor winter there hath hope of spring,

Nor the pale night of day,

Since the old king with scorpion sting

Hath done himself away.

The morn was calm; the wind’s last breath

Had fal’n: in solemn hush

The golden moon went down beneath

The dawning’s crimson flush.

16

NORTH WIND IN OCTOBER

In the golden glade the chestnuts are fallen all;

From the sered boughs of the oak the acorns fall:

The beech scatters her ruddy fire;

The lime hath stripped to the cold,

And standeth naked above her yellow attire:

The larch thinneth her spire

To lay the ways of the wood with cloth of gold.

Out of the golden-green and white

Of the brake the fir-trees stand upright

In the forest of flame, and wave aloft

To the blue of heaven their blue-green tuftings soft.

But swiftly in shuddering gloom the splendours fail,

As the harrying North-wind beareth

A cloud of skirmishing hail

The grievèd woodland to smite:

In a hurricane through the trees he teareth,

Raking the boughs and the leaves rending,

And whistleth to the descending

Blows of his icy flail.

Gold and snow he mixeth in spite,

And whirleth afar; as away on his winnowing flight

He passeth, and all again for awhile is bright.

17

FIRST SPRING MORNING

A CHILD’S POEM

Look! Look! the spring is come:

O feel the gentle air,

That wanders thro’ the boughs to burst

The thick buds everywhere!

The birds are glad to see

The high unclouded sun:

Winter is fled away, they sing,

The gay time is begun.

Adown the meadows green

Let us go dance and play,

And look for violets in the lane,

And ramble far away

To gather primroses,

That in the woodland grow,

And hunt for oxlips, or if yet

The blades of bluebells show:

There the old woodman gruff

Hath half the coppice cut,

And weaves the hurdles all day long

Beside his willow hut.

We’ll steal on him, and then

Startle him, all with glee

Singing our song of winter fled

And summer soon to be.

18

A VILLAGER

There was no lad handsomer than Willie was

The day that he came to father’s house:

There was none had an eye as soft an’ blue

As Willie’s was, when he came to woo.

To a labouring life though bound thee be,

An’ I on my father’s ground live free,

I’ll take thee, I said, for thy manly grace,

Thy gentle voice an’ thy loving face.

’Tis forty years now since we were wed:

We are ailing an’ grey needs not to be said:

But Willie’s eye is as blue an’ soft

As the day when he wooed me in father’s croft.

Yet changed am I in body an’ mind,

For Willie to me has ne’er been kind:

Merrily drinking an’ singing with the men

He ’ud come home late six nights o’ the se’n.

An’ since the children be grown an’ gone

He ’as shunned the house an’ left me lone:

An’ less an’ less he brings me in

Of the little he now has strength to win.

The roof lets through the wind an’ the wet,

An’ master won’t mend it with us in’s debt:

An’ all looks every day more worn,

An’ the best of my gowns be shabby an’ torn.

No wonder if words hav’ a-grown to blows;

That matters not while nobody knows:

For love him I shall to the end of life,

An’ be, as I swore, his own true wife.

An’ when I am gone, he’ll turn, an’ see

His folly an’ wrong, an’ be sorry for me:

An’ come to me there in the land o’ bliss

To give me the love I looked for in this.

19

Weep not to-day: why should this sadness be?

Learn in present fears

To o’ermaster those tears

That unhindered conquer thee.

Think on thy past valour, thy future praise:

Up, sad heart, nor faint

In ungracious complaint,

Or a prayer for better days.

Daily thy life shortens, the grave’s dark peace

Draweth surely nigh,

When good-night is good-bye;

For the sleeping shall not cease.

Fight, to be found fighting: nor far away

Deem, nor strange thy doom.

Like this sorrow ’twill come,

And the day will be to-day.

NEW

POEMS

NEW POEMS

ECLOGUE I

THE MONTHS

BASIL AND EDWARD

MAN hath with man on earth no holier bond

Than that the Muse weaves with her dreamy thread:

Nor e’er was such transcendent love more fond

Than that which Edward unto Basil led,

Wandering alone across the woody shires

To hear the living voice of that wide heart,

To see the eyes that read the world’s desires,

And touch the hand that wrote the roving rhyme.

Diverse their lots as distant were their homes,

And since that early meeting, jealous Time

Knitting their loves had held their lives apart.

But now again were these fine lovers met

And sat together on a rocky hill

Looking upon the vales of Somerset,

Where the far sea gleam’d o’er the bosky combes,

Satisfying their spirits the livelong day

With various mirth and revelation due

And delicate intimacy of delight,

As there in happy indolence they lay

And drank the sun, while round the breezy height

Beneath their feet rabbit and listless ewe

Nibbled the scented herb and grass at will.

Much talked they at their ease; and at the last

Spoke Edward thus, ’'Twas on this very hill

This time of the year,—but now twelve years are past,—

That you provoked in verse my younger skill

To praise the months against your rival song;

And ere the sun had westered ten degrees

Our rhyme had brought him thro’ the Zodiac.

Have you remembered?’—Basil answer’d back,

’Guest of my solace, how could I forget?

Years fly as months that seem’d in youth so long.

The precious life that, like indifferent gold

Is disregarded in its worth to hold

Some jewel of love that God therein would set,

It passeth and is gone.’—’And yet not all’

Edward replied: ’The passion as I please

Of that past day I can to-day recall;

And if but you, as I, remember yet

Your part thereof, and will again rehearse,

For half an hour we may old Time outwit.’

And Basil said, ’Alas for my poor verse!

What happy memory of it still endures

Will thank your love: I have forgotten it.

Speak you my stanzas, I will ransom yours.

Begin you then as I that day began,

And I will follow as your answers ran.’

JANUARY

ED. The moon that mounts the sun’s deserted way,

Turns the long winter night to a silver day;

But setteth golden in face of the solemn sight

Of her lord arising upon a world of white.

FEBRUARY

BA. I have in my heart a vision of spring begun

In a sheltering wood, that feels the kiss of the sun:

And a thrush adoreth the melting day that dies

In clouds of purple afloat upon saffron skies.

MARCH

ED. Now carol the birds at dawn, and some new lay

Announceth a homecome voyager every-day.

Beneath the tufted sallows the streamlet thrills

With the leaping trout and the gleam of the daffodils.

APRIL

BA. Then laugheth the year; with flowers the meads are bright;

The bursting branches are tipped with flames of light:

The landscape is light; the dark clouds flee above,

And the shades of the land are a blue that is deep as love.

MAY

ED. But if you have seen a village all red and old

In cherry-orchards a-sprinkle with white and gold,

By a hawthorn seated, or a witchelm flowering high,

A gay breeze making riot in the waving rye!

JUNE

BA. Then night retires from heaven; the high

winds go

A-sailing in cloud-pavilions of cavern’d snow.

O June, sweet Philomel sang thy cradle-lay;

In rosy revel thy spirit shall pass away.

JULY

ED. Heavy is the green of the fields, heavy the trees

With foliage hang, drowsy the hum of bees

In the thundrous air: the crowded scents lie low:

Thro’ tangle of weeds the river runneth slow.

AUGUST

BA. A reaper with dusty shoon and hat of straw

On the yellow field, his scythe in his armës braw:

Beneath the tall grey trees resting at noon

From sweat and swink with scythe and dusty shoon.

SEPTEMBER

ED. Earth’s flaunting flower of passion fadeth fair

To ripening fruit in sunlit veils of the air,

As the art of man makes wisdom to glorify

The beauty and love of life born else to die.

OCTOBER

BA. On frosty morns with the woods aflame, down, down

The golden spoils fall thick from the chestnut crown.

May Autumn in tranquil glory her riches spend,

With mellow apples her orchard-branches bend.

NOVEMBER

ED. Sad mists have hid the sun, the land is forlorn:

The plough is afield, the hunter windeth his horn.

Dame Prudence looketh well to her winter stores,

And many a wise man finds his pleasure indoors.

DECEMBER

BA. I pray thee don thy jerkin of olden time,

Bring us good ice, and silver the trees with rime;

And I will good cheer, good music and wine bestow,

When the Christmas guest comes galoping over the snow.

Thus they in verse alternate sang the year

For rabbit shy and listless ewe to hear,

Among the grey rocks on the mountain green

Beneath the sky in fair and pastoral scene,

Like those Sicilian swains, whose doric tongue

After two thousand years is ever young,—

Sweet the pine’s murmur, and, shepherd, sweet thy pipe,—

Or that which gentle Virgil, yet unripe,

Of Tityrus sang under the spreading beech

And gave to rustic clowns immortal speech,

By rocky fountain or on flowery mead

Bidding their idle flocks at will to feed,

While they, retreated to some bosky glade,

Together told their loves, and as they played

Sang what sweet thing soe’er the poet feigned:

But these were men when good Victoria reigned,

Poets themselves, who without shepherd gear

Each of his native fancy sang the year.

ECLOGUE II

GIOVANNI DUPRÈ

LAWRENCE AND RICHARD

LAWRENCE

Look down the river—against the western sky—

The Ponte Santa Trinità—what throng

Slowly trails o’er with waving banners high,

With foot and horse! Surely they bear along

The spoil of one whom Florence honoureth:

And hark! the drum, the trumpeting dismay,

The wail of the triumphal march of death.

RICHARD

’Twill be the funeral of Giovánn Duprè

Wending to Santa Croce. Let us go

And see what relic of old splendour cheers

The dying ritual.

LAWRENCE

They esteem him well

To lay his bones with Michael Angelo.

Who might he be?

RICHARD

He too a sculptor, one

Who left a work long to resist the years.

LAWRENCE

You make me question further.

RICHARD

I can tell

All as we walk. A poor woodcarver’s son,

Prenticed to cut his father’s rude designs

(We have it from himself), maker of shrines,

In his mean workshop in Siena dreamed;

And saw as gods the artists of the earth,

And long’d to stand on their immortal shore,

And be as they, who in his vision gleam’d,

Dowering the world with grace for evermore.

So, taxing rest and leisure to one aim,

The boy of single will and inbred skill

Rose step by step to academic fame.

LAWRENCE

Do I not know him then? His figures fill

The tympana o’er Santa Croce’s gate;

In the museum too, his Cain, that stands

A left-handed discobolos....

RICHARD

So great

His vogue, that elder art of classic worth

Went to the wall to give his statues room;

And last—his country’s praise could do no more—

He cut the stone that honoured good Cavour.

LAWRENCE

I have seen the things.

RICHARD

He, finding in his hands

His life-desire possest, fell not in gloom,

Nor froth’d in vanity: his Sabbath earn’d

He look’d to spend in meditative rest:

So laying chisel by, he took a pen

To tell his story to his countrymen,

And prove (he did it) that the flower of all,

Rarest to attain, is in the power of all.

LAWRENCE

Yet nought he ever made, that I have learn’d,

In wood or stone deserved, nay not his best,

The Greek or Tuscan name for beautiful.

’Twas level with its praise, had force to pull

Favour from fashion.

RICHARD

Yet he made one thing

Worthy of the lily city in her spring;

For while in vain the forms of beauty he aped,

A perfect spirit in himself he shaped;

And all his lifetime doing less than well

Where he profess’d nor doubted to excel,

Now, where he had no scholarship, but drew

His art from love, ’twas better than he knew:

And when he sat to write, lo! by him stood

The heavenly Muse, who smiles on all things good;

And for his truth’s sake, for his stainless mind,

His homely love and faith, she now grew kind,

And changed the crown, that from the folk he got,

For her green laurel, and he knew it not.

LAWRENCE

Ah! Love of Beauty! This man then mistook

Ambition for her?

RICHARD

In simplicity

Erring he kept his truth; and in his book

The statue of his grace is fair to see.

LAWRENCE

Then buried with their great he well may be.

RICHARD

And number’d with the saints, not among them

Who painted saints. Join we his requiem.

ECLOGUE III

FOURTH OF JUNE AT ETON

RICHARD AND GODFREY

RICHARD

Beneath the wattled bank the eddies swarm

In wandering dimples o’er the shady pool:

The same their chase as when I was at school;

The same the music, where in shallows warm

The current, sunder’d by the bushy isles,

Returns to join the main, and struggles free

Above the willows, gurgling thro’ the piles:

Nothing is changed, and yet how changed are we!

—What can bring Godfrey to the Muses’ bower?

GODFREY

What but brings you? The festal day of the year;

To live in boyish memories for an hour;

See and be seen: tho’ you come seldom here.

RICHARD

Dread of the pang it was, fear to behold

What once was all myself, that kept me away.

GODFREY

You miss new pleasures coveting the old.

RICHARD

They need have prudence, who in courage lack;

’Twas that I might go on I looked not back.

GODFREY

Of all our company he, who, we say,

Fruited the laughing flower of liberty!

RICHARD

Ah! had I my desire, so should it be.

GODFREY

Nay, but I know this melancholy mood:

’Twas your poetic fancy when a boy.

RICHARD

For Fancy cannot live on real food:

In youth she will despise familiar joy

To dwell in mournful shades; as they grow real,

Then buildeth she of joy her far ideal.

GODFREY

And so perverteth all. This stream to me

Sings, and in sunny ripples lingeringly

The water saith ’Ah me! where have I lept?

Into what garden of life? what banks are these,

What secret lawns, what ancient towers and trees?

Where the young sons of heav’n, with shouts of play

Or low delighted speech, welcome the day,

As if the poetry of the earth had slept

To wake in ecstasy. O stay me! alas!

Stay me, ye happy isles, ere that I pass

Without a memory on my sullen course

By the black city to the tossing seas!’

RICHARD

So might this old oak say ’My heart is sere;

With greater effort every year I force

My stubborn leafage: soon my branch will crack,

And I shall fall or perish in the wrack:

And here another tree its crown will rear,

And see for centuries the boys at play:

And ’neath its boughs, on some fine holiday,

Old men shall prate as these.’ Come see the game.

GODFREY

Yes, if you will. ’Tis all one picture fair.

RICHARD

Made in a mirror, and who looketh there

Must see himself. Is not a dream the same?

GODFREY

Life is a dream.

RICHARD

And you, who say it, seem

Dreaming to speak to a phantom in a dream.

4

ELEGY

THE SUMMER-HOUSE ON THE MOUND

How well my eyes remember the dim path!

My homeing heart no happier playground hath.

I need not close my lids but it appears

Through the bewilderment of forty years

To tempt my feet, my childish feet, between

Its leafy walls, beneath its arching green;

Fairer than dream of sleep, than Hope more fair

Leading to dreamless sleep her sister Care.

There grew two fellow limes, two rising trees,

Shadowing the lawn, the summer haunt of bees,

Whose stems, engraved with many a russet scar

From the spear-hurlings of our mimic war,

Pillar’d the portico to that wide walk,

A mossy terrace of the native chalk

Fashion’d, that led thro’ the dark shades around

Straight to the wooden temple on the mound.

There live the memories of my early days,

There still with childish heart my spirit plays;

Yea, terror-stricken by the fiend despair

When she hath fled me, I have found her there;

And there ’tis ever noon, and glad suns bring

Alternate days of summer and of spring,

With childish thought, and childish faces bright,

And all unknown save but the hour’s delight.

High on the mound the ivied arbour stood,

A dome of straw upheld on rustic wood:

Hidden in fern the steps of the ascent,

Whereby unto the southern front we went,

And from the dark plantation climbing free,

Over a valley look’d out on the sea.

That sea is ever bright and blue, the sky

Serene and blue, and ever white ships lie

High on the horizon steadfast in full sail,

Or nearer in the roads pass within hail

Of naked brigs and barques that windbound ride

At their taut cables heading to the tide.

There many an hour I have sat to watch; nay, now

The brazen disk is cold against my brow,

And in my sight a circle of the sea

Enlarged to swiftness, where the salt waves flee,

And ships in stately motion pass so near

That what I see is speaking to my ear:

I hear the waves dash and the tackle strain,

The canvas flap, the rattle of the chain

That runs out thro’ the hawse, the clank of the wind

Winding the rusty cable inch by inch,

Till half I wonder if they have no care,

Those sailors, that my glass is brought to bear

On all their doings, if I vex them not

On every petty task of their rough lot

Prying and spying, searching every craft

From painted truck to gunnel, fore and aft,—

Thro’ idle Sundays as I have watch’d them lean

Long hours upon the rail, or neath its screen

Prone on the deck to lie outstretch’d at length,

Sunk in renewal of their wearied strength.

But what a feast of joy to me, if some

Fast-sailing frigate to the Channel come

Back’d here her topsail, or brought gently up

Let from her bow the splashing anchor drop,

By faint contrary wind stay’d in her cruise,

The Phaethon or dancing Arethuse,

Or some immense three-decker of the line,

Romantic as the tale of Troy divine;

Ere yet our iron age had doom’d to fall

The towering freeboard of the wooden wall,

And for the engines of a mightier Mars

Clipp’d their wide wings, and dock’d their soaring spars.

The gale that in their tackle sang, the wave

That neath their gilded galleries dasht so brave

Lost then their merriment, nor look to play

With the heavy-hearted monsters of to-day.

One noon in March upon that anchoring ground

Came Napier’s fleet unto the Baltic bound:

Cloudless the sky and calm and blue the sea,

As round Saint Margaret’s cliff mysteriously,

Those murderous queens walking in Sabbath sleep

Glided in line upon the windless deep:

For in those days was first seen low and black

Beside the full-rigg’d mast the strange smoke-stack,

And neath their stern revolv’d the twisted fan.

Many I knew as soon as I might scan,

The heavy Royal George, the Acre bright,

The Hogue and Ajax, and could name aright

Others that I remember now no more;

But chief, her blue flag flying at the fore,

With fighting guns a hundred thirty and one,

The Admiral ship The Duke of Wellington,

Whereon sail’d George, who in her gig had flown

The silken ensign by our sisters sewn.

The iron Duke himself,—whose soldier fame

To England’s proudest ship had given her name,

And whose white hairs in this my earliest scene

Had scarce more honour’d than accustom’d been, —

Was two years since to his last haven past:

I had seen his castle-flag to fall half-mast

One morn as I sat looking on the sea,

When thus all England’s grief came first to me,

Who hold my childhood favour’d that I knew

So well the face that won at Waterloo.

But now ’tis other wars, and other men;—

The year that Napier sail’d, my years were ten—

Yea, and new homes and loves my heart hath found:

A priest has there usurped the ivied mound,

The bell that call’d to horse calls now to prayers,

And silent nuns tread the familiar stairs.

Within the peach-clad walls that old outlaw,

The Roman wolf, scratches with privy paw.

5

O Love, I complain,

Complain of thee often,

Because thou dost soften

My being to pain:

Thou makest me fear

The mind that createth,

That loves not nor hateth

In justice austere;

Who, ere he make one,

With millions toyeth,

And lightly destroyeth

Whatever is begun.

An’ wer’t not for thee,

My glorious passion,

My heart I could fashion

To sternness, as he.

But thee, Love, he made

Lest man should defy him,

Connive and outvie him,

And not be afraid:

Nay, thee, Love, he gave

His terrors to cover,

And turn to a lover

His insolent slave.

6

THE SOUTH WIND

The south wind rose at dusk of the winter day,

The warm breath of the western sea

Circling wrapp’d the isle with his cloke of cloud,

And it now reach’d even to me, at dusk of the day,

And moan’d in the branches aloud:

While here and there, in patches of dark space,

A star shone forth from its heavenly place,

As a spark that is borne in the smoky chase;

And, looking up, there fell on my face—

Could it be drops of rain

Soft as the wind, that fell on my face?

Gossamers light as threads of the summer dawn,

Suck’d by the sun from midmost calms of the main,

From groves of coral islands secretly drawn,

O’er half the round of earth to be driven,

Now to fall on my face

In silky skeins spun from the mists of heaven.

Who art thou, in wind and darkness and soft rain

Thyself that robest, that bendest in sighing pines

To whisper thy truth? that usest for signs

A hurried glimpse of the moon, the glance of a star

In the rifted sky?

Who art thou, that with thee I

Woo and am wooed?

That robing thyself in darkness and soft rain

Choosest my chosen solitude,

Coming so far

To tell thy secret again,

As a mother her child, in her folding arm

Of a winter night by a flickering fire,

Telleth the same tale o’er and o’er

With gentle voice, and I never tire,

So imperceptibly changeth the charm,

As Love on buried ecstasy buildeth his tower,

—Like as the stem that beareth the flower

By trembling is knit to power;—

Ah! long ago

In thy first rapture I renounced my lot,

The vanity, the despondency and the woe,

And seeking thee to know

Well was’t for me, and evermore

I am thine, I know not what.

For me thou seekest ever, me wondering a day

In the eternal alternations, me

Free for a stolen moment of chance

To dream a beautiful dream

In the everlasting dance

Of speechless worlds, the unsearchable scheme,

To me thou findest the way,

Me and whomsoe’er

I have found my dream to share

Still with thy charm encircling; even to-night

To me and my love in darkness and soft rain

Under the sighing pines thou comest again,

And staying our speech with mystery of delight,

Of the kiss that I give a wonder thou makest,

And the kiss that I take thou takest.

7

I climb the mossy bank of the glade:

My love awaiteth me in the shade.

She holdeth a book that she never heedeth:

In Goddës work her spirit readeth.

She is all to me, and I to her:

When we embrace, the stars confer.

O my love, from beyond the sky

I am calling thy heart, and who but I?

Fresh as love is the breeze of June,

In the dappled shade of the summer noon.

Catullus, throwing his heart away,

Gave fewer kisses every day.

Heracleitus, spending his youth

In search of wisdom, had less of truth.

Flame of fire was the poet’s desire:

The thinker found that life was fire.

O my love! my song is done:

My kiss hath both their fires in one.

8

To my love I whisper, and say

Knowest thou why I love thee?—Nay:

Nay, she saith; O tell me again.—

When in her ear the secret I tell,

She smileth with joy incredible—

Ha! she is vain—O Nay—

Then tell us!—Nay, O nay.

But this is in my heart,

That Love is Nature’s perfect art,

And man hath got his fancy hence,

To clothe his thought in forms of sense.

Fair are thy works, O man, and fair

Thy dreams of soul in garments rare,

Beautiful past compare,

Yea, godlike when thou hast the skill

To steal a stir of the heavenly thrill:

But O, have care, have care!

’Tis envious even to dare:

And many a fiend is watching well

To flush thy reed with the fire of hell.

9

My delight and thy delight

Walking, like two angels white,

In the gardens of the night:

My desire and thy desire

Twining to a tongue of fire,

Leaping live, and laughing higher;

Thro’ the everlasting strife

In the mystery of life.

Love, from whom the world begun

Hath the secret of the sun.

Love can tell, and love alone,

Whence the million stars were strewn,

Why each atom knows its own,

How, in spite of woe and death,

Gay is life, and sweet is breath:

This he taught us, this we knew,

Happy in his science true,

Hand in hand as we stood

Neath the shadows of the wood,

Heart to heart as we lay

In the dawning of the day.

10

SEPTUAGESIMA

Now all the windows with frost are blinded,

As punctual day with greedy smile

Lifts like a Cyclops evil-minded

His ruddy eyeball over the isle.

In an hour ’tis paled, in an hour ascended

A dazzling light in the cloudless grey.

Steel is the ice; the snow unblended

Is trod to dust on the white highway.

The lambkins frisk; the shepherd is melting

Drink for the ewes with a fire of straw:

The red flames leap at the wild air pelting

Bitterly thro’ the leafless shaw.

Around, from many a village steeple

The sabbath-bells hum over the snow:

I give a blessing to parson and people

Across the fields as away I go.

Over the hills and over the meadows

Gay is my way till day be done:

Blue as the heaven are all the shadows,

And every light is gold in the sun.

11

The sea keeps not the Sabbath day,

His waves come rolling evermore;

His noisy toil grindeth the shore,

And all the cliff is drencht with spray.

Here as we sit, my love and I,

Under the pine upon the hill,

The sadness of the clouded sky,

The bitter wind, the gloomy roar,

The seamew’s melancholy cry

With loving fancy suit but ill.

We talk of moons and cooling suns,

Of geologic time and tide,

The eternal sluggards that abide

While our fair love so swiftly runs,

Of nature that doth half consent

That man should guess her dreary scheme

Lest he should live too well content

In his fair house of mirth and dream:

Whose labour irks his ageing heart,

His heart that wearies of desire,

Being so fugitive a part

Of what so slowly must expire.

She in her agelong toil and care

Persistent, wearies not nor stays,

Mocking alike hope and despair.

—Ah, but she too can mock our praise,

Enchanted on her brighter days,

Days, that the thought of grief refuse,

Days that are one with human art,

Worthy of the Virgilian muse,

Fit for the gaiety of Mozart.

12

Riding adown the country lanes

One day in spring,

Heavy at heart with all the pains

Of man’s imagining:—

The mist was not yet melted quite

Into the sky:

The small round sun was dazzling white,

The merry larks sang high:

The grassy northern slopes were laid

In sparkling dew,

Out of the slow-retreating shade

Turning from sleep anew:

Deep in the sunny vale a burn

Ran with the lane,

O’erhung with ivy, moss and fern

It laughed in joyful strain:

And primroses shot long and lush

Their cluster’d cream:

Robin and wren and amorous thrush

Carol’d above the stream:

The stillness of the lenten air

Call’d into sound

The motions of all life that were

In field and farm around:

So fair it was, so sweet and bright,

The jocund Spring

Awoke in me the old delight

Of man’s imagining,

Riding adown the country lanes:

The larks sang high.—

O heart! for all thy griefs and pains

Thou shalt be loth to die.

13

PATER FILIO

Sense with keenest edge unusèd,

Yet unsteel’d by scathing fire;

Lovely feet as yet unbruisèd

On the ways of dark desire;

Sweetest hope that lookest smiling

O’er the wilderness defiling!

Why such beauty, to be blighted

By the swarm of foul destruction?

Why such innocence delighted,

When sin stalks to thy seduction?

All the litanies e’er chaunted

Shall not keep thy faith undaunted.

I have pray’d the sainted Morning

To unclasp her hands to hold thee;

From resignful Eve’s adorning

Stol’n a robe of peace to enfold thee;

With all charms of man’s contriving

Arm’d thee for thy lonely striving.

Me too once unthinking Nature,

—Whence Love’s timeless mockery took me,—

Fashion’d so divine a creature,

Yea, and like a beast forsook me.

I forgave, but tell the measure

Of her crime in thee, my treasure.

14

NOVEMBER

The lonely season in lonely lands, when fled

Are half the birds, and mists lie low, and the sun

Is rarely seen, nor strayeth far from his bed;

The short days pass unwelcomed one by one.

Out by the ricks the mantled engine stands

Crestfallen, deserted,—for now all hands

Are told to the plough,—and ere it is dawn appear

The teams following and crossing far and near,

As hour by hour they broaden the brown bands

Of the striped fields; and behind them firk and prance

The heavy rooks, and daws grey-pated dance:

As awhile, surmounting a crest, in sharp outline

(A miniature of toil, a gem’s design,)

They are pictured, horses and men, or now near by

Above the lane they shout lifting the share,

By the trim hedgerow bloom’d with purple air;

Where, under the thorns, dead leaves in huddle lie

Packed by the gales of Autumn, and in and out

The small wrens glide

With a happy note of cheer,

And yellow amorets flutter above and about,

Gay, familiar in fear.

And now, if the night shall be cold, across the sky

Linnets and twites, in small flocks helter-skelter,

All the afternoon to the gardens fly,

From thistle-pastures hurrying to gain the shelter

Of American rhododendron or cherry-laurel:

And here and there, near chilly setting of sun,

In an isolated tree a congregation

Of starlings chatter and chide,

Thickset as summer leaves, in garrulous quarrel:

Suddenly they hush as one,—

The tree top springs,—

And off, with a whirr of wings,

They fly by the score

To the holly-thicket, and there with myriads more

Dispute for the roosts; and from the unseen nation

A babel of tongues, like running water unceasing,

Makes live the wood, the flocking cries increasing,

Wrangling discordantly, incessantly,

While falls the night on them self-occupied;

The long dark night, that lengthens slow,

Deepening with Winter to starve grass and tree,

And soon to bury in snow

The Earth, that, sleeping ’neath her frozen stole,

Shall dream a dream crept from the sunless pole

Of how her end shall be.

15

WINTER NIGHTFALL

The day begins to droop,—

Its course is done:

But nothing tells the place

Of the setting sun.

The hazy darkness deepens,

And up the lane

You may hear, but cannot see,

The homing wain.

An engine pants and hums

In the farm hard by:

Its lowering smoke is lost

In the lowering sky.

The soaking branches drip,

And all night through

The dropping will not cease

In the avenue.

A tall man there in the house

Must keep his chair:

He knows he will never again

Breathe the spring air:

His heart is worn with work;

He is giddy and sick

If he rise to go as far

As the nearest rick:

He thinks of his morn of life,

His hale, strong years;

And braves as he may the night

Of darkness and tears.

16

Since we loved,—(the earth that shook

As we kissed, fresh beauty took)—

Love hath been as poets paint,

Life as heaven is to a saint;

All my joys my hope excel,

All my work hath prosper’d well,

All my songs have happy been,

O my love, my life, my queen.

17

When Death to either shall come,—

I pray it be first to me,—

Be happy as ever at home,

If so, as I wish, it be.

Possess thy heart, my own;

And sing to the child on thy knee,

Or read to thyself alone

The songs that I made for thee.

18

WISHES

I wish’d to sing thy grace, but nought

Found upon earth that could compare:

Some day, maybe, in heaven, I thought,—

If I should win the welcome there,—

There might I make thee many a song:

But now it is enough to say

I ne’er have done our life the wrong

Of wishing for a happier day.

19

A LOVE LYRIC

Why art thou sad, my dearest?

What terror is it thou fearest,

Braver who art than I

The fiend to defy?

Why art thou sad, my dearest?

And why in tears appearest,

Closer than I that wert

At hiding thy hurt?

Why art thou sad, my dearest,

Since now my voice thou hearest?

Who with a kiss restore

Thy valour of yore.

20

ΕΡΟΣΕΡΟΣ

Why hast thou nothing in thy face?

Thou idol of the human race,

Thou tyrant of the human heart,

The flower of lovely youth that art;

Yea, and that standest in thy youth

An image of eternal Truth,

With thy exuberant flesh so fair,

That only Pheidias might compare,

Ere from his chaste marmoreal form

Time had decayed the colours warm;

Like to his gods in thy proud dress

Thy starry sheen of nakedness.

Surely thy body is thy mind,

For in thy face is nought to find,

Only thy soft unchristen’d smile,

That shadows neither love nor guile,

But shameless will and power immense,

In secret sensuous innocence.

O king of joy, what is thy thought?

I dream thou knowest it is nought,

And wouldst in darkness come, but thou

Makest the light where’er thou go.

Ah yet no victim of thy grace,

None who e’er long’d for thy embrace,

Hath cared to look upon thy face.

21

THE FAIR BRASS

An effigy of brass

Trodden by careless feet

Of worshippers that pass,

Beautiful and complete,

Lieth in the sombre aisle

Of this old church unwreckt,

And still from modern style

Shielded by kind neglect.

It shows a warrior arm’d:

Across his iron breast

His hands by death are charmed

To leave his sword at rest,

Wherewith he led his men

O’ersea, and smote to hell

The astonisht Saracen,

Nor doubted he did well.

Would wé could teach our sons

His trust in face of doom,

Or give our bravest ones

A comparable tomb:

Such as to look on shrives

The heart of half its care;

So in each line survives

The spirit that made it fair;

So fair the characters,

With which the dusty scroll,

That tells his title, stirs

A requiem for his soul.

Yet dearer far to me,

And brave as he are they,

Who fight by land and sea

For England at this day;

Whose vile memorials,

In mournful marbles gilt,

Deface the beauteous walls

By growing glory built:

Heirs of our antique shrines,

Sires of our future fame,

Whose starry honour shines

In many a noble name

Across the deathful days,

Link’d in the brotherhood

That loves our country’s praise,

And lives for heavenly good.

22

THE DUTEOUS HEART

Spirit of grace and beauty,

Whom men so much miscall;

Maidenly, modest duty,

I cry thee fair befal!

Pity for them that shun thee,

Sorrow for them that hate,

Glory, hath any won thee

To dwell in high estate!

But rather thou delightest

To walk in humble ways,

Keeping thy favour brightest

Uncrown’d by foolish praise;

In such retirement dwelling,

Where, hath the worldling been,

He straight returneth telling

Of sights that he hath seen,

Of simple men and truest

Faces of girl and boy;

The souls whom thou enduest

With gentle peace and joy.

Fair from my song befal thee,

Spirit of beauty and grace!

Men that so much miscall thee

Have never seen thy face.

23

THE IDLE FLOWERS

I have sown upon the fields

Eyebright and Pimpernel,

And Pansy and Poppy-seed

Ripen’d and scatter’d well,

And silver Lady-smock

The meads with light to fill,

Cowslip and Buttercup,

Daisy and Daffodil;

King-cup and Fleur-de-lys

Upon the marsh to meet

With Comfrey, Watermint,

Loose-strife and Meadowsweet;

And all along the stream

My care hath not forgot

Crowfoot’s white galaxy

And love’s Forget-me-not:

And where high grasses wave

Shall great Moon-daisies blink,

With Rattle and Sorrel sharp

And Robin’s ragged pink.

Thick on the woodland floor

Gay company shall be,

Primrose and Hyacinth

And frail Anemone,

Perennial Strawberry-bloom,

Woodsorrel’s pencilled veil,

Dishevel’d Willow-weed

And Orchis purple and pale,

Bugle, that blushes blue,

And Woodruff’s snowy gem,

Proud Foxglove’s finger-bells

And Spurge with milky stem.

High on the downs so bare,

Where thou dost love to climb,

Pink Thrift and Milkwort are,

Lotus and scented Thyme;

And in the shady lanes

Bold Arum’s hood of green,

Herb Robert, Violet,

Starwort and Celandine;

And by the dusty road

Bedstraw and Mullein tall,

With red Valerian

And Toadflax on the wall,

Yarrow and Chicory,

That hath for hue no like,

Silene and Mallow mild

And Agrimony’s spike,

Blue-eyed Veronicas

And grey-faced Scabious

And downy Silverweed

And striped Convolvulus:

Harebell shall haunt the banks,

And thro’ the hedgerow peer

Withwind and Snapdragon

And Nightshade’s flower of fear.

And where men never sow,

Have I my Thistles set,

Ragwort and stiff Wormwood

And straggling Mignonette,

Bugloss and Burdock rank

And prickly Teasel high,

With Umbels yellow and white,

That come to kexes dry.

Pale Chlora shalt thou find,

Sun-loving Centaury,

Cranesbill and Sinjunwort,

Cinquefoil and Betony:

Shock-headed Dandelion,

That drank the fire of the sun

Hawkweed and Marigold,

Cornflower and Campion.

Let Oak and Ash grow strong,

Let Beech her branches spread;

Let Grass and Barley throng

And waving Wheat for bread;

Be share and sickle bright

To labour at all hours;

For thee and thy delight

I have made the idle flowers.

But now ’tis Winter, child,

And bitter northwinds blow,

The ways are wet and wild,

The land is laid in snow.

24

DUNSTONE HILL

A cottage built of native stone

Stands on the mountain-moor alone,

High from man’s dwelling on the wide

And solitary mountain-side,

The purple mountain-side, where all

The dewy night the meteors fall,

And the pale stars musically set

To the watery bells of the rivulet,

And all day long, purple and dun,

The vast moors stretch beneath the sun,

The wide wind passeth fresh and hale,

And whirring grouse and blackcock sail.

Ah, heavenly Peace, where dost thou dwell?

Surely ’twas here thou hadst a cell,

Till flaming Love, wandering astray

With fury and blood, drove thee away.—

Far down across the valley deep

The town is hid in smoky sleep,

At moonless nightfall wakening slow

Upon the dark with lurid glow:

Beyond, afar the widening view

Merges into the soften’d blue,

Cornfield and forest, hill and stream,

Fair England in her pastoral dream.

To one who looketh from this hill

Life seems asleep, all is so still:

Nought passeth save the travelling shade

Of clouds on high that float and fade:

Nor since this landscape saw the sun

Might other motion o’er it run,

Till to man’s scheming heart it came

To make a steed of steel and flame.

Him may you mark in every vale

Moving beneath his fleecy trail,

And tell whene’er the motions die

Where every town and hamlet lie.

He gives the distance life to-day,

Rushing upon his level’d way

From man’s abode to man’s abode,

And mocks the Roman’s vaunted road,

Which o’er the moor purple and dun

Still wanders white beneath the sun,

Deserted now of men and lone

Save for this cot of native stone.

There ever by the whiten’d wall

Standeth a maiden fair and tall,

And all day long in vacant dream

Watcheth afar the flying steam.

25

SCREAMING TARN

The saddest place that e’er I saw

Is the deep tarn above the inn

That crowns the mountain-road, whereby

One southward bound his way must win.

Sunk on the table of the ridge

From its deep shores is nought to see:

The unresting wind lashes and chills

Its shivering ripples ceaselessly.

Three sides ’tis banked with stones aslant,

And down the fourth the rushes grow,

And yellow sedge fringing the edge

With lengthen’d image all arow.

’Tis square and black, and on its face

When noon is still, the mirror’d sky

Looks dark and further from the earth

Than when you gaze at it on high.

At mid of night, if one be there,

—So say the people of the hill—

A fearful shriek of death is heard,

One sudden scream both loud and shrill.

And some have seen on stilly nights,

And when the moon was clear and round,

Bubbles which to the surface swam

And burst as if they held the sound.—

’Twas in the days ere hapless Charles

Losing his crown had lost his head,

This tale is told of him who kept

The inn upon the watershed:

He was a lowbred ruin’d man

Whom lawless times set free from fear:

One evening to his house there rode

A young and gentle cavalier.

With curling hair and linen fair

And jewel-hilted sword he went;

The horse he rode he had ridden far,

And he was with his journey spent.

He asked a lodging for the night,

His valise from his steed unbound,

He let none bear it but himself

And set it by him on the ground.

’Here’s gold or jewels,’ thought the host,

’That’s carrying south to find the king.’

He chattered many a loyal word,

And scraps of royal airs gan sing.

His guest thereat grew more at ease

And o’er his wine he gave a toast,

But little ate, and to his room

Carried his sack behind the host.

’Now rest you well,’ the host he said,

But of his wish the word fell wide;

Nor did he now forget his son

Who fell in fight by Cromwell’s side.

Revenge and poverty have brought

Full gentler heart than his to crime;

And he was one by nature rude,

Born to foul deeds at any time.

With unshod feet at dead of night

In stealth he to the guest-room crept,

Lantern and dagger in his hand,

And stabbed his victim while he slept.

But as he struck a scream there came,

A fearful scream so loud and shrill:

He whelm’d the face with pillows o’er,

And lean’d till all had long been still.

Then to the face the flame he held

To see there should no life remain:—

When lo! his brutal heart was quell’d:

’Twas a fair woman he had slain.

The tan upon her face was paint,

The manly hair was torn away,

Soft was the breast that he had pierced;

Beautiful in her death she lay.

His was no heart to faint at crime,

Tho’ half he wished the deed undone.

He pulled the valise from the bed

To find what booty he had won.

He cut the straps, and pushed within

His murderous fingers to their theft.

A deathly sweat came o’er his brow,

He had no sense nor meaning left.

He touched not gold, it was not cold,

It was not hard, it felt like flesh.

He drew out by the curling hair

A young man’s head, and murder’d fresh;

A young man’s head, cut by the neck.

But what was dreader still to see,

Her whom he had slain he saw again,

The twain were like as like can be.

Brother and sister if they were,

Both in one shroud they now were wound,—

Across his back and down the stair,

Out of the house without a sound.

He made his way unto the tarn,

The night was dark and still and dank;

The ripple chuckling neath the boat

Laughed as he drew it to the bank.

Upon the bottom of the boat

He laid his burden flat and low,

And on them laid the square sandstones

That round about the margin go.

Stone upon stone he weigh’d them down,

Until the boat would hold no more;

The freeboard now was scarce an inch:

He stripp’d his clothes and push’d from shore.

All naked to the middle pool

He swam behind in the dark night;

And there he let the water in

And sank his terror out of sight.

He swam ashore, and donn’d his dress,

And scraped his bloody fingers clean;

Ran home and on his victim’s steed

Mounted, and never more was seen.

But to a comrade ere he died

He told his story guess’d of none:

So from his lips the crime returned

To haunt the spot where it was done.

26

THE ISLE OF ACHILLES

(FROM THE GREEK)

Τὸν φίλτατόν σοι παῖδ’ ἐμοί τ’, Ἀχιλλέα

ὄψει δόμους ναίοντα νησιωτικοὺς

Λευκὴν κατ’ ἀκτὴν ἐντὸς Εὐξείνου πόρου.

Eur. And. 1250.

Voyaging northwards by the western strand

Of the Euxine sea we came to where the land

Sinks low in salt morass and wooded plain:

Here mighty Ister pushes to the main,

Forking his turbid flood in channels three

To plough the sands with which he chokes the sea.

Against his middle arm, not many a mile

In the offing of black water is the isle

Named of Achilles, or as Leukê known,

Which tender Thetis, counselling alone

With her wise sire beneath the ocean-wave,

Unto her child’s departed spirit gave,

Where he might still his love and fame enjoy,

Through the vain Danaan cause fordone at Troy.

Thither Achilles passed, and long fulfill’d

His earthly lot, as the high gods had will’d,

Far from the rivalries of men, from strife,

From arms, from woman’s love and toil of life.

Now of his lone abode I will unfold

What there I saw, or was by others told.

There is in truth a temple on the isle;

Therein a wooden statue of rude style

And workmanship antique with helm of lead:

Else all is desert, uninhabited;

Only a few goats browse the wind-swept rocks,

And oft the stragglers of their starving flocks

Are caught and sacrificed by whomsoe’er,

Whoever of chance or purpose hither fare:

About the fence lie strewn their bleaching bones.

But in the temple jewels and precious stones,

Upheapt with golden rings and vials lie,

Thankofferings to Achilles, and thereby,

Written or scratch’d upon the walls in view,

Inscriptions, with the givers’ names thereto,

Some in Romaic character, some Greek,

As each man in the tongue that he might speak

Wrote verse of praise, or prayer for good to come,

To Achilles most, but to Patroclus some;

For those who strongly would Achilles move

Approach him by the pathway of his love.

Thousands of birds frequent the sheltering shrine,

The dippers and the swimmers of the brine,

Sea-mew and gull and diving cormorant,

Fishers that on the high cliff make their haunt

Sheer inaccessible, and sun themselves

Huddled arow upon the narrow shelves:—

And surely no like wonder ere hath been

As that such birds should keep the temple clean;

But thus they do: at earliest dawn of day

They flock to sea and in the waters play,

And when they well have wet their plumage light,

Back to the sanctuary they take flight

Splashing the walls and columns with fresh brine,

Till all the stone doth fairly drip and shine,

When off again they skim asea for more

And soon returning sprinkle steps and floor,

And sweep all cleanly with their wide-spread wings.

From other men I have learnt further things.

If any of free purpose, thus they tell,

Sail’d hither to consult the oracle,—

For oracle there was,—they sacrificed

Such victims as they brought, if such sufficed,

And some they slew, some to the god set free:

But they who driven from their course at sea

Chanced on the isle, took of the goats thereon

And pray’d Achilles to accept his own.

Then made they a gift, and when they had offer’d once,

If to their question there was no response,

They added to the gift and asked again;

Yea twice and more, until the god should deign

Answer to give, their offering they renew’d;

Whereby great riches to the shrine ensued.

And when both sacrifice and gifts were made

They worship’d at the shrine, and as they pray’d

Sailors aver that often hath been seen

A man like to a god, of warrior mien,

A beauteous form of figure swift and strong;

Down on his shoulders his light hair hung long

And his full armour was enchast with gold:

While some, who with their eyes might nought behold,

Say that with music strange the air was stir’d;

And some there are, who have both seen and heard:

And if a man wish to be favour’d more,

He need but spend one night upon the shore;

To him in sleep Achilles will appear

And lead him to his tent, and with good cheer

Show him all friendliness that men desire;

Patroclus pours the wine, and he his lyre

Takes from the pole and plays the strains thereon

Which Cheiron taught him first on Pelion.

These things I tell as they were told to me,

Nor do I question but it well may be:

For sure I am that, if man ever was,

Achilles was a hero, both because

Of his high birth and beauty, his country’s call,

His valour of soul, his early death withal,

For Homer’s praise, the crown of human art;

And that above all praise he had at heart

A gentler passion in her sovran sway,

And when his love died threw his life away.

27

AN ANNIVERSARY

HE

Bright, my belovèd, be thy day,

This eve of Summer’s fall:

And Autumn mass his flowers gay

To crown thy festival!

SHE

I care not if the morn be bright,

Living in thy love-rays:

No flower I need for my delight,

Being crownèd with thy praise.

HE

O many years and joyfully

This sun to thee return;

Ever all men speak well of thee,

Nor any angel mourn!

SHE

For length of life I would not pray,

If thy life were to seek;

Nor ask what men and angels say

But when of thee they speak.

HE

Arise! The sky hath heard my song,

The flowers o’erhear thy praise;

And little loves are waking long

To wish thee happy days.

28

REGINA CARA

JUBILEE-SONG, FOR MUSIC, 1897

Hark! The world is full of thy praise,

England’s Queen of many days;

Who, knowing how to rule the free,

Hast given a crown to monarchy.

Honour, Truth and growing Peace

Follow Britannia’s wide increase,

And Nature yield her strength unknown

To the wisdom born beneath thy throne!

In wisdom and love firm is thy fame:

Enemies bow to revere thy name:

The world shall never tire to tell

Praise of the queen that reignèd well.

O FELIX ANIMA, DOMINA PRAECLARA,

AMORE SEMPER CORONABERE

REGINA CARA.

NOTES

NOTE

The poems contained in Book I are my final selection from a volume published in 1873. Those of Book II are from a pamphlet published in 1879. Some of all these are in places corrected. Book III is made up of poems from a pamphlet published in 1880; to which are added others of about the same date. Some of these have already appeared in a volume printed for me by my friend the Rev. C. H. Daniel, in 1884. No. 6 was written to a tune by Dr. Howard. No. 19 is a pretty close translation of a poem by Théophile Gautier, which is itself a translation from the English by Thomas Moore in The Epicurean. All the poems in Book IV are now printed for the first time. No. 9 is a translation from a madrigal by Michael Angelo (No. VIII in Guasti). It is from my Comedy ’The Humours of the Court,’ in which also No. 16 occurs. No. 11 is from a Sicilian nona rima stanza, the first poem in Trucchi’s Poesie Italiane inedite. No. 3 is but the initial fragment of a poem which took another shape.

1890.

NOTE TO FOURTH EDITION

Book V was printed by Mr. Daniel in 1893 and published contemporaneously with an American edition, according to the requirements of the international copyright law. In passing the proofs of this edition I have altered the first line of No. 10: which being actually descriptive of a robin’s song, now appears as such. It was first printed ’Pink-throated linnet.’ I have also written ’and’ for ’or’ in two lines of V. 17, and amended I. 5.

1894.

NOTE TO PRESENT VOLUME

In revising my ’shorter poems’ for this edition I have corrected a few misprints which seem to have run through the earlier editions; and, though I have refrained from the vanity of trying to improve old work which has been so often printed, I have amended one or two lines which seemed peculiarly bad. I hope that the ’new poems’ which I have gathered to fill this second volume up to the size of the first, may be found in some respects better than the old. Eclogues 2 and 3 have already appeared in the Cornhill Magazine, and the poems numbered severally 6, 14, 15 and 21, in Mr. Elkin Mathews’ Shilling Garland, No. II. 1896. The rest are printed here for the first time: they are of various dates, some of them were written this year for this volume.

R. B., Sept. 1899.

INDEX

INDEX OF FIRST LINES

PAGE

A cottage built of native stone

272

Again with pleasant green

61

All women born

40

An effigy of brass

262

Angel spirits of sleep

145

A poppy grows upon the shore

26

Ariel, O,—my angel, my own

165

A song of my heart

191

Assemble, all ye maidens

34

Awake, my heart, to be loved

113

A winter’s night with the snow about

101

Beautiful must be the mountains

189

Because thou canst not see

93

Behold! the radiant Spring

66

Beneath the wattled bank

223

Betwixt two billows

169

Bright, my belovèd, be thy day

287

Christ and his Mother

194

Clear and gentle stream

9

Cold is the winter day

183

Crown Winter with green

160

Dear lady, when thou frownest

22

Fire of heaven, whose starry arrow

143

Flame-throated robin

185

Gay Robin is seen no more

131

Hark! the world is full

289

Hark to the merry birds

128

Haste on, my joys

95

His poisoned shafts

38

How well my eyes

227

I climb the mossy bank

237

I found to-day out walking

25

I have loved flowers that fade

80

I have sown upon the fields

267

I heard a linnet courting

20

I know not how I came

50

I love all beauteous things

123

I love my lady’s eyes

115

I made another song

32

I never shall love the snow again

187

In the golden glade

201

In this May-month

181

I praise the tender flower

99

I saw the Virgin-mother

48

I stand on the cliff

89

I will not let thee go

23

I wish’d to sing thy grace

258

Joy, sweetest lifeborn joy

108

Let praise devote thy work

160

Let us, as by this verdant bank

57

Long are the hours the sun is above

28

Look down the river

218

Look! look! the spring is come

203

Love not too much

172

Love on my heart from heaven fell

137

Man hath with man

211

My bed and pillow are cold

103

My delight and thy delight

241

My eyes for beauty pine

134

My spirit kisseth thine

163

My spirit sang all day

124

Now all the windows

243

Now thin mists temper

175

O bold majestic downs

59

O golden Sun, whose ray

77

O Love, I complain

232

O Love, my muse

135

O my vague desires

85

O thou unfaithful

104

O youth whose hope is high

119

Perfect little body

91

Poor withered rose

14

Riding adown the country lanes

247

Sad, sombre place

71

Say who is this with silvered hair

158

See, whirling snow

180

Sense with keenest edge unusèd

249

Since thou, O fondest and truest

117

Since to be loved endures

174

Since we loved

256

Sometimes when my lady sits by me

27

So sweet love seemed

178

Spirit of grace and beauty

265

Spring goeth all in white

133

The birds that sing on autumn eves

150

The cliff-top has a carpet

16

The clouds have left the sky

127

The day begins to droop

254

The evening darkens over

118

The full moon from her cloudless skies

112

The green corn waving in the dale

139

The hill pines were sighing

138

The idle life I lead

144

The lonely season

251

The north wind came up

198

The pinks along my garden walks

142

The saddest place

275

The south wind rose

234

There is a hill

53

There was no lad handsomer

205

The sea keeps not

245

The snow lies sprinkled on the beach

161

The storm is over

154

The summer trees are tempest-torn

149

The upper skies are palest blue

126

The wood is bare

12

Thou didst delight my eyes

106

To my love I whisper

239

Voyaging northwards

282

Wanton with long delay

130

Weep not to-day

207

We left the city when the summer day

96

What is sweeter than new-mown hay

147

What voice of gladness

179

When Death to either shall come

257

When first we met

39

When June is come

141

When men were all asleep

87

When my love was away

152

Wherefore to-night so full of care

75

Whither, O splendid ship

46

Who has not walked upon the shore

30

Why art thou sad

259

Why hast thou nothing

260

Will Love again awake

43

Ye thrilled me once

157

Transcriber's Notes

Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations in hyphenation, spelling, accents and punctuation remain unchanged except where in conflict with the index.

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Table of Contents

Poetical Works of ROBERT BRIDGES

BOOK I

1 ELEGY

2 ELEGY

3

4 THE CLIFF-TOP

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14 ELEGY

15 RONDEAU

16 TRIOLET

17 TRIOLET

BOOK II

1

2 A PASSER-BY

3 LATE SPRING EVENING

4 WOOING

5

6 A WATER-PARTY

7 THE DOWNS

8 SPRING

9 SPRING

10 ELEGY

11 DEJECTION

12 MORNING HYMN

13

BOOK III

1

2 LONDON SNOW

3 THE VOICE OF NATURE

4 ON A DEAD CHILD

5 THE PHILOSOPHER TO HIS MISTRESS

6

7 INDOLENCE

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16 SONG

17

18

19

BOOK IV

1

2

3

4

5 LAST WEEK OF FEBRUARY, 1890

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13 THE WINDMILL

14

15

16

17

18

19 ANNIVERSARY

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30 LAUS DEO

BOOK V

1 THE WINNOWERS

2 THE AFFLICTION OF RICHARD

3

4 THE GARDEN IN SEPTEMBER

5

6 LARKS

7 THE PALM WILLOW

8 ASIAN BIRDS

9 JANUARY

10 A ROBIN

11

12 NIGHTINGALES

13

14 FOUNDER’S DAY. A SECULAR ODE ON THE NINTH JUBILEE OF ETON COLLEGE

15

16 NORTH WIND IN OCTOBER

17 FIRST SPRING MORNING

18 A VILLAGER

19

NEW POEMS

ECLOGUE I THE MONTHS

ECLOGUE II GIOVANNI DUPRÈ

ECLOGUE III FOURTH OF JUNE AT ETON

4 ELEGY

5

6 THE SOUTH WIND

7

8

9

10 SEPTUAGESIMA

11

12

13 PATER FILIO

14 NOVEMBER

15 WINTER NIGHTFALL

16

17

18 WISHES

19 A LOVE LYRIC

20 ΕΡΟΣΕΡΟΣ

21 THE FAIR BRASS

22 THE DUTEOUS HEART

23 THE IDLE FLOWERS

24 DUNSTONE HILL

25 SCREAMING TARN

26 THE ISLE OF ACHILLES

27 AN ANNIVERSARY

28 REGINA CARA

NOTES

NOTE

NOTE TO FOURTH EDITION

NOTE TO PRESENT VOLUME

INDEX OF FIRST LINES

Transcriber's Notes

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