Chapter III: The Return

So did I in Heaven sing,
And the lilac evening
Deeper, deeper, deeper shone.
Fairer yet and yet more fair
Burned my kingdom of the air.

So I sang--or _did_ I sing?
I, who still was listening.
So I sang--yet _was_ it mine,
The Song, the Singing Voice divine?

Sudden, in a fit of mirth,
I that was so mighty grown
Bent me low to see the Earth
And the little hill I knew
Where the gorse and heather grew.

Then I cried and Heaven cried
Loud with laughter, for I spied
How my puny body lay
In a coat of sombre grey
Six foot long amid the heather
With its two arms locked together,
With its pinpoint eyes that burned
Motionless and solemn turned
In a brave unconscious stare
On the diamonded air.

Still I looked, and in a while
Saw the growing of a smile
On the lips and then a yawn,
Then a difficult breath long-drawn--
One deep breath, and then an arm
Stretched out, and, as if alarm
Seized it, the whole body shook.

Then could I no longer look,
For I felt my limbs and knew
I was narrowed down again
To my body, and I grew
Quiet, fearing the disdain
Of the stars who looked on me
Fallen from their company.

But I heard no sound of scorn,
Only a far echo borne
Of the Voice whose singing moves
And quickens every thing that loves.

SPRING RAIN IN LONDON

Hardly awake, I saw in the street
The shining raindrops pelt;
And lulled by their quick monotonous beat
I let my languid eyes half close. I felt

The tinkle of a rivulet
Bubbling lazily down a hill,
Where the turf was a couch for dark violet
And flame-eyed tormentil.

I saw the sun leaping through a cloud--
Apollo shooting at the bladed corn--
And the lark, a dizzy fanatic, hailing loud
The golden god reborn.

LOTUS EATERS

I grew so quiet as I walked along,
My mind so much a mirror to the wood,
So passively open to the colour and song
And the whole company of solitude

That past time fell from me, and time to come
No longer drew me with its magnet power:
My whole self lazily to a bee’s low hum
Listened, and watched him fumble at a flower.

The present held me. I was just aware
Of the ripple and stir of muscles where my hand
Lay slack against my side. I sucked live air,
And drew sweet moisture from the clayey sand.

Now do I know how horses live, and cows,
Minute to minute of the shining day,
Solemn with gaze contented as they browse
Finding their lotus in the fields of May.

THE GREY BIRD

The wind blows
Heavy with spice.
Among macaws and birds of paradise
With plumage grey he goes.

Silence hangs like a cloud;
Yet lives innumerable teem.
The wild eyes of the crowd
Of watching creatures with a sullen gleam
The forest haunt.
The birds flaunt
Their vivid hues, and scream,
Yet leave the smothering silence still supreme.

And the bird with the grey wing
Unnoticed flies. No finery or glow
Has he to show,
Nor in this land unhallowed will he sing.
But in the tropic heat,
When March is ablaze,
Strange instincts beat
In his breast.
He is full of amaze,
He suffers a sweet unrest,
And though
Unheeded still he flutter to and fro,
Yet in foreknowledge of a gentle Spring
He turns and fondles oft in his warm throat
The pure, the lovely note
He soon shall sing--
When, in a land of the West,
In England, over the foam,
After long voyage his tired wings come to rest
And his glad heart finds home.

Then hark how he shall spill
His liquid miracle,
Hark to the thrill
Of the secret song,
The gay tune hid so long!
See on a twig scarce bent,
Mid leafage cool
Of oak or birch
Or willow-fringe about a reedy pool,
How he shall choose his perch
And make wild music out of souls content.
How he shall love!
How he shall sing!
How he shall rove
With a careless wing!
How in this Isle
Of Splendid Voice,
Home from exile
He shall rejoice!
How his golden song shall be spent
Forgetting the foul, fierce continent!

ELYSIUM

Hushed their feet fall
On the dewy grass:
In robe rhythmical
Shining they pass:

Lovers who for bliss
Grave and rare and deep
Need no clasp, or kiss,
Or lovers’ sleep.

ETERNITY

Men who are wise in secret lore
Well argue and avow
That fugitive Time shall be no more--
No change, no after, no before,
But one eternal Now.

Yet I will dream Eternity
Only a nobler Time,
Where all the past shall gathered be
And hours all of memory
In each new hour chime:

Triumphing easily over Death;
Showing the sign of power
Of one who goes with even breath,
Who hurrieth not nor lingereth,
Harmonious with his hour:

A march, full-speed, from thought to thought,
A music more sublime
Than holy poet ever caught
From magic choirs, and tuned and wrought
In miracle of rhyme.

THE SEA-MAID

I heard an immortal, under the sea,
Singing the beauty of change and death.
Oh lovelier than light was she,
And Araby was in her breath.

She lay in a hollow of stainless air
Roofed and walled with a crystal gleam;
No light wind stirred to quiver her hair
Or loose from her eyes the banded dream.

Her voice was the piping voice of a child,
Shrill, pathetic. I do not know
Whether I wept or whether I smiled
To hear her chant of curious woe.

The sea-maid sang,
“Never shall I die.
The evil eye,
The spine, the fang

Have not any power,--
No spell, no charm
May wither or harm
My beauty’s flower.

For, I suppose,
I am fair, more fair
Than any rose
Or earth-bloom rare,

Or maid of the earth,
Or, faint and far,
Heaven’s dark birth
Of a radiant star.

And yet they are crowned
With a joy not mine,
With a light divine
Who have found, have found

The secret of change,--
They are born, they grow,
They are dark, they glow,
They are new, wild, strange.

But I remain
Immortal, I
Who am fain, oh fain
To change or die.

* * * * *

Once was a time
I found the wreck
Of a ship sublime
With a masted deck:

I peeped through the hull
And what should it hold
But shimmering gold
And a shining skull

And broken glass
And twisted steel,
And a steering-wheel
Of oak and brass.

I loved them and watched them day by day,
I watched their beautiful slow decay.
I watched them soften and break and rust,
And thicken with weeds and fall to dust.

But when they were crumbled quite, there came
The fish that are centuries-through the same,
Their lifted lids that ought to be wise
Arching high over vacant eyes.

With gaping mouth and sloping chin,
And face fixed hard in a solemn grin,
They softly murmured, _The passing hour
Over our beauty has no power_.

I turned. I looked in my crystal glass.
My splendour was bright as ever it was.
And I wept, and I weep, that I should remain
Immortal, unchanging, without a stain.”

THE CELL

When from the hush of this cool wood
I go, Lord, to the noisy mart,
Give me among the multitude,
I pray, a lonely heart.

Yea, build in me a secret cell
Where quietness shall be a song:
In that green solitude I’ll dwell.
And praise Thee all day long.

THE ASCETICS

Ages long the hills have stood
A solitary brotherhood,
Ages long with sinews bare
They have shouldered the keen air,
They have wrestled with the skies
Hiddenly for a dark prize.

Merry Spring with her wanton train
Tiptoes, tiptoes by in vain;
Ye, O hills, never behold
Her brave dust of green and gold
Flashing by, the pride, the mirth,
The myriad fluttering of the earth.

This wild magic ye have lost--
Tell me, at so bitter cost,
What the guerdon ye have won?
“Speech with the moon, speech with the sun;
Valiancy to meet unbowed
The challenge of the thundercloud,
And, to quicken us for fresh wars,
Gay communion with the stars.”

CONSPIRACIES

The valley seemed a single throat
Singing when the blackbird sang,
So true complete and pure his note,
And through so clean an air it rang:
Trees in a golden rapture stood
Unshaken; their dark shadows fell
And lay locked by the river-flood
In level quiet: blackbird’s bell
And hollow-shining air and tree
And river made conspiracy
And cast on me a spell.

Deep in my heart the holy stream,
The stream of quietude, was born,
Whose waters wandering clouds of dream
And marvellous idle shapes adorn;
My breath was like the breath of a child
Asleep,--yet rooted in repose,
Multitudinous swift and wild
My branching, flowering thoughts arose.
So heart, breath, mind, while I spoke no word,
Conspired. Suddenly I heard
My song with the blackbird’s close.

A RHYME OF FAITH

Say ye “Lo the heavens frown,
Soon the thundercloud shall burst,
Towering faith shall be flung down.
We--thank God--expect the worst.”

Cowardly blasphemers, hark!
_Credo_ shall my motto be,
_Credo_--all the sky is dark--
_Quia Impossibile_.

THE SHINING POND

Against the sky’s pale rim
The cottage and the trees stood dim.
But in the glow,
More tense,
Of the little shining pond that lay below,
The darkened outlines were drawn clear,
Sharp to my sense.

And gazing there
My vision became
Empty and passive, no more than a frame
For the silver water that burned and burned ....

At last, when I turned,
My soul was a mirror, on whose surface lay
Without a flaw
Each momentary thing I saw,--
Then slipped away.

And I heard
Each faint noise,
Hardly listening.

I heard
The noise of the cockchafers around me,--
Not only the sound
As they boomed in their flight,
Above, in the dim light,
But as they busily stirred
Loosening
Heavy body and horny wing,
Blundering free
Out of the thicket of the may-tree.

I saw the flower look up pale-eyed
From the tangled grass,
And the pale moth climb up, half awake, with quivering wing,
And still to the side
Of the sedges cling,--
Then like a ghost through the brown air pass.

And nowhere,
Everywhere,
The fall,
Hollow and clear,
Of the cuckoo’s sounding call.

And yet so quiet ... every tree
(But most the poplar tree,
Shooting up
Confidently
To the sky’s white cup)
Appeared eternal.

Suddenly, out beyond
The dark, I heard a chime.
It told of eternity, not of time,
It told that the quiet hour was one
With the quiet ages gone,
With the quiet hours to be
Eternally.

Shadow crept over the shining pond.
I fell into a deep
Trance, an illumined sleep.

THE HAUNTED STREET

Only the faint-echoing fall of my feet
Sounded in the empty street,
Where noisily an hour or so ago
The townpeople wandered--men, all sorts and types,
Swinging leisurely to and fro,
Laughing and lounging, pulling at their pipes;
Big-featured women; boys with caps aslant
To hint them men of the world; slim girls with scant
White summer dresses that in dubious light
Fluttered and gleamed to the sight
Like pallid moth-wings.
Now the populous street
Was empty: not a phantom lingered there,
Not a ghost of sound on the air
Save, as I passed, for my echoing feet.

The moon was hidden; hardly a candle shone
At any upper window, and the stars
Were dim as candles: from the shops and bars
The glimmer of light was gone.
A few arc-lamps at intervals threw
Mock moonlight on the mimic waterway
Of the wheel-burnished road;
And the road lay
Cool and rejoicing, lightened of its load
Of travelling life--as a tired face may lie
Smooth of its furrows, the unquiet day
Forgotten, the importunity
Of thought and emotion folded away
And shuttered off by Sleep.

Only my footsteps sounded in the road.

Suddenly I stopped. For I felt a faint light creep
Up to me and touch me, and lo, behind a cloud-veil
The harvest Moon gradually climbing the ascent
To the open firmament!
The vapours like lit foam
Dripped and glittered, as I watched her battle against the tide,
Then huddled again more close and strove to hide
Her scattering silver with dull monochrome;
Yet with a final stroke did she prevail,
Unflinching out of the stormy water sail,
Astonish the dark night, and roam
Splendid in triumph on her ocean-home.

And, as I watched, it seemed
My eyes were nothing but hollows filled to the brim with light,
And my body was unsubstantial, and the flood unearthly streamed
Through and through me, body and soul, immovable, absorbed in sight.

Along the sombre rank
Of ordinary houses the lustre spread
Until their level surfaces showed blank
And staring-white, and dead.
No longer now as images of Sleep
Could I feel them, folding away
In recesses deep
The voices and the passing feet of day:
Rather I felt them solid, cold, intense,
Shining on the glass of my moonlit sense
Like naked tombstones. They seemed to me
The only reality:
My conscious being
Was from its centre all
Diverted to its outward wall,
From the thinking and willing soul to the touching, seeing,
Receptive surface. I lost
All sense of separation. I was one
With the tomblike stone.
The bar of my humanity I crossed,
Drawn outward as the houses drew more near,
Till they and I for body had only a gleaming wall,
For spirit a vague fear.

The pulse of Time stopped.

There was no sound
Anywhere,
No motion in the street around,
In my soul’s eclipse I could not stir.

Yet some hidden impulse suddenly broke the spell,
For inward, inward, struggling through the barrier
Of my dumb sense I drove. I smote the silent bell
At the door of my heart angrily, bidding it answer me
With a semblance of actual sound. Driven by the tyranny
Of tangible outward horror into my soul I fought,
Striving to win the images that dwell
In the quiet inmost rooms of intricate-carven thought.

There I conjured a vision of summer’s ripe content,
Gold corn in the valley, gold gorse on the hill,
The gold sun shining, the air full of scent,
The common turf paved with gold tormentil;
The air basking lazily, full of the sound of bees,
And a slow stream washing the boughs of trailing willow-trees.

There I found a garden where tall hollyhocks
And double-flowered larkspurs towered side by side,
Groups of slender columbine and crimson-hearted phlox,
Old-fashioned lavender and pink and London pride:
And in that close and quiet garden did I find
The faces of my dearest friends, intimate and kind.

But a hurry of other faces like a shadow-show,
Faces remote and strange, crowded unbidden before me,
Faces at first I did not know ...
Yet some of them bore me
Manifest hate or love,--gazing on me
As a familiar friend or enemy.
Gradually I felt the answering passions stir
And days forgotten from a buried past rise;
Gradually
Like objects with pale outlines whitening the gloom
Of a dark room,
Out of a misty blurr
The faces grew familiar to my eyes.

And yet, as I dimly knew
With a dazed, half-conscious knowing,
These images coming and going,--
These faces old and young
That grew
In a moment, unfolded
And faded,--out of a past that never was mine were sprung:
Not mine, although they so remoulded me
Under their strong control
That memory seemed to be slowly drawn up out of my soul
To join them and make them a part
Of my own years,
Linking them to the passions of my heart,
Old hopes and old fears.

In a while shone out
Distinct among them all, beneath a rout
Of dusky hair, one face
Of quick eager impulsive grace;
And memory arose in me till I burned
With a full-kindled fire
Of worship and love, seeing no failure, no flaw
In her loveliness....
then memory turned,
Memory and the strength of desire,
To hate, fierce hate, hate fiercer for a memory of shame,
Of a wrong that I had done to her. I saw
With different eyes her beauty and I hated it.
Darkness and agony were in me: I shook: I bit on my lip; there was dew
Of sweat on my hand, on my forehead; I knew
My soul no longer was mine but lit with the flame
Of alien passions, possessing me, driving me ...

Emptily,
Emptily on either side the motionless line
Of tomblike houses gaped upon me--
Their emptiness spoke, they gave me an answer, they told
That only the cold
Bodies of those who slept
Lay in their hold:
The hot unsleeping passions were abroad
Thronging the white road,
Pressing around me, into me. They had crept
Deep into me more subtle than sleep;
My soul was strangled: I could not shake them off: I struggled in vain ...

But with a saving throb of pain
The power of motion came to me again,
And down the length of that echoing street of dread,
While the beautiful mockery of the white moon still looked down
On the sleeping town,
Quick in the stillness I fled.

Printed in the United States of America.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

The Sea-Maid: quote marks in the poem have been left as-is.

The use of ellipsis has been edited to match the original book.