Chapter I: HEAR in my heart, I hear in its ominous pulses

All day, on the road, the hoofs of invisible horses,
All night, from their stalls, the importunate pawing and neighing.

Let cowards and laggards fall back! but alert to the saddle
Weather-worn and abreast, go men of our galloping legion,
With a stirrup-cup each to the lily of women that loves him.

The trail is through dolour and dread, over crags and morasses;
There are shapes by the way, there are things that appal or entice us:
What odds? We are Knights of the Grail, we are vowed to the riding.

Thought's self is a vanishing wing, and joy is a cobweb,
And friendship a flower in the dust, and glory a sunbeam:
Not here is our prize, nor, alas! after these our pursuing.

A dipping of plumes, a tear, a shake of the bridle,
A passing salute to this world and her pitiful beauty:
We hurry with never a word in the track of our fathers.

(I hear in my heart, I hear in its ominous pulses
All day, on the road, the hoofs of invisible horses,
All night, from their stalls, the importunate pawing and neighing.)

We spur to a land of no name, out-racing the storm-wind;
We leap to the infinite dark like sparks from the anvil.
Thou leadest, O God! All's well with Thy troopers that follow.

_Bedesfolk_

WHO is good enough to be
Near the never-stainèd sea?
Ah, not I,
Who thereby
Only sigh:
_Pray for me._

Standing underneath some free
Innocent magnanimous tree,
To be true,
There anew
Must I sue:
_Pray for me._

Ere I pass on hilly lea
Fellow-lives of glad degree,
Without shame,
Name by name
These I claim:
_Pray for me._

Fail not, then, thou kingly sea!
Aid the needy, sister tree!
March herds,
Ye have words!
April birds,
_Pray for me_!

_In a City Street_

THOUGH sea and mount have beauty and this but what it can,
Thrice fairer than their life the life here battling in the van,
The tragic gleam, the mist and grime,
The dread endearing stain of time,
The sullied heart of man.

Mine is the clotted sunshine, a bubble in the sky,
That where it dare not enter steals in shrouded passion by;
And mine the saffron river-sails,
And every plane-tree that avails
To rest an urban eye;

The bells, the dripping gable, the tavern's corner glare;
The cab in firefly darting; the barrel-organ air,
While one by one, or two by two
The hatless babes are waltzing through
The gutters of the Square.

Not on Thessalian headlands of song and old desire
My spirit chose her pleasure-house, but in the London mire:
Long, long alone she loves to pace,
And find a music in this place
As in a minster choir.

O names of awe and rapture! O deeds of legendry!
Still is it most of joy within your altered pale to be,
Whose very ills I fain would slake
Mine angels are, and help to make
In Hell a Heaven for me.

_Florentin_

_A.D. MDCCCXC_

HEART all full of heavenward haste, too like the bubble bright
On wild little waters floating half of an April night,
Fled from the ear in music, fled from the eye in light,

Dear and stainless heart of a boy! No sweeter thing can be
Drawn to the quiet centre of God who is our sea:
Whither, through troubled valleys, we also follow thee.

_A Song of the Lilac_

ABOVE the wall that's broken,
And from the coppice thinned,
So sacred and so sweet
The lilac in the wind!
For when by night the May wind blows
The lilac-blooms apart,
The memory of his first love
Is shaken on his heart.

In tears it long was buried,
And trances wrapt it round;
Oh, how they wake it now,
The fragrance and the sound!
For when by night the May wind blows
The lilac-blooms apart,
The memory of his first love
Is shaken on his heart.

_Monochrome_

SHUT fast again in Beauty's sheath
Where ancient forms renew,
The round world seems above, beneath,
One wash of faintest blue,

And air and tide so stilly sweet
In nameless union lie,
The little far-off fishing fleet
Goes drifting up the sky.

Secure of neither misted coast
Nor ocean undefined,
Our flagging sail is like the ghost
Of one that served mankind,

Who in the void, as we upon
This melancholy sea,
Finds labour and allegiance done,
And Self begin to be.

_Saint Francis Endeth his Sermon_

"AND now, my clerks who go in fur or feather
Or brighter scales, I bless you all. Be true
To your true Lover and Avenger, whether
By land or sea ye die the death undue.
Then proffer man your pardon; and together
Track him to Heaven, and see his heart made new.

"From long ago one hope hath in me thriven,
Your hope, mysterious as the scented May:
Not to Himself your titles God hath given
In vain, nor only for our mortal day.
O doves! how from The Dove shall ye be driven?
O darling lambs! ye with The Lamb shall play."

_An Estray_

WELL we know, not ever here is a footing for thy dream:
Thou art sick for horse and spear beside an Asian stream,

For the hearth-smoke in the wild, for the goatherd's stave,
For a beauty far exiled, a belief within its grave.

While another sky and ground orb thy strange remembering,
And no world of mortal bound is the master of thy wing,

Canst thou yet thy fate forgive, that the godhead in thy breast
Has this life at least to live as a force in rhythmic rest,

As a seed that bides the hour of obscureness and decay,
Being troth of flower to flower down the long dynastic day?

Child whom elder airs enfold, who hast greatness to maintain
Where heroic hap of old may return and shine again,

As too oft across thy heart flits the too familiar light,
How alarms of love upstart at the token quick and slight!

Lest captivity be o'er, lest thou glide away, and so
From our tents of Nevermore strike the trail of Long Ago.

_Friendship Broken_

I

WE chose the faint chill morning, friend and friend,
Pacing the twilight out beneath an oak,
Soul calling soul to judgment; and we spoke
Strange things and deep as any poet penned,
Such truth as never truth again can mend,
Whatever art we use, what gods invoke;
It was not wrath, it made nor strife nor smoke:
Be what it may, it had a solemn end.

Farewell, in peace. We of the selfsame throne
Are foeman vassals; pale astrologers,
Each a wise skeptic of the other's star.
Silently, as we went our ways alone,
The steadfast sun, whom no poor prayer deters,
Drew high between us his majestic bar.

II

MINE was the mood that shows the dearest face
Through a long avenue, and voices kind
Idle, and indeterminate, and blind
As rumours from a very distant place;
Yet, even so, it gathered the first chase
Of the first swallows where the lane's inclined,
An ebb of wavy wings to serve my mind
For round Spring's vision. Ah, some equal grace
(The calm sense of seen beauty without sight)
Befell thee, honourable heart! no less
In patient stupor walking from the dawn;
Albeit thou too wert loser of life's light,
Like fallen Adam in the wilderness,
Aware of naught but of the thing withdrawn.

_A Talisman_

TAKE Temperance to thy breast,
While yet is the hour of choosing,
As arbitress exquisite
Of all that shall thee betide;
For better than fortune's best
Is mastery in the using,
And sweeter than any thing sweet
The art to lay it aside!

_Heathenesse_

NO round boy-satyr, racing from the mere,
Shakes on the mountain lawn his dripping head
This many a May, your sister being dead,
Ye Christian folk! your sister great and dear.
To breathe her name, to think how sad-sincere
Was all her searching, straying, dreaming, dread,
How of her natural night was Plato bred
(A star to keep the ways of honour clear),

Who will not sigh for her? who can forget
Not only unto campèd Israel,
Nor martyr-maids that as a bridegroom met
The Roman lion's roar, salvation fell?
To Him be most of praise that He is yet
Your God through gods not inaccessible.

_For Izaak Walton_

CAN trout allure the rod of yore
In Itchen stream to dip?
Or lover of her banks restore
That sweet Socratic lip?
Old fishing and wishing
Are over many a year.
Oh, hush thee, Oh, hush thee! heart innocent and dear.

Again the foamy shallows fill,
The quiet clouds amass,
And soft as bees by Catherine Hill
At dawn the anglers pass,
And follow the hollow,
In boughs to disappear.
Oh, hush thee, Oh, hush thee! heart innocent and dear.

Nay, rise not now, nor with them take
One amber-freckled fool!
Thy sons to-day bring each an ache
For ancient arts to cool.
But, father, lie rather
Unhurt and idle near;
Oh, hush thee, Oh, hush thee! heart innocent and dear.

While thought of thee to men is yet
A sylvan playfellow,
Ne'er by thy marble they forget
In pious cheer to go.
As air falls, the prayer falls
O'er kingly Winchester:
Oh, hush thee, Oh, hush thee! heart innocent and dear.

_Fifteen Epitaphs_

I