Chapter IV

Over me, beeches broad beneath blue sky
In light winds through their cooling leaves rejoice:
Now, the red squirrel, lithe and wild, runs by;
Anon the wood dove from deep glades, with voice
Of mellow music, lulls the air:
All murmurs of the forest, stirs and cries,
Come stilly down green coverts; the high fern
Smells of rich earth aglow from burning skies.
Hither my greenwood ways love best to turn:
Hither my lone hours gladliest fare.

But not for melancholy solitude;
Not for the fond delight of loneliness:
Though here nor voice, nor alien feet, intrude.
Lone am I: but what lone dreams dare repress
High presences of vanished days?
Long billowy reaches of unnumbered trees
Roll downward from this haunt, and break at length
Against such walls, as no man unmoved sees,
But hails the past of splendour and of strength:
And heights of immemorial praise.

That Castle gray, marvellous with mighty years,
Crowning the forest deeps in pride of place:
Towers, royal in their histories of tears,
And royal in their chronicles of grace:
Am I alone, beholding those?
The solitary forest bowers me round:
Yet companies august go through the glade,
Crowned and resplendent! stately and discrowned!
All, solemn from the tragedies they played:
Remembering, each the doom, the close.

Alone! Nay, but almost, would that I were
Alone: too high are these great things for me.
Immeasurable glooms and splendours here
Usurp the calm noon, where my rest should be:
O proud, O ancient Towers! farewell.
I turn from you, and take the world of men:
Gladly I mix me with the common day:
But should they vex me with their tumult: then,
Hither my feet will find the accustomed way;
Then cast once more your heightening spell.

1889

BAGLEY WOOD.

_To Percy Addleshaw._

The night is full of stars, full of magnificence:
Nightingales hold the wood, and fragrance loads the dark.
Behold, what fires august, what lights eternal! Hark,
What passionate music poured in passionate love's defence!
Breathe but the wafting wind's nocturnal frankincense!
Only to feel this night's great heart, only to mark
The splendours and the glooms, brings back the patriarch,
Who on Chaldaean wastes found God through reverence.

Could we but live at will upon this perfect height,
Could we but always keep the passion of this peace,
Could we but face unshamed the look of this pure light,
Could we but win earth's heart, and give desire release:
Then were we all divine, and then were ours by right
These stars, these nightingales, these scents: then shame would cease.

1890.

CORONA CRUCIS.

_To the Rev. Father Goldie, S. J._

Deficit inter tenebras cor triste:
Unde fulgebit mihi lux petita?
O cor infidum! Nonne dicis, Christe!
Ego sum Via, et Veritas, et Vita.

Via amara Tu, Veritas dura,
Vita difficilis, tremende Deus!
Deliciarum Via, Veritas pura,
Vita vitarum Tu, et amor meus!

Non Te relinquam, carae Dator crucis,
Rex caritatis, Domine dolorum!
Splendet longinqua mihi patria lucis,
Et diadema omnium amorum.

1893.

A SONG OF ISRAEL.

_To the Rev. Stewart Headlam._

Praise ye Him, with virginals and organs:
Praise ye Him, with timbrel and flute!
Come from the field, glorify His temple,
With red corn, with the ripe first fruit.

He is God, who brought us out from Egypt,
Gave us lands of vineyard and oil:
He is God, who made the Kings of Canaan,
Made their kingdoms, to be our spoil.

Praise ye Him, with psaltery and cymbal:
Praise ye Him, with viol and harp!
Through the Wilderness, through the rough places,
Led He us, for whom Death grew sharp.

Sinai, with thunders and with voices,
Praised our God, the Giver of Law:
Jordan stayed the rushing of his waters;
Israel passed over, and saw:

Saw the plenty, saw the Land of Promise,
Saw, and praised Him, the Lord of lords:
King of armies, terrible and holy;
Light to our eyes, and strength to our swords.

Where be now the gods of all the nations?
Where is Baal? Where Ashtaroth?
Fallen! fallen! before the God of Jacob:
None withstood the day of His wrath.

Praise ye Him, with virginals and organs:
Praise ye Him, with music and voice!
Praise the Name of the Lord God Jehovah:
Praise Him, praise Him, ye Tribes His choice!

1889

THE DARK ANGEL.

Dark Angel, with thine aching lust
To rid the world of penitence:
Malicious Angel, who still dost
My soul such subtile violence!

Because of thee, no thought, no thing,
Abides for me undesecrate:
Dark Angel, ever on the wing,
Who never reachest me too late!

When music sounds, then changest thou
Its silvery to a sultry fire:
Nor will thine envious heart allow
Delight untortured by desire.

Through thee, the gracious Muses turn
To Furies, O mine Enemy!
And all the things of beauty burn
With flames of evil ecstasy.

Because of thee, the land of dreams
Becomes a gathering place of fears:
Until tormented slumber seems
One vehemence of useless tears.

When sunlight glows upon the flowers,
Or ripples down the dancing sea:
Thou, with thy troop of passionate powers,
Beleaguerest, bewilderest, me.

Within the breath of autumn woods,
Within the winter silences:
Thy venomous spirit stirs and broods,
O Master of impieties!

The ardour of red flame is thine,
And thine the steely soul of ice:
Thou poisonest the fair design
Of nature, with unfair device.

Apples of ashes, golden bright;
Waters of bitterness, how sweet!
O banquet of a foul delight,
Prepared by thee, dark Paraclete!

Thou art the whisper in the gloom,
The hinting tone, the haunting laugh:
Thou art the adorner of my tomb,
The minstrel of mine epitaph.

I fight thee, in the Holy Name!
Yet, what thou dost, is what God saith:
Tempter! should I escape thy flame,
Thou wilt have helped my soul from Death

The second Death, that never dies,
That cannot die, when time is dead:
Live Death, wherein the lost soul cries,
Eternally uncomforted.

Dark Angel, with thine aching lust!
Of two defeats, of two despairs:
Less dread, a change to drifting dust,
Than thine eternity of cares.

Do what thou wilt, thou shalt not so,
Dark Angel! triumph over me:
Lonely, unto the Lone I go;
Divine, to the Divinity.

1893.

A FRIEND.

His are the whitenesses of soul,
That Virgil had: he walks the earth
A classic saint, in self-control,
And comeliness, and quiet mirth.

His presence wins me to repose:
When he is with me, I forget
All heaviness: and when he goes,
The comfort of the sun is set.

But in the lonely hours I learn,
How I can serve and thank him best:
God! trouble him: that he may turn
Through sorrow to the only rest.

1894.

TO A PASSIONIST.

Clad in a vestment wrought with passion-flowers;
Celebrant of one Passion; called by name
Passionist: is thy world, one world with ours?
Thine, a like heart? Thy very soul, the same?

Thou pleadest an eternal sorrow: we
Praise the still changing beauty of this earth.
Passionate good and evil, thou dost see:
Our eyes behold the dreams of death and birth.

We love the joys of men: we love the dawn,
Red with the sun, and with the pure dew pearled
Thy stern soul feels, after the sun withdrawn,
How much pain goes to perfecting the world.

Canst thou be right? Is thine the very truth?
Stands then our life in so forlorn a state?
Nay, but thou wrongest us: thou wrong'st our youth,
Who dost our happiness compassionate.

And yet! and yet! O royal Calvary!
Whence divine sorrow triumphed through years past:
Could ages bow before mere memory?
Those passion-flowers must blossom, to the last.

Purple they bloom, the splendour of a King:
Crimson they bleed, the sacrament of Death:
About our thrones and pleasaunces they cling,
Where guilty eyes read, what each blossom saith.

1888.

ADVENTUS DOMINI.

_To the Rev. Radclyffe Dolling._

Et cherubim et seraphim descendit Rex:
Caelos caelorum linquit salvaturus nos.
Deserit, ne per saecula stet mortis lex,
Angelos Deus noster et Archangelos.

Tu, miserator! Tu, Christe misericors!
Tu, peccatores nos qui solus redimis:
Ut caeli gaudeant, ut moriatur mors,
Veni cum Angelis et cum Archangelis!

1890.

MEN OF ASSISI.

_To Viscount St. Cyres._

A crown of roses and of thorns;
A crown of roses and of bay:
Each crown of loveliness adorns
Assisi, gleaming far away
On Umbrian heights, in Umbrian day.

One bloomed, when Cynthia's lover sang
Cynthia, and revelry, and Rome:
And one his wounded hands did hang,
Whose heart was lovelier Love's dear home;
And his, an holier martyrdom.

Are the spring roses round thine head,
Propertius! as they were of old?
In the gray deserts of the dead,
Glows any wine in cups of gold?
Not all the truth, dead Cynthia told!

And round thine head, so lowly fair,
Saint Francis! thorns no longer close:
Paradise roses may be there,
And Mary lilies: only those.
Thy sister, Death, hurt not thy rose.

We to thy shade, with song and wine,
Libation make, Propertius!
While suns or stars of summer shine,
Thy passionate music thrills through us:
Hail to thee, hail! We crown thee, thus.

But when our hearts are chill and faint,
Pierced with true sorrow piteous:
Francis! our brother and God's Saint,
We worship thee, we hail thee, thus:
Praying, _Sweet Francis! pray for us._

O city on the Umbrian hills:
Assisi, mother of such sons!
What glory of remembrance fills
Thine heart, whereof the legend runs:
_These are among my vanished ones._

1890.

MEN OF AQUINO.

_To Charles Mulvany._

Those angry fires, that clove the air,
Heavy with Rome's imperial lust:
Those bitter fires, that burn and flare
Unquenched, above their kindler's dust:
Aquinum can their birth declare.

The wicked splendours of old time,
Juvenal! stung thy passionate heart.
Wrath learned of thee a scorn sublime;
The Muses, a prophetic art:
Yet pride and lust kept still their prime.

A greater birth, Aquinum knows:
Rank upon rank, in stately wise;
Rank upon rank, in ordered rows;
Like sacred hosts and hierarchies,
The march of holy science goes.

Vain, a man's voice, to conquer men!
Rome fell: Rome rose: Aquinum lent
The world her greater citizen:
Armed for Rome's war, Saint Thomas went,
Using God's voice: they listened, then.

Ah, Juvenal! thy trumpet sound:
Woe for the fallen soul of Rome!
But the high saint, whose music found
The altar its eternal home,
Sang: _Lauda Sion!_ heavenward bound.

A fourfold music of the Host,
He sang: the open Heavens shone plain.
Then back he turned him to his post,
And opened heavenly Laws again,
From first to last, both least and most.

O little Latin town! rejoice,
Who hast such motherhood, as this:
Through all the worlds of faith one voice
Chaunts forth the truth; yet stays not his,
Whose anger made a righteous choice.

1890

LUCRETIUS.

_To William Nash._

I.

Visions, to sear with flame his worn and haunted eyes,
Throng him: and fears unknown invest the black night hours.
His royal reason fights with undefeated Powers,
Armies of mad desires, legions of wanton lies;
His ears are full of pain, because of their fierce cries:
Nor from his tended thoughts, for all their fruits and flowers,
Comes solace: for Philosophy within her bowers
Falls faint, and sick to death. Therefore Lucretius dies.

Dead! And his deathless death hath him, so still and stark!
No change upon the deep, no change upon the earth,
None in the wastes of nature, the starred wilderness.
Wandering flames and thunders of the shaken dark:
Among the mountain heights, winds wild with stormy mirth:
These were before, and these will be: no more, no less.

1890.

II.

Lucretious! King of men, that are
No more, they think, than men:
Who, past the flaming walls afar,
Find nought within their ken:

The cruel draught, that wildered thee,
And drove thee upon sleep,
Was kinder than Philosophy,
Who would not let thee weep.

Thou knowest now, that life and death
Are wondrous intervals:
The fortunes of a fitful breath,
Within the flaming walls.

Without them, an eternal plan,
Which life and death obey:
Divinity, that fashions man,
Its high, immortal way.

Or was he right, thy past compare,
Thy one true voice of Greece?
Then, whirled about the unconscious air,
Thou hast a vehement peace.

No calms of light, no purple lands,
No sanctuaries sublime:
Like storms of snow, like quaking sands,
Thine atoms drift through time.

1889.