Chapter I: Front Matter

A CHANT OF LOVE
FOR ENGLAND

AND OTHER POEMS

BY
HELEN GRAY CONE

LONDON AND TORONTO
J. M. DENT & SONS LTD.

1915

In Memoriam

P. M. and A. C. D.

KILLED IN ACTION, 1915

Let Pride with Grief go hand in hand:
They join the hallowed hosts who died
In battle for their lovely land;
With light about their brows they ride.

Young hearts and hot, gray heads and wise,
Good knights of all the years foregone,
Faith in their England in their eyes,
Still ride they on, still ride they on!

By altars old their banners fade
Beneath dear spires; their names are set
In minster aisle, in yew-tree shade;
Their memories fight for England yet.

Let Pride with Grief go hand in hand,
Sad Love with Patience, side by side;
In battle for their lovely land
Not vainly England’s sons have died!

And well may pride this hour befit;
For not since England’s days began
More fiery-clear the word was writ:
Who dies for England, dies for Man!

CONTENTS

PAGE

A CHANT OF LOVE FOR ENGLAND 1

SOLDIERS OF THE LIGHT 3

THE STORY OF THE “ORIENT” 6

POVERTY ROW 10

THE TRUMPETER 12

GREENCASTLE JENNY 14

BY THE BLOCKHOUSE ON THE HILL 17

THE HOUSE OF HATE 20

THE RIDDLE OF WRECK 23

THE RIDE TO THE LADY 24

THE GAOLER 27

THE FIRST GUEST 29

ARRAIGNMENT 32

A RESURRECTION 33

THE GLORIOUS COMPANY 35

THE ARROWMAKER 37

IVO OF CHARTRES 39

THE ACCOLADE 41

THE ENCOUNTER 48

FLOWER FANCIES:--
I. A Yellow Pansy 51
II. The Spring Beauties 52
III. Thisbe 53

A RHYME OF ROBIN PUCK 54

A LULLABY 56

THE PORTRAIT OF THE PRINCESS 57

LEPAGE’S JOAN OF ARC 59

A NOCTURNE OF RUBINSTEIN 61

A MEMORY OF ELLEN TERRY’S BEATRICE 64

EMELIE 65

ELSINORE 67

FIAMMETTA 70

MARINA SINGS 73

THE KING’S DIAMOND 76

“AS THE CROW FLIES” 80

THE WAYFARERS 81

A ROSE 83

THE INN OF THE STAR 84

POSIES:--
I. Friendship 86
II. Rose-Rent 86
III. Desire of Fame 86

TO-DAY 87

THE BALLAD OF CALNAN’S CHRISTMAS 88

SONNETS:--
The Immortal Word 91
The Torch-race 92
Retrospect 93
The Contrast 94
Triumph 95
A Mystery 96
The Common Street 97

ABRAHAM LINCOLN 98

A CHANT OF LOVE FOR ENGLAND

A song of hate is a song of Hell;
Some there be that sing it well.
Let them sing it loud and long,
We lift our hearts in a loftier song:
We lift our hearts to Heaven above,
Singing the glory of her we love,--
_England!_

Glory of thought and glory of deed,
Glory of Hampden and Runnymede;
Glory of ships that sought far goals,
Glory of swords and glory of souls!
Glory of songs mounting as birds,
Glory immortal of magical words;
Glory of Milton, glory of Nelson,
Tragical glory of Gordon and Scott;
Glory of Shelley, glory of Sidney,
Glory transcendent that perishes not,--
Hers is the story, hers be the glory,
_England!_

Shatter her beauteous breast ye may;
The Spirit of England none can slay!
Dash the bomb on the dome of Paul’s,--
Deem ye the fame of the Admiral falls?
Pry the stone from the chancel floor,--
Dream ye that Shakespeare shall live no more?
Where is the giant shot that kills
Wordsworth walking the old green hills?
Trample the red rose on the ground,--
Keats is Beauty while earth spins round!
Bind her, grind her, burn her with fire,
Cast her ashes into the sea,--
She shall escape, she shall aspire,
She shall arise to make men free:
She shall arise in a sacred scorn,
Lighting the lives that are yet unborn;
Spirit supernal, Splendour eternal,
ENGLAND!

SOLDIERS OF THE LIGHT

“Why of War, O thou that lovest rather
Peace of roses in a rain-sweet garden,
Peace of moonlit silver-heaving waters,
All the lovely looks of little children?
What strange mandate
Bids thee sing of War, who lovest these things?

“How of War, O faint-heart, thou that grievest
Over every gentle creature wounded,
All soft eyes of pain and puzzled sorrow,
All the lithe limbs marred, the wild wings broken?
What black magic
Makes thee brood on War, who dreadest these things?

“Is it but the haunting of the bugles,
Floating memories of the war-time bugles
Blowing over those far fields of childhood,
Pleasant in the foolish ear of childhood,
When the sword-hilt
Seemed but made to shine and hold a jewel?”

Then the inward Voice that gave the mandate,--
Bade me sing of battle,--bade me answer:
Well I know the symbol of the sword-hilt,
Know the Cross of sacrifice and service;
See the heart’s-blood
Burning where the child beheld the jewel.

I have hated with the perfect hatred
All the work of Hell in all the ages;
Hated all the hate and all the horror;
Yet the Vision of the Face of faces,
God-in-Manhood,
Shines through Hell, and I have seen the Vision.

In all battles, under many banners,
Soldiers of the Light have fought, have fallen,
Souls elect and armoured all with honour,
Following an unconquerable Captain;
Fighting, falling,
For the hope, the dream, the splendid secret!

In this rubric, lo, the Past is lettered:
Strike the red words out, we strike the glory.
Leave the sacred colour on the pages,
Pages of the Past that teach the Future.
On that scripture
Yet shall young souls take the oath of service.

God end War! but when brute War is ended,
Yet there shall be many a noble soldier,
Many a noble battle worth the winning,
Many a hopeless battle worth the losing.
Life is battle,
Life is battle, even to the sunset.

Soldiers of the Light shall strive forever,
In the wards of pain, the ways of labour,
In the stony deserts of the city,
In the hives where greed has housed the helpless;
Patient, valiant,
Fighting with the powers of death and darkness.

Make us mingle in that heavenly warfare;
Call us through the throats of all brave bugles
Blown on fields foregone by lips forgotten;
Nerve us with the courage of lost comrades,
Gird us, lead us,
Thou, O Prince of Peace and God of Battles!

THE STORY OF THE “ORIENT”

’Twas a pleasant Sunday morning while the spring was in its
glory,
English spring of gentle glory; smoking by his cottage door,
Florid-faced, the man-o’-war’s-man told his white-head boy the
story,
Noble story of Aboukir told a hundred times before.

“Here, the _Theseus_--here, the _Vanguard_;” as he spoke each name
sonorous,--
_Minotaur_, _Defence_, _Majestic_, stanch old comrades of the brine,
That against the ships of Brueys made their broadsides roar in
chorus,--
Ranging daisies on his doorstone, deft he mapped the battle-line.

Mapped the curve of tall three-deckers, deft as might a man
left-handed,
Who had given an arm to England later on at Trafalgar.
While he poured the praise of Nelson to the child with eyes
expanded,
Bright athwart his honest forehead blushed the scarlet cutlass-scar.

For he served aboard the _Vanguard_, saw the Admiral blind and
bleeding
Borne below by silent sailors, borne to die as then they deemed.
Every stout heart sick but stubborn, fought the sea-dogs on
unheeding,
Guns were cleared and manned and cleared, the battle thundered,
flashed, and screamed.

Till a cry swelled loud and louder,--towered on fire the _Orient_
stately,
Brueys’ flag-ship, she that carried guns a hundred and a score;
Then came groping up the hatchway he they counted dead but lately,
Came the little one-armed Admiral to guide the fight once more.

“‘Lower the boats!’ was Nelson’s order,”--But the listening boy
beside him,
Who had followed all his motions with an eager wide blue eye,
Nursed upon the name of Nelson till he half had deified him,
Here, with childhood’s crude consistence, broke the tale to
question “Why?”

For by children facts go streaming in a throng that never pauses,
Noted not, till, of a sudden, thought, a sunbeam, gilds the motes.
All at once the known words quicken, and the child would deal with
causes.
Since to kill the French was righteous, why bade Nelson lower the
boats?

Quick the man put by the question. “But the _Orient_, none could
save her;
We could see the ships, the ensigns, clear as day-light by the
flare;
And a many leaped and left her; but, God rest ’em! some were braver;
Some held by her, firing steady till she blew to God knows where.”

At the shock, he said, the _Vanguard_ shook through all her timbers
oaken;
It was like the shock of Doomsday,--not a tar but shuddered hard.
All was hushed for one strange moment; then that awful calm was
broken
By the heavy plash that answered the descent of mast and yard.

So, her cannon still defying, and her colours flaming, flying,
In her pit her wounded helpless, on her deck her Admiral dead,
Soared the _Orient_ into darkness with her living and her dying:
“Yet our lads made shift to rescue three-score souls,” the seaman
said.

Long the boy with knit brows wondered o’er that friending of the
foeman;
Long the man with shut lips pondered; powerless he to tell the cause
Why the brother in his bosom that desired the death of no man,
In the crash of battle wakened, snapped the bonds of hate like
straws.

While he mused, his toddling maiden drew the daisies to a posy;
Mild the bells of Sunday morning rang across the churchyard sod;
And helped on by tender hands, with sturdy feet all bare and rosy,
Climbed his babe to mother’s breast, as climbs the slow world up to
God.

POVERTY ROW

Brave old neighbours in Poverty Row,
Why should we grudge to dwell with you?
Pinch of poverty well ye know--
Doubtful dinner and clouted shoe.
Grinned the wolf at your doors, and yet
You sang your songs and you said your say.
Lashed to labour by devil Debt,
All were manful, and some were gay.

What, old Chaucer! a royal jest
Once you made in your laughing verse:
“No more goldfinch-song in the nest--
Autumn nest of the empty purse!”
Master Spenser, your looks are spare;
Princes’ favours, how fleet they be!
Thinking that yours was the selfsame fare,
Crust or crumb shall be sweet to me.

Worshipful Shakespeare of Stratford town,
Prosperous-portly in doublet red,
What of the days when you first came down
To London city to earn your bread?
What of the lodging where Juliet’s face
Startled your dream with its southern glow,
Flooding with splendour the sordid place?
That was a garret in Poverty Row!

Many a worthy has here, I ween,
Made brief sojourn or long abode:
Johnson, dining behind the screen;
Goldsmith, vagrant along the road;
Keats, ah, pitiful! poor and ill,
Harassed and hurt, in his short spring day;
Best Sir Walter, with flagging quill
Digging the mountain of debt away.

Needy comrade, whose evil star,
Pallid-frowning, decrees you wrong,
Greatly neighboured, in truth, we are;
Hold your heart up and sing your song!
Lift your eyes to the book-shelf where,
Glorious-gilded, a shining show,
Every man in his mansion fair,
Dwell the princes of Poverty Row!

THE TRUMPETER

Two ships, alone in sky and sea,
Hang clinched, with crash and roar;
There is but one--whiche’er it be--
Will ever come to shore.

And will it be the grim black bulk,
That towers so evil now?
Or will it be The Grace of God,
With the angel at her prow?

The man that breathes the battle’s breath
May live at last to know;
But the trumpeter lies sick to death
In the stifling dark below.

He hears the fight above him rave;
He fears his mates must yield;
He lies as in a narrow grave
Beneath a battle-field.

His fate will fall before the ship’s,
Whate’er the ship betide;
He lifts the trumpet to his lips
As though he kissed a bride.

“Now blow thy best, blow thy last,
My trumpet, for the Right!”--
He has sent his soul in one strong blast,
To hearten them that fight.

GREENCASTLE JENNY

A BALLAD OF ’SIXTY-THREE

Oh, Greencastle streets were a stream of steel
With the slanted muskets the soldiers bore,
And the scared earth muttered and shook to feel
The tramp and the rumble of Longstreet’s Corps;
The bands were blaring “The Bonny Blue Flag,”
And the banners borne were a motley many;
And watching the gray column wind and drag
Was a slip of a girl--we’ll call her Jenny.

A slip of a girl--what needs her name?--
With her cheeks aflame and her lips aquiver,
As she leaned and looked with a loyal shame
At the steady flow of the steely river:
Till a storm grew black in the hasel eyes
Time had not tamed, nor a lover sighed for;
And she ran and she girded her, apron-wise,
With the flag she loved and her brothers died for.

Out of the doorway they saw her start,
(Pickett’s Virginians were marching through,)
The hot little foolish hero-heart
Armoured with stars and the sacred blue.
Clutching the folds of red and white
Stood she and bearded those ranks of theirs,
Shouting shrilly with all her might,
“Come and take it, the man that dares!”

Pickett’s Virginians were passing through;
Supple as steel and brown as leather,
Rusty and dusty of hat and shoe,
Wonted to hunger and war and weather;
Peerless, fearless, an army’s flower!
Sterner soldiers the world saw never,
Marching lightly, that summer hour,
To death and failure and fame forever.

Rose from the rippling ranks a cheer;
Pickett saluted, with bold eyes beaming,
Sweeping his cap like a cavalier,
With his lion locks in the warm wind streaming.
Fierce little Jenny! her courage fell,
As the firm lines flickered with friendly laughter,
And Greencastle streets gave back the yell
That Gettysburg slopes gave back soon after.

So they cheered for the flag they fought
With the generous glow of the stubborn fighter,
Loving the brave as the brave man ought,
And never a finger was raised to fright her:
So they marched, though they knew it not,
Through the fresh green June to the shock infernal,
To the hell of the shell and the plunging shot,
And the charge that has won them a name eternal.

And she felt at last, as she hid her face,
There had lain at the root of her childish daring
A trust in the men of her own brave race,
And a secret faith in the foe’s forbearing.
And she sobbed, till the roll of the rumbling gun
And the swinging tramp of the marching men
Were a memory only, and day was done,
And the stars in the fold of the blue again.

(_Thank God that the day of the sword is done,
And the stars in the fold of the blue again!_)

BY THE BLOCKHOUSE ON THE HILL

A BALLAD OF ’NINETY-EIGHT

The soul of the fair young man sprang up
From the earth where his body lay,
And he was aware of a grim dark soul
Companioning his way.

“Who are you, brother?” the fair soul said;
“We wing together still!”
And the soul replied, that was swart and red,
“The spirit of him who shot you dead
By the blockhouse on the hill.

“Your men and you on the crest were first,
And the last foe left was I;
In the crackle of rifles I dropped and cursed,
Lightning-struck as the cheer outburst
And the hot charge panted nigh.

“You saw me writhe at the side of the trench:
You bade--I know not what:
With one last gnash, with one last wrench,
I sped my last, sure shot.

“The thing that lies on the sodden ground
Like a wrack of the whirlwind’s track,
Your men have made of the body of me,--
But they could not call you back!

“In that black game I won, I won!
But had you worked your will,
Speak now the shame that you would have done
By the blockhouse on the hill!”

“God judge my men!” said the fair young soul;
“He knows you tried them sore.
Had He given me power to bide an hour
I had wrought that they forbore.

“I bade them, ere your bullet brought
This swift, this sweet release,
To bear your body out of the fire
That you might pass in peace.”

Said the grim dark soul, “Farewell, farewell,
Farewell ’twixt you and me,
Till they set red Judas loose from hell
To kneel at the Lord Christ’s knee!”

“Not so, not so,” said the fair young soul,
“But reach me out your hand:
We two will kneel at the Lord Christ’s knee,
And He that was hanged on the cruel tree
Will remember and understand.

“We two will pray at the Lord Christ’s knee
That never on earth again
The breath of the hot brute guns shall cloud
The sight in the eyes of men!”

The clean stars came into the sky;
The perfect night was still;
Yet rose to heaven the old blood-cry,
By the blockhouse on the hill.

THE HOUSE OF HATE

Mine enemy builded well, with the soft blue hills in sight;
But betwixt his house and the hills I builded a house for spite:
And the name thereof I set in the stone-work over the gate,
With a carving of bats and apes; and I called it the House of Hate.

And the front was alive with masks of malice and of despair;
Horned demons that leered in stone, and women with serpent hair;
That whenever his glance would rest on the soft hills far and blue,
It must fall on mine evil work, and my hatred should pierce him
through.

And I said, “I will dwell herein, for beholding my heart’s desire
On my foe”; and I knelt, and fain had brightened the hearth with
fire;
But the brands they would hiss and die, as with curses a strangled
man,
And the hearth was cold from the day that the House of Hate began.

And I called at the open door, “Make ye merry, all friends of mine,
In the hall of my House of Hate, where is plentiful store and wine.
We will drink unhealth together unto him I have foiled and fooled!”
And they stared and they passed me by; but I scorned to be thereby
schooled.

And I ordered my board for feast; and I drank, in the topmost seat,
Choice grape from a curious cup; and the first it was wonder-sweet;
But the second was bitter indeed, and the third was bitter and
black,
And the gloom of the grave came on me, and I cast the cup to wrack.

Alone, I was stark alone, and the shadows were each a fear;
And thinly I laughed, but once, for the echoes were strange to hear;
And the wind in the hallways howled as a green-eyed wolf might cry,
And I heard my heart: I must look on the face of a man, or die!

So I crept to my mirrored face, and I looked, and I saw it grown
(By the light in my shaking hand) to the like of the masks of stone;
And with horror I shrieked aloud as I flung my torch and fled,
And a fire-snake writhed where it fell; and at midnight the sky was
red.

And at morn, when the House of Hate was a ruin, despoiled of flame,
I fell at mine enemy’s feet, and besought him to slay my shame;
But he looked in mine eyes and smiled, and his eyes were calm and
great:
“You rave, or have dreamed,” he said; “I saw not your House of
Hate.”

THE RIDDLE OF WRECK

Dark hemlocks, seventy and seven,
High on the hill-slope sigh in dream,
With plumy heads in heaven;
They silver the sunbeam.

One broken body of a tree,
Stabbed through and slashed by lightning keen,
Unsouled, and grim to see,
Hangs o’er the hushed ravine.

A hundred masts, a hundred more,
Crowd close against the sunset-fires.
Their late adventure o’er,
They mingle with the spires.

But one is lying prone, alone,
Where gleaming gulls to seaward sweep,
White sand of burial blown
In sheets about its sleep.

When lightning’s leashed, and sea is still,
Ye sacrificial mysteries dread,
Scapegoats of shore and hill,
Your riddle may be read.

THE RIDE TO THE LADY

“Now since mine even is come at last,--
For I have been the sport of steel,
And hot life ebbeth from me fast,
And I in saddle roll and reel,--
Come bind me, bind me on my steed!
Of fingering leech I have no need!”
The chaplain clasped his mailèd knee.
“Nor need I more thy whine and thee!
No time is left my sins to tell;
But look ye bind me, bind me well!”
They bound him strong with leathern thong,
For the ride to the lady should be long.

Day was dying; the poplars fled,
Thin as ghosts, on a sky blood-red;
Out of the sky the fierce hue fell,
And made the streams as the streams of hell.
All his thoughts as a river flowed,
Flowed aflame as fleet he rode,
Onward flowed to her abode,
Ceased at her feet, mirrored her face.
(Viewless Death apace, apace,
Rode behind him in that race.)

“Face, mine own, mine alone,
Trembling lips my lips have known,
Birdlike stir of the dove-soft eyne
Under the kisses that make them mine!
Only of thee, of thee, my need!
Only to thee, to thee, I speed!”
The Cross flashed by at the highway’s turn;
In a beam of the moon the Face shone stern.

Far behind had the fight’s din died;
The shuddering stars in the welkin wide
Crowded, crowded, to see him ride.
The beating hearts of the stars aloof
Kept time to the beat of the horse’s hoof.
“What is the throb that thrills so sweet?
Heart of my lady, I feel it beat!”
But his own strong pulse the fainter fell,
Like the failing tongue of a hushing bell.
The flank of the great-limbed steed was wet
Not alone with the started sweat.

Fast, and fast, and the thick black wood
Arched its cowl like a black friar’s hood;
Fast, and fast, and they plunged therein,--
But the viewless rider rode to win.

Out of the wood to the highway’s light
Galloped the great-limbed steed in fright;
The mail clashed cold, and the sad owl cried,
And the weight of the dead oppressed his side.

Fast, and fast, by the road he knew;
And slow, and slow, the stars withdrew;
And the waiting heaven turned weirdly blue,
As a garment worn of a wizard grim.
He neighed at the gate in the morning dim.

She heard no sound before her gate,
Though very quiet was her bower.
All was as her hand had left it late:
The needle slept on the broidered vine,
Where the hammer and spikes of the passion-flower
Her fashioning did wait.
On the couch lay something fair,
With steadfast lips and veilèd eyne;
But the lady was not there.
On the wings of shrift and prayer,
Pure as winds that winnow snow,
Her soul had risen twelve hours ago.
The burdened steed at the barred gate stood,
No whit the nearer to his goal.
Now God’s great grace assoil the soul
That went out in the wood!

THE GAOLER

To be free, to be alone,
Is a joy that I have not known.

To a keeper who never sleeps
I was given at the hour of birth
By the governors of earth;
And so well his watch he keeps,
Though I leave no sleight untried,
That he will not quit my side.

How often, in bygone years,
I have passioned, and sworn with tears
That I loathed him and all his ways!
He is silent; he smiles; he stays.

When I close my eyes at night,
His face is my latest sight.
That dark face is mine own!
He walks in my dreams at will;
When I wake, he is with me still.
To be free, to be alone,
Is a joy that I have not known.

I have cried to the winds, the sea,
“Oh, help me, for ye are free!”
I have thought to escape away,
But his hand on my shoulder lay.

From the hills and the lifting stars
He has borne me back to bars;
With the spell of my murmured name
He has captived and kept me tame.

It is whispered that he and I
In a single hour shall die,
As we were born, ’tis said,
I shall lie in selfless peace;
For him, too, is surcease,
Rest, and a quiet bed.
Self bindeth not the dead.

Somewhat otherwise I believe;
For a hope is astir in me
That when consciousness one day fills
With a splendour I scarce conceive,--
More than the winds and sea,
More than the stars and hills,--
I indeed shall escape away
Forever in that great day;
I shall have no heed to give
Unto aught that would call me back:
He shall pass like the sunrise rack,
He shall vanish; but I shall live!

THE FIRST GUEST

When the house is finished, Death enters.

_Eastern Proverb._

Life’s House being ready all,
Each chamber fair and dumb,
Ere Life, the Lord, is come
With pomp into his hall,--
Ere Toil has trod the floors,
Ere Love has lit the fires,
Or young great-eyed Desires
Have, timid, tried the doors;
Or from east-window leaned
One Hope, to greet the sun,
Or one gray Sorrow screened
Her sight against the west,--
Then enters the first guest,
The House of Life being done.

He waits there in the shade.
I deem he is Life’s twin,
For whom the House was made.
Whatever his true name,
Be sure, to enter in
He has both key and claim.

The daybeams, free of fear,
Creep drowsy toward his feet;
His heart were heard to beat,
Were any there to hear;
Ah, not for ends malign,
Like wild thing crouched in lair,
Or watcher of a snare,
But with a friend’s design
He lurks in shadow there!

He goes not to the gates
To welcome any other,
Nay, not Lord Life, his brother;
But still his hour awaits
Each several guest to find
Alone, yea, quite alone;
Pacing with pensive mind
The cloister’s echoing stone,
Or singing, unaware,
At the turning of the stair,
’Tis truth, though we forget,
In Life’s House enters none
Who shall that seeker shun,
Who shall not so be met.
“Is this mine hour?” each saith.
“So be it, gentle Death!”
Each has his way to end,
Encountering this friend.
Griefs die to memories mild;
Hope turns a weanèd child;
Love shines a spirit white,
With eyes of deepened light.
When many a guest has passed,
Some day ’tis Life’s at last
To front the face of Death.
Then, casements closed, men say:
“Lord Life is gone away;
He went, we trust and pray,
To God, who gave him breath.”
Beginning, End, He is:
Are not these sons both His?
Lo, these with Him are one!
To phrase it so were best:
God’s self is that first Guest,
The House of Life being done!

ARRAIGNMENT

“Not ye who have stoned, not ye who have smitten us,” cry
The sad, great souls, as they go out hence into dark,
“Not ye we accuse, though for you was our passion borne;
And ye we reproach not, who silently passed us by.
We forgive blind eyes and the ears that would not hark,
The careless and causeless hate and the shallow scorn.

“But ye, who have seemed to know us, have seen and heard;
Who have set us at feasts and have crowned with the costly rose;
Who have spread us the purple of praises beneath our feet;
Yet guessed not the word that we spake was a living word,
Applauding the sound,--we account you as worse than foes!
We sobbed you our message; ye said, ‘It is song, and sweet!’”

A RESURRECTION

_Neither would they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead._

I was quick in the flesh, was warm, and the live heart shook my
breast:
In the market I bought and sold, in the temple I bowed my head,
I had swathed me in shows and forms, and was honoured above the rest
For the sake of the life I lived; nor did any esteem me dead.

But at last, when the hour was ripe--was it sudden-remembered word?
Was it sight of a bird that mounted, or sound of a strain that
stole?
I was ware of a spell that snapped, of an inward strength that
stirred,
Of a Presence that filled that place; and it shone, and I knew my
Soul.

And the dream I had called my life was a garment about my feet,
For the web of the years was rent with the throe of a yearning
strong.
With a sweep as of winds in heaven, with a rush as of flames that
meet,
The Flesh and the Spirit clasped; and I cried, “Was I dead so
long?”

I had glimpse of the Secret, flashed through the symbol obscure and
mean,
And I felt as a fire what erst I repeated with lips of clay;
And I knew for the things eternal the things eye hath not seen;
Yea, the heavens and the earth shall pass; but they never shall
pass away.

And the miracle on me wrought, in the streets I would straight make
known:
“When this marvel of mine is heard, without cavil shall men
receive
Any legend of haloed saint, starting up through the sealèd stone!”
So I spake in the trodden ways; but behold, there would none
believe!

THE GLORIOUS COMPANY

“Faces, faces, faces of the streaming marching surge,
Streaming on the weary road, toward the awful steep,
Whence your glow and glory, as ye set to that sharp verge,
Faces lit as sunlit stars, shining as ye sweep?

“Whence this wondrous radiance that ye somehow catch and cast,
Faces rapt, that one discerns mid the dusky press
Herding in dull wonder, gathering fearful to the Vast?
Surely all is dark before, night of nothingness!”

_Lo, the Light!_ (they answer) _O the pure, the pulsing Light,
Beating like a heart of life, like a heart of love,
Soaring, searching, filling all the breadth and depth and height,
Welling, whelming with its peace worlds below, above!_

“O my soul, how art thou to that living Splendour blind,
Sick with thy desire to see even as these men see!--
Yet to look upon them is to know that God hath shined:
Faces lit as sunlit stars, be all my light to me!”

THE ARROWMAKER

Day in, day out, or sun or rain,
Or sallow leaf, or summer grain,
Beneath a wintry morning moon
Or through red smouldering afternoon,
With simple joy, with careful pride,
He plies the craft he long has plied:
To shape the stave, to set the sting,
To fit the shaft with irised wing;
And farers by may hear him sing,
For still his door is wide:
“Laugh and sigh, live and die,--
The world swings round; I know not, I,
If north or south mine arrows fly!”

And sometimes, while he works, he dreams,
And on his soul a vision gleams:
Some storied field fought long ago,
Where arrows fell as thick as snow.
His breath comes fast, his eyes grow bright,
To think upon that ancient fight.
Oh, leaping from the strainèd string
Against an armoured Wrong to ring,
Brave the songs that arrows sing!
He weighs the finished flight:
“Live and die; by and by
The sun kills dark; I know not, I,
In what good fight mine arrows fly!”

Or at the gray hour, weary grown,
When curfew o’er the wold is blown,
He sees, as in a magic glass,
Some lost and lonely mountain-pass;
And lo! a sign of deathful rout
The mocking vine has wound about,--
An earth-fixed arrow by a spring,
All greenly mossed, a mouldered thing;
That stifled shaft no more shall sing!
He shakes his head in doubt.
“Laugh and sigh, live and die,--
The hand is blind: I know not, I,
In what lost pass mine arrows lie!
One to east, one to west,
Another for the eagle’s breast,--
The archer and the wind know best!”
The stars are in the sky;
He lays his arrows by.

IVO OF CHARTRES

Now may it please my lord, Louis the king,
Lily of Christ and France! riding his quest,
I, Bishop Ivo, saw a wondrous thing.

There was no light of sun left in the west,
And slowly did the moon’s new light increase.
Heaven, without cloud, above the near hill’s crest,
Lay passion-purple in a breathless peace.
Stars started like still tears, in rapture shed,
Which without consciousness the lids release.

All steadily, one little sparkle red,
Afar, drew close. A woman’s form grew up
Out of the dimness, tall, with queen-like head,
And in one hand was fire; in one, a cup.
Of aspect grave she was, with eyes upraised,
As one whose thoughts perpetually did sup
At the Lord’s table.

While the cresset blazed,
Her I regarded. “Daughter, whither bent,
And wherefore?” As by speech of man amazed,
One moment her deep look to me she lent;
Then, in a voice of hymn-like, solemn fall,
Calm, as by rote, she spake out her intent:

“I in my cruse bear water, wherewithal
To quench the flames of Hell; and with my fire
I Paradise would burn: that hence no small
Fear shall impel, and no mean hope shall hire,
Men to serve God as they have served of yore;
But to His will shall set their whole desire,
For love, love, love alone, forevermore!”

And “love, love, love,” rang round her as she passed
From sight, with mystic murmurs o’er and o’er
Reverbed from hollow heaven, as from some vast,
Deep-coloured, vaulted, ocean-answering shell.
I, Ivo, had no power to ban or bless,
But was as one withholden by a spell.
Forward she fared in lofty loneliness,
Urged on by an imperious inward stress,
To waste fair Eden, and to drown fierce Hell.

THE ACCOLADE

A SONG FOR THE BEGINNING

I

Now filled was all the sum
Of serving years, and past, forever past,
All duties, all delights, of young esquires:
And to the altar and the hour at last,--
The hour, the altar, of his dear desires,--
Clear-shriven and whitely clad the youth was come.

II

Full many a squire was in that household bred
To arms and honour and sweet courtesy,
Who wore that sojourn’s fragrant memory
As amulet in after-battles dread;
And meeting in kings’ houses joyously,
Or, wounded, in the sedge beside a lake,
Such men were bounden brothers, for the sake
Of the blade that knighted and the board that fed.