Chapter XV: Part TWO: I

He did not come in the dawning; he did not come at noon;
And out o' the tawny sunset, before the rise o' the moon,
When the road was a gipsy's ribbon, looping the purple moor,
A red-coat troop came marching--
Marching--marching--
King George's men came marching, up to the old inn-door.

II

They said no word to the landlord, they drank his ale instead,
But they gagged his daughter and bound her to the foot of her
narrow bed;
Two of them knelt at her casement, with muskets at their side!
There was death at every window;
And hell at one dark window;
For Bess could see, through her casement, the road that _he_
would ride.

III

They had tied her up to attention, with many a sniggering jest;
They had bound a musket beside her, with the barrel beneath her breast!
"Now keep good watch!" and they kissed her.
She heard the dead man say--
_Look for me by moonlight;
Watch for me by moonlight;
I'll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way!_

IV

She twisted her hands behind her; but all the knots held good!
She writhed her hands till her fingers were wet with sweat or blood!
They stretched and strained in the darkness, and the hours
crawled by like years,
Till, now, on the stroke of midnight,
Cold, on the stroke of midnight,
The tip of one finger touched it! The trigger at least was hers!

V

The tip of one finger touched it; she strove no more for the rest!
Up, she stood up to attention, with the barrel beneath her breast,
She would not risk their hearing; she would not strive again;
For the road lay bare in the moonlight;
Blank and bare in the moonlight;
And the blood of her veins in the moonlight throbbed to her
love's refrain.

VI

_Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot!_ Had they heard it? The horse-hoofs ringing
clear;
_Tlot-tlot, tlot-tlot_, in the distance? Were they deaf that they did
not hear?
Down the ribbon of moonlight, over the brow of the hill,
The highwayman came riding,
Riding, riding!
The red-coats looked to their priming! She stood up, straight and
still!

VII

_Tlot-tlot_, in the frosty silence! _Tlot-tlot_, in the echoing night!
Nearer he came and nearer! Her face was like a light!
Her eyes grew wide for a moment; she drew one last deep breath,
Then her finger moved in the moonlight,
Her musket shattered the moonlight,
Shattered her breast in the moonlight and warned him--with her death.

VIII

He turned; he spurred to the West; he did not know who stood
Bowed, with her head o'er the musket, drenched with her own red blood!
Not till the dawn he heard it, his face grew grey to hear
How Bess, the landlord's daughter,
The landlord's black-eyed daughter,
Had watched for her love in the moonlight, and died in the darkness
there.

IX

Back, he spurred like a madman, shrieking a curse to the sky,
With the white road smoking behind him and his rapier brandished high!
Blood-red were his spurs i' the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet
coat,
When they shot him down on the highway,
Down like a dog on the highway,
And he lay in his blood on the highway, with the bunch of lace at his
throat.

* * * *

X

_And still of a winter's night, they say, when the wind is in the trees,
When the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
When the road is a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
A highwayman comes riding--
Riding--riding--
A highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door._

XI

_Over the cobbles he clatters and clangs in the dark inn-yard;
He taps with his whip on the shutters, but all is locked and barred;
He whistles a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord's black-eyed daughter,
Bess, the landlord's daughter,
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair._

THE HAUNTED PALACE

Come to the haunted palace of my dreams,
My crumbling palace by the eternal sea,
Which, like a childless mother, still must croon
Her ancient sorrows to the cold white moon,
Or, ebbing tremulously,
With one pale arm, where the long foam-fringe gleams,
Will gather her rustling garments, for a space
Of muffled weeping, round her dim white face.

A princess dwelt here once: long, long ago
This tower rose in the sunset like a prayer;
And, through the witchery of that casement, rolled
In one soft cataract of faëry gold
Her wonder-woven hair;
Her face leaned out and took the sacred glow
Of evening, like the star that listened, high
Above the gold clouds of the western sky.

Was there no prince behind her in the gloom,
No crimson shadow of his rich array?
Her face leaned down to me: I saw the tears
Bleed through her eyes with the slow pain of years,
And her mouth yearned to say--
"Friend, is there any message, from the tomb
Where love lies buried?" But she only said--
"Oh, friend, canst thou not save me from my dead?

"Canst thou not minister to a soul in pain?
Or hast thou then no comfortable word?
Is there no faith in thee wherewith to atone
For his unfaith who left me here alone,
Heart-sick with hope deferred;
Oh, since my love will never come again,
Bring'st thou no respite through the desolate years,
Respite from these most unavailing tears?"

Then saw I, and mine own tears made response,
Her woman's heart come breaking through her eyes;
And, as I stood beneath the tower's grey wall,
She let the soft waves of her deep hair fall
Like flowers from Paradise
Over my fevered face: then all at once
Pity was passion; and like a sea of bliss
Those waves rolled o'er me drowning for her kiss.

* * * *

Seven years we dwelt together in that tower,
Seven years in that old palace by the sea,
And sitting at that casement, side by side,
She told me all her pain: how love had died
Now for all else but me;
Yet how she had loved that other: like a flower
Her red lips parted and with low sweet moan
She pressed their tender suffering on mine own.

And always with vague eyes she gazed afar,
Out through the casement o'er the changing tide;
And slowly was my heart's hope brought to nought
That some day I should win each wandering thought
And make her my soul's bride:
Still, still she gazed across the cold sea-bar;
Ay; with her hand in mine, still, still and pale,
Waited and watched for the unreturning sail.

And I, too, watched and waited as the years
Rolled on; and slowly was I brought to feel
How on my lips she met her lover's kiss,
How my heart's pulse begat an alien bliss;
And cold and hard as steel
For me those eyes were, though their tender tears
Were salt upon my cheek; and then one night
I saw a sail come through the pale moonlight.

And like an alien ghost I stole away,
And like a breathing lover he returned;
And in the woods I dwelt, or sometimes crept
Out in the grey dawn while the lovers slept
And the great sea-tides yearned
Against the iron shores; and faint and grey
The tower and the shut casement rose above:
And on the earth I sobbed out all my love.

At last, one royal rose-hung night in June,
When the warm air like purple Hippocrene
Brimmed the dim valley and sparkled into stars,
I saw them cross the foam-lit sandy bars
And dark pools, glimmering green,
To bathe beneath the honey-coloured moon:
I saw them swim out from that summer shore,
Kissed by the sea, but they returned no more.

* * * *

And into the dark palace, like a dream
Remembered after long oblivious years,
Through the strange open doors I crept and saw
As some poor pagan might, with reverent awe,
And deep adoring tears,
The moonlight through that painted window stream
Over the soft wave of their vacant bed;
There sank I on my knees and bowed my head,

For as a father by a cradle bows,
Remembering two dead children of his own,
I knelt; and by the cry of the great deep
Their love seemed like a murmuring in their sleep,
A little fevered moan,
A little tossing of childish arms that shows
How dreams go by! "If I were God," I wept,
"I would have pity on children while they slept."

* * * *

The days, the months, the years drift over me;
This is my habitation till I die:
Nothing is changed; they left that open book
Beside the window. Did he sit and look
Up at her face as I
Looked while she read it, and the enchanted sea
With rich eternities of love unknown
Fulfilled the low sweet music of her tone?

So did he listen, looking in her face?
And did she ever pause, remembering so
The heart that bore the whole weight of her pain
Until her own heart's love returned again?
In the still evening glow
I sit and listen in this quiet place,
And only hear--like notes of phantom birds--
Their perished kisses and little broken words.

_Come to the haunted palace of my dreams,
My crumbling palace by the eternal sea,
Which, like a childless mother, still must croon
Her ancient sorrows to the cold white moon,
Or, ebbing tremulously,
With one pale arm, where the long foam-fringe gleams,
Will gather her rustling garments, for a space
Of muffled weeping, round her dim white face._

THE SCULPTOR

This is my statue: cold and white
It stands and takes the morning light!
The world may flout my hopes and fears,
Yet was my life's work washed with tears
Of blood when this poor hand last night
Finished the pain of years.

Speak for me, patient lips of stone,
Blind eyes my lips have rested on
So often when the o'er-weary brain
Would grope to human love again,
And found this grave cold mask alone
And the tears fell like rain.

Ay; is this all? Is this the brow
I fondled, never wondering how
It lived--the face of pain and bliss
That through the marble met my kiss?
Oh, though the whole world praise it now,
Let no man dream it is!

They blame; they cannot blame aright
Who never knew what infinite
Deep loss must shame me most of all!
They praise; like earth their praises fall
Into a tomb. The hour of light
Is flown beyond recall.

Yet have I seen, yet have I known,
And oh, not tombed in cold white stone
The dream I lose on earth below;
And I shall come with face aglow
And find and claim it for my own
Before God's throne, I know.

SUMMER

(AN ODE)

Now like a pageant of the Golden Year
In rich memorial pomp the hours go by,
With rose-embroidered flags unfurled
And tasselled bugles calling through the world
Wake, for your hope draws near!
Wake, for in each soft porch of azure sky,
Seen through each arch of pale green leaves, the Gate
Of Eden swings apart for Summer's royal state.

Ah, when the Spirit of the moving scene
Has entered in, the splendour will be spent!
The flutes will cease, the gates will close;
Only the scattered crimson of the rose,
The wild wood's hapless queen,
Dis-kingdomed, will declare the way he went;
And, in a little while, her court will go,
Pass like a cloud and leave no trace on earth below.

Tell us no more of Autumn, the slow gold
Of fruitage ripening in a world's decay,
The falling leaves, the moist rich breath
Of woods that swoon and crumble into death
Over the gorgeous mould:
Give us the flash and scent of keen-edged May
Where wastes that bear no harvest yield their bloom,
Rude crofts of flowering nettle, bents of yellow broom.

The very reeds and sedges of the fen
Open their hearts and blossom to the sky;
The wild thyme on the mountain's knees
Unrolls its purple market to the bees;
Unharvested of men
The Traveller's Joy can only smile and die.
Joy, joy alone the throbbing whitethroats bring,
Joy to themselves and heaven! They were but born to sing!

And see, between the northern-scented pines,
The whole sweet summer sharpens to a glow!
See, as the well-spring plashes cool
Over a shadowy green fern-fretted pool
The mystic sunbeam shines
For one mad moment on a breast of snow
A warm white shoulder and a glowing arm
Up-flung, where some swift Undine sinks in shy alarm.

And if she were not all a dream, and lent
Life for a little to your own desire,
Oh, lover in the hawthorn lane,
Dream not you hold her, or you dream in vain!
The violet, spray-besprent
When from that plunge the rainbows flashed like fire,
Will scarce more swiftly lose its happy dew
Than eyes which Undine haunts will cease to shine on you.

What though the throstle pour his heart away,
A happy spendthrift of uncounted gold,
Swinging upon a blossomed briar
With soft throat lifted in a wild desire
To make the world his may.
Ever the pageant through the gates is rolled
Further away; in vain the rich notes throng
Flooding the mellow noon with wave on wave of song.

The feathery meadows like a lilac sea,
Knee-deep, with honeyed clover, red and white,
Roll billowing: the crisp clouds pass
Trailing their soft blue shadows o'er the grass;
The skylark, mad with glee,
Quivers, up, up, to lose himself in light;
And, through the forest, like a fairy dream
Through some dark mind, the ferns in branching beauty stream.

Enough of joy! A little respite lend,
Summer, fair god that hast so little heed
Of these that serve thee but to die,
Mere trappings of thy tragic pageantry!
Show us the end, the end!
We too, with human hearts that break and bleed,
March to the night that rounds their fleeting hour,
And feel we, too, perchance but serve some loftier Power.

O that our hearts might pass away with thee,
Burning and pierced and full of thy sweet pain,
Burst through the gates with thy swift soul,
Hunt thy most white perfection to the goal,
Nor wait, once more to see
Thy chaliced lilies rotting in the rain,
Thy ragged yellowing banners idly hung
In woods that have forgotten all the songs we sung!

_Peace! Like a pageant of the Golden Year
In rich memorial pomp the hours go by,
With rose-embroidered flags unfurled
And tasselled bugles calling through the world
Wake, for your hope draws near!
Wake, for in each soft porch of azure sky,
Seen through each arch of pale green leaves, the Gate
Of Eden swings apart for Summer's royal state._

Not wait! Forgive, forgive that feeble cry
Of blinded passion all unworthy thee!
For here the spirit of man may claim
A loftier vision and a nobler aim
Than e'er was born to die:
Man only, of earth, throned on Eternity,
From his own sure abiding-place can mark
How earth's great golden dreams go past into the dark.

AT DAWN

O Hesper-Phosphor, far away
Shining, the first, the last white star,
Hear'st thou the strange, the ghostly cry,
That moan of an ancient agony
From purple forest to golden sky
Shivering over the breathless bay?
It is not the wind that wakes with the day;
For see, the gulls that wheel and call,
Beyond the tumbling white-topped bar,
Catching the sun-dawn on their wings,
Like snow-flakes or like rose-leaves fall,
Flutter and fall in airy rings;
And drift, like lilies ruffling into blossom
Upon some golden lake's unwrinkled bosom.

Are not the forest's deep-lashed fringes wet
With tears? Is not the voice of all regret
Breaking out of the dark earth's heart?
She too, she too, has loved and lost; and we--
We that remember our lost Aready,
Have we not known, we too,
The primal greenwood's arch of blue,
The radiant clouds at sun-rise curled
Around the brows of the golden world;
The marble temples, washed with dew,
To which with rosy limbs aflame
The violet-eyed Thalassian came,
Came, pitiless, only to display
How soon the youthful splendour dies away;
Came, only to depart
Laughing across the grey-grown bitter sea;
For each man's life is earth's epitome,
And though the years bring more than aught they take,
Yet might his heart and hers well break
Remembering how one prayer must still be vain.
How one fair hope is dead,
One passion quenched, one glory fled
With those first loves that never come again.

How many years, how many generations,
Have heard that sigh in the dawn,
When the dark earth yearns to the unforgotten nations
And the old loves withdrawn,
Old loves, old lovers, wonderful and unnumbered
As waves on the wine-dark sea,
'Neath the tall white towers of Troy and the temples that slumbered
In Thessaly?

From the beautiful palaces, from the miraculous portals,
The swift white feet are flown!
They were taintless of dust, the proud, the peerless Immortals
As they sped to their loftier throne!
Perchance they are there, earth dreams, on the shores of Hesper,
Her rosy-bosomed Hours,
Listening the wild fresh forest's enchanted whisper,
Crowned with its new strange flowers;
Listening the great new ocean's triumphant thunder
On the stainless unknown shore,
While that perilous queen of the world's delight and wonder
Comes white from the foam once more.

When the mists divide with the dawn o'er those glittering waters,
Do they gaze over unoared seas--
Naiad and nymph and the woodland's rose-crowned daughters
And the Oceanides?
Do they sing together, perchance, in that diamond splendour,
That world of dawn and dew,
With eyelids twitching to tears and with eyes grown tender
The sweet old songs they knew,
The songs of Greece? Ah, with harp-strings mute do they falter
As the earth like a small star pales?
When the heroes launch their ship by the smoking altar
Does a memory lure their sails?
Far, far away, do their hearts resume the story
That never on earth was told,
When all those urgent oars on the waste of glory
Cast up its gold?

_Are not the forest fringes wet
With tears? Is not the voice of all regret
Breaking out of the dark earth's heart?
She too, she too, has loved and lost; and though
She turned last night in disdain
Away from the sunset-embers,
From her soul she can never depart;
She can never depart from her pain.
Vainly she strives to forget;
Beautiful in her woe,
She awakes in the dawn and remembers._

THE SWIMMER'S RACE

I

Between the clover and the trembling sea
They stand upon the golden-shadowed shore
In naked boyish beauty, a strenuous three,
Hearing the breakers' deep Olympic roar;
Three young athletes poised on a forward limb,
Mirrored like marble in the smooth wet sand,
Three statues moulded by Praxiteles:
The blue horizon rim
Recedes, recedes upon a lovelier land,
And England melts into the skies of Greece.

II

The dome of heaven is like one drop of dew,
Quivering and clear and cloudless but for one
Crisp bouldered Alpine range that blinds the blue
With snowy gorges glittering to the sun:
Forward the runners lean, with outstretched hand
Waiting the word--ah, how the light relieves
The silken rippling muscles as they start
Spurning the yellow sand,
Then skimming lightlier till the goal receives
The winner, head thrown back and lips apart.

III

Now at the sea-marge on the sand they lie
At rest for a moment, panting as they breathe,
And gazing upward at the unbounded sky
While the sand nestles round them from beneath;
And in their hands they gather up the gold
And through their fingers let it lazily stream
Over them, dusking all their limbs' fair white,
Blotting their shape and mould,
Till, mixed into the distant gazer's dream
Of earth and heaven, they seem to sink from sight.

IV

But one, in seeming petulance, oppressed
With heat has cast his brown young body free:
With arms behind his head and heaving breast
He lies and gazes at the cool bright sea;
So young Leander might when in the noon
He panted for the starry eyes of eve
And whispered o'er the waste of wandering waves,
"Hero, bid night come soon!"
Nor knew the nymphs were waiting to receive
And kiss his pale limbs in their cold sea-caves.

V

Now to their feet they leap and, with a shout,
Plunge through the glittering breakers without fear,
Breast the green-arching billows, and still out,
As if each dreamed the arms of Hero near;
Now like three sunbeams on an emerald crest,
Now like three foam-flakes melting out of sight,
They are blent with all the glory of all the sea;
One with the golden West;
Merged in a myriad waves of mystic light
As life is lost in immortality.

THE VENUS OF MILO

I

Backward she leans, as when the rose unblown
Slides white from its warm sheath some morn in May!
Under the sloping waist, aslant, her zone
Clings as it slips in tender disarray;
One knee, out-thrust a little, keeps it so
Lingering ere it fall; her lovely face
Gazes as o'er her own Eternity!
Those armless radiant shoulders, long ago
Perchance held arms out wide with yearning grace
For Adon by the blue Sicilian sea.

II

No; thou eternal fount of these poor gleams,
Bright axle-star of the wheeling temporal skies,
Daughter of blood and foam and deathless dreams,
Mother of flying Love that never dies,
To thee, the topmost and consummate flower,
The last harmonic height, our dull desires
And our tired souls in dreary discord climb;
The flesh forgets its pale and wandering fires;
We gaze through heaven as from an ivory tower
Shining upon the last dark shores of Time.

III

White culmination of the dreams of earth,
Thy splendour beacons to a loftier goal,
Where, slipping earthward from the great new birth,
The shadowy senses leave the essential soul!
Oh, naked loveliness, not yet revealed,
A moment hence that falling robe will show
No prophecy like this, this great new dawn,
The bare bright breasts, each like a soft white shield,
And the firm body like a slope of snow
Out of the slipping dream-stuff half withdrawn.

THE NET OF VULCAN

From peaks that clove the heavens asunder
The hunchback god with sooty claws
Loomed o'er the night, a cloud of thunder,
And hurled the net of mortal laws;
It flew, and all the world grew dimmer;
Its blackness blotted out the stars,
Then fell across the rosy glimmer
That told where Venus couched with Mars.

And, when the steeds that draw the morning
Spurned from their Orient hooves the spray,
All vainly soared the lavrock, warning
Those tangled lovers of the day:
Still with those twin white waves in blossom,
Against the warrior's rock-broad breast,
The netted light of the foam-born bosom
Breathed like a sea at rest.

And light was all that followed after,
Light the derision of the sky,
Light the divine Olympian laughter
Of kindlier gods in days gone by:
Low to her lover whispered Venus,
"The shameless net be praised for this--
When night herself no more could screen us
It snared us one more hour of bliss."

NIOBE

How like the sky she bends above her child,
One with the great horizon of her pain!
No sob from our low seas where woe runs wild,
No weeping cloud, no momentary rain,
Can mar the heaven-high visage of her grief,
That frozen anguish, proud, majestic, dumb.
She stoops in pity above the labouring earth,
Knowing how fond, how brief
Is all its hope, past, present, and to come,
She stoops in pity, and yearns to assuage its dearth.

Through that fair face the whole dark universe
Speaks, as a thorn-tree speaks thro' one white flower;
And all those wrenched Promethean souls that curse
The gods, but cannot die before their hour,
Find utterance in her beauty. That fair head
Bows over all earth's graves. It was her cry
Men heard in Rama when the twisted ways
With children's blood ran red!
Her silence utters all the sea would sigh;
And, in her face, the whole earth's anguish prays.

It is the pity, the pity of human love
That strains her face, upturned to meet the doom,
And her deep bosom, like a snow-white dove
Frozen upon its nest, ne'er to resume
Its happy breathing o'er the golden brace
Whose fostering was her death. Death, death alone
Can break the anguished horror of that spell!
The sorrow on her face
Is sealed: the living flesh is turned to stone;
She knows all, all, that Life and Time can tell.

Ah, yet, her woman's love, so vast, so tender;
Her woman's body, hurt by every dart;
Braving the thunder, still, still hide the slender
Soft frightened child beneath her mighty heart.
She is all one mute immortal cry, one brief
Infinite pang of such victorious pain
That she transcends the heavens and bows them down!
The majesty of grief
Is hers, and her dominion must remain
Eternal. God nor man usurps that crown.

ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE

I

Height over height, the purple pine-woods clung to the rich Arcadian
mountains,
Holy-sweet as a sea of incense, under the low dark crimson skies:
Glad were the glens where Eurydice bathed, in the beauty of dawn, at the
haunted fountains
Deep in the blue hyacinthine hollows, whence all the rivers of
Arcady rise.

Long ago, ah, white as the Huntress, cold and sweet as the petals that
crowned her,
Fair and fleet as the fawn that shakes the dew from the fern at
break of day,
Wreathed with the clouds of her dusky hair that swept in a sun-bright
glory around her,
Down to the valley her light feet stole, ah, soft as the budding of
flowers in May.

Down to the valley she came, for far and far below in the
dreaming meadows
Pleaded ever the Voice of voices, calling his love by her
golden name;
So she arose from her home in the hills, and down through the blossoms
that danced with their shadows,
Out of the blue of the dreaming distance, down to the heart of her
lover she came.

* * * *

Red were the lips that hovered above her lips in the flowery haze of the
June-day:
Red as a rose through the perfumed mist of passion that reeled before
her eyes;
Strong the smooth young sunburnt arms that folded her heart to his heart
in the noon-day,
Strong and supple with throbbing sunshine under the blinding
southern skies.

Ah, the kisses, the little murmurs, mad with pain for their
phantom fleetness,
Mad with pain for the passing of love that lives, they
dreamed--as we dream--for an hour!
Ah, the sudden tempest of passion, mad with pain, for its
over-sweetness,
As petal by petal and pang by pang their love broke out into
perfect flower.

Ah, the wonder as once he wakened, out of a dream of remembered blisses,
Couched in the meadows of dreaming blossom to feel, like the touch of
a flower on his eyes,
Cool and fresh with the fragment dews of dawn the touch of her light
swift kisses,
Shed from the shadowy rose of her face between his face and the warm
blue skies.

II

Lost in his new desire
He dreamed away the hours;
His lyre
Lay buried in the flowers:

To whom the King of Heaven,
Apollo, lord of light,
Had given
Beauty and love and might:

Might, if he would, to slay
All evil dreams and pierce
The grey
Veil of the Universe;

With Love that holds in one
Sacred and ancient bond
The sun
And all the vast beyond,

And Beauty to enthrall
The soul of man to heaven:
Yea, all
These gifts to him were given.

_Yet in his dream's desire
He drowsed away the hours:
His lyre
Lay buried in the flowers._

Then in his wrath arose
Apollo, lord of light,
That shows
The wrong deed from the right;

And by what radiant laws
O'erruling human needs,
The cause
To consequence proceeds;

How balanced is the sway
He gives each mortal doom:
How day
Demands the atoning gloom:

How all good things await
The soul that pays the price
To Fate
By equal sacrifice;

And how on him that sleeps
For less than labour's sake
There creeps
Uncharmed, the Pythian snake.

III

Lulled by the wash of the feathery grasses, a sea with many a sun-swept
billow,
Heart to heart in the heart of the summer, lover by lover asleep
they lay,
Hearing only the whirring cicala that chirruped awhile at their
poppied pillow
Faint and sweet as the murmur of men that laboured in villages far
away.

Was not the menace indeed more silent? Ah, what care for labour and
sorrow?
Gods in the meadows of moly and amaranth surely might envy their deep
sweet bed
Here where the butterflies troubled the lilies of peace, and took no
thought for the morrow,
And golden-girdled bees made feast as over the lotus the soft sun
spread.

Nearer, nearer the menace glided, out of the gorgeous gloom around
them,
Out of the poppy-haunted shadows deep in the heart of the purple
brake;
Till through the hush and the heat as they lay, and their own sweet
listless dreams enwound them,--
Mailed and mottled with hues of the grape-bloom suddenly, quietly,
glided the snake.

Subtle as jealousy, supple as falsehood, diamond-headed and cruel as
pleasure,
Coil by coil he lengthened and glided, straight to the fragrant curve
of her throat:
There in the print of the last of the kisses that still glowed red from
the sweet long pressure,
Fierce as famine and swift as lightning over the glittering lyre he
smote.

IV

And over the cold white body of love and delight
Orpheus arose in the terrible storm of his grief,
With quivering up-clutched hands, deadly and white,
And his whole soul wavered and shook like a wind-swept leaf:

As a leaf that beats on a mountain, his spirit in vain
Assaulted his doom and beat on the Gates of Death:
Then prone with his arms o'er the lyre he sobbed out his pain,
And the tense chords faintly gave voice to the pulse of his breath.

And he heard it and rose, once again, with the lyre in his hand,
And smote out the cry that his white-lipped sorrow denied:
And the grief's mad ecstasy swept o'er the summer-sweet land,
And gathered the tears of all Time in the rush of its tide.

There was never a love forsaken or faith forsworn,
There was never a cry for the living or moan for the slain,
But was voiced in that great consummation of song; ay, and borne
To storm on the Gates of the land whence none cometh again.

Transcending the barriers of earth, comprehending them all
He followed the soul of his loss with the night in his eyes;
And the portals lay bare to him there; and he heard the faint call
Of his love o'er the rabble that wails by the river of sighs.

Yea, there in the mountains before him, he knew it of old,
That portal enormous of gloom, he had seen it in dreams,
When the secrets of Time and of Fate through his harmonies rolled;
And behind it he heard the dead moan by their desolate streams.

And he passed through the Gates with the light and the cloud of his
song,
Dry-shod over Lethe he passed to the chasms of hell;
And the hosts of the dead made mock at him, crying, _How long
Have we dwelt in the darkness, oh fool, and shall evermore dwell?_

_Did our lovers not love us?_ the grey skulls hissed in his face;
_Were our lips not red? Were these cavernous eyes not bright?
Yet us, whom the soft flesh clothed with such roseate grace,
Our lovers would loathe if we ever returned to their sight!_

Oh then, through the soul of the Singer, a pity so vast
Mixed with his anguish that, smiting anew on his lyre,
He caught up the sorrows of hell in his utterance at last,
Comprehending the need of them all in his own great desire.

V

And they that were dead, in his radiant music, remembered the
dawn with its low deep crimson,
Heard the murmur of doves in the pine-wood, heard the moan of the
roaming sea,
Heard and remembered the little kisses, in woods where the last of
the moon yet swims on
Fragrant, flower-strewn April nights of young-eyed lovers in Arcady;

Saw the soft blue veils of shadow floating over the billowy grasses
Under the crisp white curling clouds that sailed and trailed through
the melting blue;
Heard once more the quarrel of lovers above them pass, as a
lark-song passes,
Light and bright, till it vanished away in an eye-bright heaven of
silvery dew.

Out of the dark, ah, white as the Huntress, cold and sweet as the
petals that crowned her,
Fair and fleet as a fawn that shakes the dew from the fern at break
of day;
Wreathed with the clouds of her dusky hair that swept in a sun-bright
glory around her,
On through the deserts of hell she came, and the brown air bloomed
with the light of May.

On through the deserts of hell she came; for over the fierce and frozen
meadows
Pleaded ever the Voice of voices, calling his love by her golden name;
So she arose from her grave in the darkness, and up through the wailing
fires and shadows,
On by chasm and cliff and cavern, out of the horrors of death she
came.

Then had she followed him, then had he won her, striking a chord that
should echo for ever,
Had he been steadfast only a little, nor paused in the great
transcendent song;
But ere they had won to the glory of day, he came to the brink of the
flaming river
And ceased, to look on his love a moment, a little moment, and
overlong.

VI

O'er Phlegethon he stood:
Below him roared and flamed
The flood
For utmost anguish named.

And lo, across the night,
The shining form he knew
With light
Swift footsteps upward drew.

Up through the desolate lands
She stole, a ghostly star,
With hands
Outstretched to him afar.

With arms outstretched, she came
In yearning majesty,
The same
Royal Eurydice.

Up through the ghastly dead
She came, with shining eyes
And red
Sweet lips of child-surprise.

Up through the wizened crowds
She stole, as steals the moon
Through clouds
Of flowery mist in June.

He gazed: he ceased to smite
The golden-chorded lyre:
Delight
Consumed his heart with fire.

Though in that deadly land
His task was but half-done,
His hand
Drooped, and the fight half-won.

He saw the breasts that glowed,
The fragrant clouds of hair:
They flowed
Around him like a snare.

_O'er Phlegethon he stood,
For utmost anguish named:
The flood
Below him roared and flamed._

Out of his hand the lyre
Suddenly slipped and fell,
The fire
Acclaimed it into hell.

The night grew dark again:
There came a bitter cry
Of pain,
_Oh Love, once more I die!_

And lo, the earth-dawn broke,
And like a wraith she fled:
He woke
Alone: his love was dead.

He woke on earth: the day
Shone coldly: at his side
There lay
The body of his bride.

VII

Only now when the purple vintage bubbles and winks in the autumn glory,
Only now when the great white oxen drag the weight of the harvest
home,
Sunburnt labourers, under the star of the sunset, sing as an old-world
story
How two pale and thwarted lovers ever through Arcady still must roam.

Faint as the silvery mists of morning over the peaks that the
noonday parches,
On through the haunts of the gloaming musk-rose, down to the rivers
that glisten below,
Ever they wander from meadow to pinewood, under the whispering
woodbine arches,
Faint as the mists of the dews of the dusk when violets dream and
the moon-winds blow.

Though the golden lute of Orpheus gathered the splendours of
earth and heaven,
All the golden greenwood notes and all the chimes of the changing sea,
Old men over the fires of winter murmur again that he was not given
The steadfast heart divine to rule that infinite freedom of harmony.

Therefore he failed, say they; but we, that have no wisdom, can
only remember
How through the purple perfumed pinewoods white Eurydice roamed and
sung:
How through the whispering gold of the wheat, where the poppy burned
like a crimson ember,
Down to the valley in beauty she came, and under her feet the flowers
upsprung.

_Down to the valley she came, for far and far below in the dreaming
meadows
Pleaded ever the Voice of voices, calling his love by her golden name;
So she arose from her home in the hills, and down through the blossoms
that danced with their shadows,
Out of the blue of the dreaming distance, down to the heart of her
lover she came._

FROM THE SHORE

Love, so strangely lost and found,
Love, beyond the seas of death,
Love, immortally re-crowned,
Love, who swayest this mortal breath,
Sweetlier to thy lover's ear
Steals the tale that ne'er was told;
Bright-eyes, ah, thine arms are near,
Nearer now than e'er of old.

When on earth thy hands were mine,
Mine to hold for evermore,
Oft we watched the sunset shine
Lonely from this wave-beat shore;
Pent in prison-cells of clay,
Time had power on thee and me:
Thou and heaven are one to-day,
One with earth and sky and sea;

Indivisible and one!
Beauty hath unlocked the Gate,
Oped the portals of the sun,
Burst the bars of Time and Fate!
Violets in the dawn of Spring
Hold the secret of thine eyes:
Lilies bare their breasts and fling
Scents of thee from Paradise.

Brooklets have thy talk by rote;
Thy farewells array the West;
Fur that clasped thee round the throat
Leaps--a squirrel--to its nest!
Backward from a sparkling eye
Half-forgotten jests return
Where the rabbit lollops by
Hurry-scurry through the fern!

Roses where I lonely pass
Brush my brow and breathe thy kiss:
Zephyrs, whispering through the grass,
Lure me on from bliss to bliss:
Here thy robe is rustling close,
There thy fluttering lace is blown,--
All the tide of beauty flows
Tributary to thine own.

Birds that sleek their shining throats
Capture every curve from thee:
All their golden warbled notes,
Fragments of thy melody,
Crowding, clustering, one by one,
Build it upward, spray by spray,
Till the lavrock in the sun
Pours thy rapture down the day.

Silver birch and purple pine,
Crumpled fern and crimson rose,
Flash to feel their beauty thine,
Clasp and fold thee, warm and close:
Every beat and gleam of wings
Holds thee in its bosom furled;
All that chatters, laughs, and sings,
Darts thy sparkle round the world.

_Love, so strangely lost and found,
Love, beyond the seas of death,
Love, immortally re-crowned,
Love, who swayest this mortal breath,
Sweetlier to thy lover's ear
Steals the tale that ne'er was told;
Bright eyes, ah, thine arms are near,
Nearer now than e'er of old._

THE RETURN

O, hedges white with laughing may,
O, meadows where we met,
This heart of mine will break to-day
Unless ye, too, forget.

Breathe not so sweet, breathe not so sweet,
But swiftly let me pass
Across the fields that felt her feet
In the old time that was.

A year ago, but one brief year,
O, happy flowering land,
We wandered here and whispered there,
And hand was warm in hand.

O, crisp white clouds beyond the hill,
O, lavrock in the skies,
Why do ye all remember still
Her bright uplifted eyes.

Red heather on the windy moor,
Wild thyme beside the way,
White jasmine by the cottage door,
Harden your hearts to-day.

Smile not so kind, smile not so kind,
Thou happy haunted place,
Or thou wilt strike these poor eyes blind
With her remembered face.

REMEMBRANCE

O, unforgotten lips, grey haunting eyes,
Soft curving cheeks and heart-remembered brow,
It is all true, the old love never dies;
And, parted, we must meet for ever now.

We did not think it true! We did not think
Love meant this universal cry of pain,
This crown of thorn, this vinegar to drink,
This lonely crucifixion o'er again.

Yet through the darkness of the sleepless night
Your tortured face comes meekly answering mine;
Dumb, but I know why those mute lips are white;
Dark, but I know why those dark lashes shine.

O, love, love, love, what death can set us free
From this implacable ghost of memory?

A PRAYER

Only a little, O Father, only to rest
Or ever the night comes and the eternal sleep,
Only to rest a little, a little to weep
In the dead love's pitiful arms, on the dead love's breast,

A little to loosen the frozen fountains, to free
Rivers of blood and tears that should slacken the pulse
Of this pitiless heart, and appease these pangs that convulse
Body and soul; oh, out of Eternity,

A moment to whisper, only a moment to tell
My dead, my dead, what words are so helpless to say--
The dreams unuttered, the prayers no passion could pray,
And then--the eternal sleep or the pains of hell,

I could welcome them, Father, gladly as ever a child
Laying his head on the pillow might turn to his rest
And remember in dreams, as the hand of the mother is prest
On his hair, how the Pitiful blessed him of old and smiled.

LOVE'S GHOST

I

Thy house is dark and still: I stand once more
Beside the marble door.
It opens as of old: thy pale, pale face
Peers thro' the narrow space:
Thy hands are mine, thy hands are mine to hold,
Just as of old.

II

"Hush! hush! or God will hear us! Ah, speak low
As Love spake long ago."
"Sweet, sweet, are these thine arms, thy breast, thy hair
Assuaging my despair,
Assuaging the long thirst, quenching the tears
Of all these years?

III

"Thy house is deep and still: God cannot hear;
Sweet, have no fear!
Are not thy cold lips crushed against my kiss?
Love gives us this,
Not God;" but "Ah," she moans, "God hears us; speak,
Speak low, hide cheek on cheek."

IV

Oh then what eager whisperings, hoarded long,
Sweeter than any song,
What treasured news to tell, what hopes, what fears,
Gleaned from the barren years,
What raptures wrung from out the heart of pain,
What wild farewells again!

V

Whose pity is this? Ah, quick, one kiss! Once more
Closes the marble door!
I grope here in the darkness all alone.
Across the cold white stone,
Over thy tomb, a sudden starlight gleams:
Death gave me this--in dreams.

ON A RAILWAY PLATFORM

A drizzle of drifting rain
And a blurred white lamp o'erhead,
That shines as my love will shine again
In the world of the dead.

Round me the wet black night,
And, afar in the limitless gloom,
Crimson and green, two blossoms of light,
Two stars of doom.

But the night of death is aflare
With a torch of back-blown fire,
And the coal-black deeps of the quivering air
Rend for my soul's desire.

Leap, heart, for the pulse and the roar
And the lights of the streaming train
That leaps with the heart of thy love once more
Out of the mist and the rain.

Out of the desolate years
The thundering pageant flows;
But I see no more than a window of tears
Which her face has turned to a rose.

OXFORD REVISITED

Changed and estranged, like a ghost, I pass the familiar portals,
Echoing now like a tomb, they accept me no more as of old;
Yet I go wistfully onward, a shade thro' a kingdom of mortals
Wanting a face to greet me, a hand to grasp and to hold.

Hardly I know as I go if the beautiful City is only
Mocking me under the moon, with its streams and its willows agleam,
Whether the City or friends or I that am friendless and lonely,
Whether the boys that go by or the time-worn towers be the dream;

Whether the walls that I know, or the unknown fugitive faces,
Faces like those that I loved, faces that haunt and waylay,
Faces so like and unlike, in the dim unforgettable places,
Startling the heart into sickness that aches with the sweet of
the May,--

Whether all these or the world with its wars be the wandering shadows!
Ah, sweet over green-gloomed waters the may hangs, crimson and white;
And quiet canoes creep down by the warm gold dusk of the meadows,
Lapping with little splashes and ripples of silvery light.

Others as I have returned: I shall see the old faces to-morrow,
Down by the gay-coloured barges, alert for the throb of the oars,
Wanting to row once again, or tenderly jesting with sorrow
Up the old stairways and noting the strange new names on the doors.

Is it a dream? And I know not nor care if there be an awaking
Ever at all any more, for the years that have torn us apart,
Few, so few as they are, will ever be rending and breaking:
Sooner by far than I knew have they wrought this change for my heart!

Well; I grow used to it now! Could the dream but remain and for ever,
With the flowers round the grey quadrangle laughing as time grows old!
For the waters go down to the sea, but the sky still gleams on the river!
We plucked them--but there shall be lilies, ivory lilies and gold.

And still, in the beautiful City, the river of life is no duller,
Only a little strange as the eighth hour dreamily chimes,
In the City of friends and echoes, ribbons and music and colour,
Lilac and blossoming chestnut, willows and whispering limes.

Over the Radcliffe Dome the moon as the ghost of a flower
Weary and white awakes in the phantom fields of the sky:
The trustful shepherded clouds are asleep over steeple and tower,
Dark under Magdalen walls the Cher like a dream goes by.

Back, we come wandering back, poor ghosts, to the home that one misses
Out in the shelterless world, the world that was heaven to us then,
Back from the coil and the vastness, the stars and the boundless abysses,
Like monks from a pilgrimage stealing in bliss to their cloisters
again.

City of dreams that we lost, accept now the gift we inherit--
Love, such a love as we knew not of old in the blaze of our noon,
We that have found thee at last, half City, half heavenly Spirit,
While over a mist of spires the sunset mellows the moon.

THE THREE SHIPS

(_To an old Tune_)

I

As I went up the mountain-side,
The sea below me glittered wide,
And, Eastward, far away, I spied
On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day,
The three great ships that take the tide
On Christmas Day in the morning.

II

Ye have heard the song, how these must ply
From the harbours of home to the ports o' the sky!
Do ye dream none knoweth the whither and why
On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day,
The three great ships go sailing by
On Christmas Day in the morning?

III

Yet, as I live, I never knew
That ever a song could ring so true,
Till I saw them break thro' a haze of blue
On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day;
And the marvellous ancient flags they flew
On Christmas Day in the morning!

IV

From the heights above the belfried town
I saw that the sails were patched and brown,
But the flags were a-flame with a great renown
On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day,
And on every mast was a golden crown
On Christmas Day in the morning.

V

Most marvellous ancient ships were these!
Were their prows a-plunge to the Chersonese?
For the pomp of Rome or the glory of Greece,
On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day,
Were they out on a quest for the Golden Fleece
On Christmas Day in the morning?

VI

And the sun and the wind they told me there
How goodly a load the three ships bear,
For the first is gold and the second is myrrh
On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day;
And the third is frankincense most rare
On Christmas Day in the morning.

VII

They have mixed their shrouds with the golden sky,
They have faded away where the last dreams die ...
Ah yet, will ye watch, when the mist lifts high
On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day?
Will ye see three ships come sailing by
On Christmas Day in the morning?

SLUMBER-SONGS OF THE MADONNA

PRELUDE

Dante saw the great white Rose
Half unclose;
Dante saw the golden bees
Gathering from its heart of gold
Sweets untold,
Love's most honeyed harmonies.

Dante saw the threefold bow
Strangely glow,
Saw the Rainbow Vision rise,
And the Flame that wore the crown
Bending down
O'er the flowers of Paradise.

Something yet remained, it seems;
In his dreams
Dante missed--as angels may
In their white and burning bliss--
Some small kiss
Mortals meet with every day.

Italy in splendour faints
'Neath her saints!
O, her great Madonnas, too,
Faces calm as any moon
Glows in June,
Hooded with the night's deep blue!

What remains? I pass and hear
Everywhere,
Ay, or see in silent eyes
Just the song she still would sing
Thus--a-swing
O'er the cradle where He lies.

I

Sleep, little baby, I love thee.
Sleep, little king, I am bending above thee.
How should I know what to sing
Here in my arms as I swing thee to sleep?
Hushaby low,
Rockaby so,
Kings may have wonderful jewels to bring,
Mother has only a kiss for her king!
Why should my singing so make me to weep?
Only I know that I love thee, I love thee,
Love thee, my little one, sleep.

II

Is it a dream? Ah yet, it seems
Not the same as other dreams!
I can but think that angels sang,
When thou wast born, in the starry sky,
And that their golden harps out-rang
While the silver clouds went by!

The morning sun shuts out the stars,
Which are much loftier than the sun;
But, could we burst our prison-bars
And find the Light whence light begun,
The dreams that heralded thy birth
Were truer than the truths of earth;
And, by that far immortal Gleam,
Soul of my soul, I still would dream!

A ring of light was round thy head,
The great-eyed oxen nigh thy bed
Their cold and innocent noses bowed!
Their sweet breath rose like an incense cloud
In the blurred and mystic lanthorn light.

About the middle of the night
The black door blazed like some great star
With a glory from afar,
Or like some mighty chrysolite
Wherein an angel stood with white
Blinding arrowy bladed wings
Before the throne of the King of kings;
And, through it, I could dimly see
A great steed tethered to a tree.

Then, with crimson gems aflame
Through the door the three kings came,
And the black Ethiop unrolled
The richly broidered cloth of gold,
And pourèd forth before thee there
Gold and frankincense and myrrh!

III

See, what a wonderful smile! Does it mean
That my little one knows of my love?
Was it meant for an angel that passed unseen,
And smiled at us both from above?
Does it mean that he knows of the birds and the flowers
That are waiting to sweeten his childhood's hours,
And the tales I shall tell and the games he will play,
And the songs we shall sing and the prayers we shall pray
In his boyhood's May,
He and I, one day?

IV

For in the warm blue summer weather
We shall laugh and love together:
I shall watch my baby growing,
I shall guide his feet,
When the orange trees are blowing
And the winds are heavy and sweet!

When the orange orchards whiten
I shall see his great eyes brighten
To watch the long-legged camels going
Up the twisted street,
When the orange trees are blowing
And the winds are sweet.

_What does it mean? Indeed, it seems
A dream! Yet not like other dreams!_

We shall walk in pleasant vales,
Listening to the shepherd's song
I shall tell him lovely tales
All day long:
He shall laugh while mother sings
Tales of fishermen and kings.

He shall see them come and go
O'er the wistful sea,
Where rosy oleanders blow
Round blue Lake Galilee,
Kings with fishers' ragged coats
And silver nets across their boats,
Dipping through the starry glow,
With crowns for him and me!
Ah, no;
Crowns for him, not me!

_Rockaby so! Indeed, it seems
A dream! Yet not like other dreams!_

V

Ah, see what a wonderful smile again!
Shall I hide it away in my heart,
To remember one day in a world of pain
When the years have torn us apart,
Little babe,
When the years have torn us apart?

Sleep, my little one, sleep,
Child with the wonderful eyes,
Wild miraculous eyes,
Deep as the skies are deep!
What star-bright glory of tears
Waits in you now for the years
That shall bid you waken and weep?
Ah, in that day, could I kiss you to sleep
Then, little lips, little eyes,
Little lips that are lovely and wise,
Little lips that are dreadful and wise!

VI

Clenched little hands like crumpled roses
Dimpled and dear,
Feet like flowers that the dawn uncloses,
What do I fear?
Little hands, will you ever be clenched in anguish?
White little limbs, will you droop and languish?
Nay, what do I hear?
I hear a shouting, far away,
You shall ride on a kingly palm-strewn way
Some day!

But when you are crowned with a golden crown
And throned on a golden throne,
You'll forget the manger of Bethlehem town
And your mother that sits alone

Wondering whether the mighty king
Remembers a song she used to sing,
Long ago,
"_Rockaby so,
Kings may have wonderful jewels to bring,
Mother has only a kiss for her king_!"...

Ah, see what a wonderful smile, once more!
He opens his great dark eyes!
Little child, little king, nay, hush, it is o'er
My fear of those deep twin skies,--
Little child,
You are all too dreadful and wise!

VII

But now you are mine, all mine,
And your feet can lie in my hand so small,
And your tiny hands in my heart can twine,
And you cannot walk, so you never shall fall,
Or be pierced by the thorns beside the door,
Or the nails that lie upon Joseph's floor;
Through sun and rain, through shadow and shine,
You are mine, all mine!

ENCELADUS

_In the Black Country, from a little window,
Before I slept, across the haggard wastes
Of dust and ashes, I saw Titanic shafts
Like shadowy columns of wan-hope arise
To waste, on the blear sky, their slow sad wreaths
Of smoke, their infinitely sad slow prayers.
Then, as night deepened, the blast-furnaces,
Red smears upon the sulphurous blackness, turned
All that sad region to a City of Dis,
Where naked, sweating giants all night long
Bowed their strong necks, melted flesh, blood and bone,
To brim the dry ducts of the gods of gloom
With terrible rivers, branches of living gold._

_O, like some tragic gesture of great souls
In agony, those awful columns towered
Against the clouds, that city of ash and slag
Assumed the grandeur of some direr Thebes
Arising to the death-chant of those gods,
A dreadful Order climbing from the dark
Of Chaos and Corruption, threatening to take
Heaven with its vast slow storm.
I slept, and dreamed.
And like the slow beats of some Titan heart
Buried beneath immeasurable woes,
The forging-hammers thudded through the dream:_

Huge on a fallen tree,
Lost in the darkness of primeval woods,
Enceladus, earth-born Enceladus,
The naked giant, brooded all alone.
Born of the lower earth, he knew not how,
Born of the mire and clay, he knew not when,
Brought forth in darkness, and he knew not why!

Thus, like a wind, went by a thousand years.

Anhungered, yet no comrade of the wolf,
And cold, but with no power upon the sun,
A master of this world that mastered him!

Thus, like a cloud, went by a thousand years.

_Who_ chained this other giant in his heart
That heaved and burned like Etna? Heavily
He bent his brows and wondered and was dumb.

And, like one wave, a thousand years went by.

He raised his matted head and scanned the stars.
He stood erect! He lifted his uncouth arms!
With inarticulate sounds his uncouth lips
Wrestled and strove--_I am full-fed, and yet
I hunger!
Who set this fiercer famine in my maw?_

_Can I eat moons, gorge on the Milky Way,
Swill sunsets down, or sup the wash of the dawn
Out of the rolling swine-troughs of the sea?
Can I drink oceans, lie beneath the mountains,
And nuzzle their heavy boulders like a cub
Sucking the dark teats of the tigress? Who,
Who set this deeper hunger in my heart?_
And the dark forest echoed--_Who? Ah, who?_

"_I hunger!_"
And the night-wind answered him,
"Hunt, then, for food."

"_I hunger!_"
And the sleek gorged lioness
Drew nigh him, dripping freshly from the kill,
Redder her lolling tongue, whiter her fangs,
And gazed with ignorant eyes of golden flame.

"_I hunger!_"
Like a breaking sea his cry
Swept through the night. Against his swarthy knees
She rubbed the red wet velvet of her ears
With mellow thunders of unweeting bliss,
Purring--_Ah, seek, and you shall find.
Ah, seek, and you shall slaughter, gorge, ah seek,
Seek, seek, you shall feed full, ah seek, ah seek._

Enceladus, earth-born Enceladus,
Bewildered like a desert-pilgrim, saw
A rosy City, opening in the clouds,
The hunger-born mirage of his own heart,
Far, far above the world, a home of gods,
Where One, a goddess, veiled in the sleek waves
Of her deep hair, yet glimmering golden through,
Lifted, with radiant arms, ambrosial food
For hunger such as this! Up the dark hills,
He rushed, a thunder-cloud,
Urged by the famine of his heart. He stood
High on the topmost crags, he hailed the gods
In thunder, and the clouds re-echoed it!

He hailed the gods!
And like a sea of thunder round their thrones
Washing, a midnight sea, his earth-born voice
Besieged the halls of heaven! He hailed the gods!
They laughed, he heard them laugh!
With echo and re-echo, far and wide,
A golden sea of mockery, they laughed!

Enceladus, earth-born Enceladus,
Laid hold upon the rosy Gates of Heaven,
And shook them with gigantic sooty hands,
Asking he knew not what, but not for alms;
And the Gates, opened as in jest;
And, like a sooty jest, he stumbled in.

Round him the gods, the young and scornful gods,
Clustered and laughed to mark the ravaged face,
The brutal brows, the deep and dog-like eyes,
The blunt black nails, and back with burdens bowed.
And, when they laughed, he snarled with uncouth lips
And made them laugh again.
"_Whence comest thou?_"
He could not speak!
How should he speak whose heart within him heaved
And burned like Etna? Through his mouth there came
A sound of ice-bergs in a frozen sea
Of tears, a sullen region of black ice
Rending and breaking, very far away.
They laughed!
He stared at them, bewildered, and they laughed
Again, "_Whence comest thou?_"

He could not speak!
But through his mouth a moan of midnight woods,
Where wild beasts lay in wait to slaughter and gorge,
A moan of forest-caverns where the wolf
Brought forth her litter, a moan of the wild earth
In travail with strange shapes of mire and clay,
Creatures of clay, clay images of the gods,
That hungered like the gods, the most high gods,
But found no food, and perished like the beasts.

And the gods laughed,--
_Art thou, then, such a god?_ And, like a leaf
Unfolding in dark woods, in his deep brain
A sudden memory woke; and like an ape
He nodded, and all heaven with laughter rocked,
While Artemis cried out with scornful lips,--
_Perchance He is the Maker of you all!_

Then, piteously outstretching calloused hands,
He sank upon his knees, his huge gnarled knees,
And echoed, falteringly, with slow harsh tongue,--
_Perchance, perchance, the Maker of you all._

They wept with laughter! And Aphrodite, she,
With keener mockery than white Artemis
Who smiled aloof, drew nigh him unabashed
In all her blinding beauty. Carelessly,
As o'er the brute brows of a stallèd ox
Across that sooty muzzle and brawny breast,
Contemptuously, she swept her golden hair
In one deep wave, a many-millioned scourge
Intolerable and beautiful as fire;
Then turned and left him, reeling, gasping, dumb,
While heaven re-echoed and re-echoed, _See,
Perchance, perchance, the Maker of us all!_

Enceladus, earth-born Enceladus,
Rose to his feet, and with one terrible cry
"_I hunger_," rushed upon the scornful gods
And strove to seize and hold them with his hands,
And still the laughter deepened as they rolled
Their clouds around them, baffling him. But once,
Once with a shout, in his gigantic arms
He crushed a slippery splendour on his breast
And felt on his harsh skin the cool smooth peaks
Of Aphrodite's bosom. One black hand
Slid down the naked snow of her long side
And bruised it where he held her. Then, like snow
Vanishing in a furnace, out of his arms
The splendour suddenly melted, and a roll
Of thunder split the dream, and headlong down
He fell, from heaven to earth; while, overhead
The young and scornful gods--he heard them laugh!--
Toppled the crags down after him. He lay
Supine. They plucked up Etna by the roots
And buried him beneath it. His broad breast
Heaved, like that other giant in his heart,
And through the crater burst his fiery breath,
But could not burst his bonds. And so he lay
Breathing in agony thrice a thousand years.

Then came a Voice, he knew not whence, "Arise,
Enceladus!" And from his heart a crag
Fell, and one arm was free, and one thought free,
And suddenly he awoke, and stood upright,
Shaking the mountains from him like a dream;
And the tremendous light and awful truth
Smote, like the dawn, upon his blinded eyes,
That out of his first wonder at the world,
Out of his own heart's deep humility,
And simple worship, he had fashioned gods
Of cloud, and heaven out of a hollow shell.
And groping now no more in the empty space
Outward, but inward in his own deep heart,
He suddenly felt the secret gates of heaven
Open, and from the infinite heavens of hope
Inward, a voice, from the innermost courts of Love,
Rang--_Thou shall have none other gods but Me._

Enceladus, the foul Enceladus,
When the clear light out of that inward heaven
Whose gates are only inward in the soul,
Showed him that one true Kingdom, said,
"I will stretch
My hands out once again. And, as the God
That made me is the Heart within my heart,
So shall my heart be to this dust and earth
A god and a creator. I will strive
With mountains, fires and seas, wrestle and strive,
Fashion and make, and that which I have made
In anguish I shall love as God loves me."

_In the Black Country, from a little window,
Waking at dawn, I saw those giant Shafts
--O great dark word out of our elder speech,
Long since the poor man's kingly heritage--
The Shapings, the dim Sceptres of Creation,
The Shafts like columns of wan-hope arise
To waste, on the blear sky, their slow sad wreaths
Of smoke, their infinitely sad slow prayers.
Then, as the dawn crimsoned, the sordid clouds,
The puddling furnaces, the mounds of slag,
The cinders, and the sand-beds and the rows
Of wretched roofs, assumed a majesty
Beyond all majesties of earth or air;
Beauty beyond all beauty, as of a child
In rags, upraised thro' the still gold of heaven,
With wasted arms and hungering eyes, to bring
The armoured seraphim down upon their knees
And teach eternal God humility;
The solemn beauty of the unfulfilled
Moving towards fulfilment on a height
Beyond all heights; the dreadful beauty of hope;
The naked wrestler struggling from the rock
Under the sculptor's chisel; the rough mass
Of clay more glorious for the poor blind face
And bosom that half emerge into the light,
More glorious and august, even in defeat,
Than that too cold dominion God foreswore
To bear this passionate universal load,
This Calvary of Creation, with mankind._

IN THE COOL OF THE EVENING

I

In the cool of the evening, when the low sweet whispers waken,
When the labourers turn them homeward, and the weary have their will,
When the censers of the roses o'er the forest-aisles are shaken,
Is it but the wind that cometh o'er the far green hill?

II

For they say 'tis but the sunset winds that wander through the heather,
Rustle all the meadow-grass and bend the dewy fern;
They say 'tis but the winds that bow the reeds in prayer together,
And fill the shaken pools with fire along the shadowy burn.

III

In the beauty of the twilight, in the Garden that He loveth,
They have veiled His lovely vesture with the darkness of a name!
Thro' His Garden, thro' His Garden it is but the wind that moveth,
No more; but O, the miracle, the miracle is the same!

IV

In the cool of the evening, when the sky is an old story
Slowly dying, but remembered, ay, and loved with passion still,
Hush!... the fringes of His garment, in the fading golden glory,
Softly rustling as He cometh o'er the far green hill.

A ROUNDHEAD'S RALLYING SONG

I

How beautiful is the battle,
How splendid are the spears,
When our banner is the sky
And our watchword _Liberty_,
And our kingdom lifted high above the years.

II

How purple shall our blood be,
How glorious our scars,
When we lie there in the night
With our faces full of light
And the death upon them smiling at the stars.

III

How golden is our hauberk,
And steel, and steel our sword,
And our shield without a stain
As we take the field again,
We whose armour is the armour of the Lord!

VICISTI, GALILÆE

"The shrines are dust, the gods are dead,"
They cried in ancient Rome!
"Ah yet, the Idalian rose is red,
And bright the Paphian foam:
For all your Galilæan tears
We turn to her," men say ...
But we, we hasten thro' the years
To our own yesterday.

Thro' all the thousand years ye need
To make the lost so fair,
Before ye can award His meed
Of perfect praise and prayer!
Ye liberated souls, the crown
Is yours; and yet, some few
Can hail, as this great Cross goes down
Its distant triumph, too.

Poor scornful Lilliputian souls,
And are ye still too proud
To risk your little aureoles
By kneeling with the crowd?
Do ye still dream ye "stand alone"
So fearless and so strong?
To-day we claim the rebels' throne
And leave you with the throng.

Yes, He has conquered! You at least
The "van-guard" leaves behind
To croon old tales of king and priest
In the ingles of mankind:
The breast of Aphrodite glows,
Apollo's face is fair;
But O, the world's wide anguish knows
No Apollonian prayer.

Not ours to scorn the first white gleam
Of beauty on this earth,
The clouds of dawn, the nectarous dream,
The gods of simpler birth;
But, as ye praise them, your own cry
Is fraught with deeper pain,
And the Compassionate ye deny
Returns, returns again.

O, worshippers of the beautiful,
Is this the end then, this,--
That ye can only see the skull
Beneath the face of bliss?
No monk in the dark years ye scorn
So barren a pathway trod
As ye who, ceasing not to mourn,
Deny the mourner's God.

And, while ye scoff, on every side
Great hints of Him go by,--
Souls that are hourly crucified
On some new Calvary!
O, tortured faces, white and meek,
Half seen amidst the crowd,
Grey suffering lips that never speak,
The Glory in the Cloud!

_In flower and dust, in chaff and grain,
He binds Himself and dies!
We live by His eternal pain,
His hourly sacrifice;
The limits of our mortal life
Are His._ The whisper thrills
Under the sea's perpetual strife,
And through the sunburnt hills.

Darkly, as in a glass, our sight
Still gropes thro' Time and Space:
We cannot see the Light of Light
With angels, face to face:
Only the tale His martyrs tell
Around the dark earth rings
He died and He went down to hell
And lives--the King of Kings!

And, while ye scoff, from shore to shore,
From sea to moaning sea,
_Eloi_, _Eloi_, goes up once more
_Lama sabacthani!_
The heavens are like a scroll unfurled,
The writing flames above--
This is the King of all the world
Upon His Cross of Love.

DRAKE

_DEDICATED TO RUDOLPH CHAMBERS LEHMANN_