Chapter II: Part 2

On the grass at last I lay
Seized by a peace divine, I know not how;
Passive, yet never so possessed of power,
Strong, yet content to feel not use my strength
Sustained a babe upon the breasts of life
Yet armed with adult will, a shining spear.
O strong deliverance of the larger law
Which strove not with the less! impetuous youth
Caught up in ampler force of womanhood!
Co-operant ardours of joined lives! the calls
Of heart to heart in chase of strenuous deeds!
Virgin and wedded freedom not disjoined,
And loyal married service to my Queen!

Husband, have lesser gains these seven good years
Been yours because you chose no gracious maid
Whose hands had woven in the women’s room
Many fair garments, while her dreaming heart
Had prescience of the bridal; one whose claims,
Tender exactions feminine, had pleased
Fond husband, one whose gentle gifts had pleased,
Soft playful touches, little amorous words,
Untutored thoughts that widened up toward yours,
With trustful homage of uplifted eyes,
And sweetest sorrows lightly comforted?
Have we two challenged each the other’s heart
Too highly? Have our joys been all too large,
No gleaming gems on finger or on neck
A man may turn and touch caressingly,
But ampler than this heaven we stand beneath--
Wide wings of Presences august? Our lives,
Were it not better they had stood apart
A little space, letting the sweet sense grow
Of distance bridged by love? Had that full calm,--
I may not question since you call it true,--
Found in some rightness of a woman’s will,
Been gladder through perturbing touch of doubt,
By brief unrest made exquisitely aware
Of all its dear possession? Have our eyes
Met with too calm directness--soul to soul
Turned with the unerroneous long regard,
Until no stuff remains for dreams to weave,
Nought but unmeasured faithfulness, clear depths
Pierced by the sun, and yielding to the eye
Which searches, yet not fathoms? Did my lips
Lay on your lips too great a pledge of love
With awe too rapturous? Teach me how I fail,
Recount what things your life has missed through me,
Appease me with new needs; my strength is weak
Trembling toward perfect service.”

In her eyes
Tears stood and utterance ceased. Wondering the boy
Parthenopœus stopped his play and gazed.

EUROPA

“He stood with head erect fronting the herd;
At the first sight of him I knew the God
And had no fear. The grass is sweet and long
Up the east land backed by a pale blue heaven:
Grey, shining gravel shelves toward the sea
Which sang and sparkled; between these he stood,
Beautiful, with imperious head, firm foot,
And eyes resolved on present victory,
Which swerved not from the full acquist of joy,
Calmly triumphant. Did I see at all
The creamy hide, deep dewlap, little horns,
Or hear the girls describe them? I beheld
Zeus, and the law of my completed life.
Therefore the ravishment of some great calm
Possessed me, and I could not basely start
Or scream; if there was terror in my breast
It was to see the inevitable bliss
In prone descent from heaven; apart I lived
Held in some solitude, intense and clear,
Even while amid the frolic girls I stooped
And praised the flowers we gathered, they and I,
Pink-streaked convolvulus the warm sand bears,
Orchids, dark poppies with the crumpled leaf,
And reeds and giant rushes from a pond
Where the blue dragon-fly shimmers and shifts.
All these were notes of music, harmonies
Fashioned to underlie a resonant song,
Which sang how no more days of flower-culling
Little Europa must desire; henceforth
The large needs of the world resumed her life,
So her least joy must be no trivial thing,
But ordered as the motion of the stars,
Or grand incline of sun-flower to the sun.

By this the God was near; my soul waxed strong,
And wider orbed the vision of the world
As fate drew nigh. He stooped, all gentleness,
Inviting touches of the tender hands,
And wore the wreaths they twisted round his horns
In lordly-playful wise, me all this while
Summoning by great mandates at my heart,
Which silenced every less authentic call,
Away, away, from girlhood, home, sweet friends,
The daily dictates of my mother’s will,
Agenor’s cherishing hand, and all the ways
Of the calm household. I would fain have felt
Some ruth to part from these, the tender ties
Severing with thrills of passion. Can I blame
My heart for light surrender of things dear,
And hardness of a little selfish soul?
Nay: the decree of joy was over me,
There was the altar, I, the sacrifice
Foredoomed to life, not death; the victim bound
Looked for the stroke, the world’s one fact for her,
The blissful consummation: straight to this
Her course had tended from the hour of birth.
Even till this careless morn of maidenhood
A sudden splendour changed to life’s high noon:
For this my mother taught me gracious things,
My father’s thoughts had dealt with me, for this
The least flower blossomed, the least cloud went by,
All things conspired for this; the glad event
Summed my full past and held it, as the fruit
Holds the fair sequence of the bud and flower
In soft matureness.

Now he bent the knee;
I never doubted of my part to do,
Nor lingered idly, since to veil command
In tender invitation pleased my lord;
I sat, and round his neck one arm I laid
Beyond all chance secure. Whether my weight
Or the soft pressure of the encircling arm
Quickened in him some unexpected bliss
I know not, but his flight was one steep rush.
O uncontrollable and joyous rage!
O splendour of the multitudinous sea!
Swift foam about my feet, the eager stroke
Of the strong swimmer, new sea-creatures brave,
And uproar of blown conch, and shouting lips
Under the open heaven; till Crete rose fair
With steadfast shining peak, and promontories.

Shed not a leaf, O plane-tree, not a leaf,
Let sacred shadow, and slumbrous sound remain
Alway, where Zeus looked down upon his bride.”

ANDROMEDA

“This is my joy--that when my soul had wrought
Her single victory over fate and fear,
He came, who was deliverance. At the first,
Though the rough-bearded fellows bruised my wrists
Holding them backwards while they drove the bolts,
And stared around my body, workman-like,
I did not argue nor bewail; but when
The flash and dip of equal oars had passed,
And I was left a thing for sky and sea
To encircle, gaze on, wonder at, not save--
The clear resolve which I had grasped and held,
Slipped as a dew-drop slips from some flower-cup
O’erweighted, and I longed to cry aloud
One sharp, great cry, and scatter the fixed will,
In fond self-pity. Have you watched night-long,
Above a face from which the life recedes,
And seen death set his seal before the dawn?
You do not shriek and clasp the hands, but just
When morning finds the world once more all good
And ready for wave’s leap and swallow’s flight,
There comes a drift from undiscovered flowers,
A drone of sailing bee, a dance of light
Among the awakened leaves, a touch, a tang,
A nameless nothing, and the world turns round,
And the full soul runs over, and tears flow,
And it is seen a piteous thing to die.
So fared it there with me; the ripple ran
Crisp to my feet; the tufted sea-pink bloomed
From a cleft rock, I saw the insects drop
From blossom into blossom; and the wide
Intolerable splendour of the sea,
Calm in a liquid hush of summer morn,
Girdled me, and no cloud relieved the sky.
I had refused to drink the proffered wine
Before they bound me, and my strength was less
Than needful: yet the cry escaped not, yet
My purpose had not fallen abroad in ruin;
Only the perfect knowledge I had won
Of things which fate decreed deserted me,
The vision I had held of life and death
Was blurred by some vague mist of piteousness,
Nor could I lean upon a steadfast will.
Therefore I closed both eyes resolved to search
Backwards across the abysm, and find Death there,
And hold him with my hand, and scan his face
By my own choice, and read his strict intent
On lip and brow,--not hunted to his feet
And cowering slavewise; ‘Death,’ I whispered, ‘Death,’
Calling him whom I needed: and he came.

Wherefore record the travail of the soul
Through darkness to grey light, the cloudy war,
The austere calm, the bitter victory?
It seemed that I had mastered fate, and held,
Still with shut eyes, the passion of my heart
Compressed, and cast the election of my will
Into that scale made heavy with the woe
Of all the world, and fair relinquished lives.
Suddenly the broad sea was vibrated,
And the air shaken with confused noise
Not like the steadfast plash and creak of oars,
And higher on my foot the ripple slid.
The monster was abroad beneath the sun.
This therefore was the moment--could my soul
Sustain her trial? And the soul replied
A swift, sure ‘Yes’: yet must I look forth once,
Confront my anguish, nor drop blindly down
From horror into horror: and I looked--
O thou deliverance, thou bright victory
I saw thee, and was saved! The middle air
Was cleft by thy impatience of revenge,
Thy zeal to render freedom to things bound:
The conquest sitting on thy brow, the joy
Of thy unerring flight became to me
Nowise mere hope, but full enfranchisement.
A sculptor of the isles has carved the deed
Upon a temple’s frieze; the maiden chained
Lifts one free arm across her eyes to hide
The terror of the moment, and her head
Sideways averted writhes the slender neck:
While with a careless grace in flying curve,
And glad like Hermes in his aery poise,
Toward the gaping throat a youth extends
The sword held lightly. When to sacrifice
I pass at morn with my tall Sthenelos,
I smile, but do not speak. No! when my gaze
First met him I was saved; because the world
Could hold so brave a creature I was free:
Here one had come with not my father’s eyes
Which darkened to the clamour of the crowd,
And gave a grieved assent; not with the eyes
Of anguish-stricken Cassiopeia, dry
And staring as I passed her to the boat.
Was not the beauty of his strength and youth
Warrant for many good things in the world
Which could not be so poor while nourishing him?
What faithlessness of heart could countervail
The witness of that brow? What dastard chains?
Did he not testify of sovereign powers
O’ermatching evil, awful charities
Which save and slay, the terror of clear joy,
Unquenchable intolerance of ill,
Order subduing chaos, beauty pledged
To conquest of all foul deformities?
And was there need to turn my head aside,
I, who had one sole thing to do, no more,
To watch the deed? I know the careless grace
My Perseus wears in manage of the steed,
Or shooting the swift disc: not such the mode
Of that victorious moment of descent
When the large tranquil might his soul contains
Was gathered for a swift abolishment
Of proud brute-tyranny. He seemed in air
A shining spear which hisses in its speed
And smites through boss and breastplate. Did he see
Andromeda, who never glanced at her
But set his face against the evil thing?
I know not; yet one truth I may not doubt
How ere the wallowing monster blind and vast
Turned a white belly to the sun, he stood
Beside me with some word of comfort strong
Nourishing the heart like choral harmonies.
O this was then my joy, that I could give
A soul not saved from wretched female fright,
Or anarchy of self-abandoned will,
But one which had achieved deliverance,
And wrought with shaping hands among the stuff
Which fate presented. Had I shrunk from Death?
Might I not therefore unashamed accept--
In a calm wonder of unfaltering joy--
Life, the fair gift he laid before my feet?
Somewhat a partner of his deed I seemed;
His equal? Nay, yet upright at his side
Scarce lower by a head and helmet’s height
Touching my Perseus’ shoulder.

He has wrought
Great deeds. Athena loves to honour him;
And I have borne him sons. Look, yonder goes
Lifting the bow, Eleios, the last-born.”

EURYDICE

“Now must this waste of vain desire have end:
Fetter these thoughts which traverse to and fro
The road which has no issue! We are judged.
O wherefore could I not uphold his heart?
Why claimed I not some partnership with him
In the strict test, urging my right of wife?
How have I let him fall? I, knowing thee
My Orpheus, bounteous giver of rich gifts,
Not all inured in practice of the will,
Worthier than I, yet weaker to sustain
An inner certitude against the blank
And silence of the senses; so no more
My heart helps thine, and henceforth there remains
No gift to thee from me, who would give all,
Only the memory of me growing faint
Until I seem a thing incredible,
Some high, sweet dream, which was not, nor could be.
Ay, and in idle fields of asphodel
Must it not be that I shall fade indeed,
No memory of me, but myself; these hands
Ceasing from mastery and use, my thoughts
Losing distinction in the vague, sweet air,
The heart’s swift pulses slackening to the sob
Of the forgetful river, with no deed
Pre-eminent to dare and to achieve,
No joy for climbing to, no clear resolve
From which the soul swerves never, no ill thing
To rid the world of, till I am no more
Eurydice, and shouldst thou at thy time
Descend, and hope to find a helpmate here,
I were grown slavish, like the girls men buy
Soft-bodied, foolish-faced, luxurious-eyed,
And meet to be another thing than wife.

Would that it had been thus: when the song ceased
And laughterless Aidoneus lifted up
The face, and turned his grave persistent eyes
Upon the singer, I had forward stepped
And spoken--‘King! he has wrought well, nor failed,
Who ever heard divine large song like this,
Keener than sunbeam, wider than the air,
And shapely as the mould of faultless fruit?
And now his heart upon the gale of song
Soars with wide wing, and he is strong for flight,
Not strong for treading with the careful foot:
Grant me the naked trial of the will
Divested of all colour, scents and song:
The deed concerns the wife; I claim my share.’
O then because Persephone was by
With shadowed eyes when Orpheus sang of flowers,
He would have yielded. And I stepping forth
From the clear radiance of the singer’s heights,
Made calm through vision of his wider truth,
And strengthened by deep beauty to hold fast
The presences of the invisible things,
Had led the way. I know how in that mood
He leans on me as babe on mother’s breast,
Nor could he choose but let his foot descend
Where mine left lightest pressure; so are passed
The brute three-visaged, and the flowerless ways,
Nor have I turned my head; and now behold
The greyness of remote terrestrial light,
And I step swifter. Does he follow still?
O surely since his will embraces mine
Closer than clinging hand can clasp a hand:
No need to turn and dull with visible proof
The certitude that soul relies on soul!
So speed we to the day; and now we touch
Warm grass, and drink the Sun. O Earth, O Sun,
Not you I need, but Orpheus’ breast, and weep
The gladdest tears that ever woman shed,
And may be weak awhile, and need to know
The sustenance and comfort of his arms.

Self-foolery of dreams; come bitter truth.
Yet he has sung at least a perfect song
While the Gods heard him, and I stood beside
O not applauding, but at last content,
Fearless for him, and calm through perfect joy,
Seeing at length his foot upon the heights
Of highest song, by me discerned from far,
Now suddenly attained in confident
And errorless ascension. Did I ask
The lesser joy, lips’ touch and clasping arms,
Or was not this salvation? For I urged
Always, in jealous service to his art,
‘Now thou hast told their secrets to the trees
Of which they muse through lullèd summer nights;
Thou hast gazed downwards in the formless gulf
Of the brute-mind, and canst control the will
Of snake, and brooding panther fiery-eyed,
And lark in middle heaven: leave these behind!
And let some careless singer of the fields
Set to the shallow sound of cymbal-stroke
The Faun a-dance; some less true-tempered soul,
Which cannot shape to harmony august
The splendour and the tumult of the world,
Inflame to frenzy of delirious rage
The Mœnad’s breast; yea, and the hearts of men,
Smoke of whose fire upcurls from little roofs,
Let singers of the wine-cup and the roast,
The whirling spear, the toy-like chariot-race,
And bickering counsel of contending kings
Delight them: leave thou these; sing thou for Gods.’
And thou hast sung for Gods; and I have heard.

I shall not fade beneath this sunless sky,
Mixed in the wandering, ineffectual tribe;
For these have known no moment when the soul
Stood vindicated, laying sudden hands
On immortality of joy, and love
Which sought not, saw not, knew not, could not know
The instruments of sense; I shall not fade.
Yea, and thy face detains me evermore
Within the realm of light. Love, wherefore blame
Thy heart because it sought me? Could the years’
Whole sum of various fashioned happiness
Exceed the measure of that eager face
Importunate and pure, still lit with song,
Turning from song to comfort of my love,
And thirsty for my presence? We are saved!
Yield Heracles, thou brawn and thews of Zeus,
Yield up thy glory on Thessalian ground,
Competitor of Death in single strife!
The lyre methinks outdoes the club and fist,
And beauty’s ingress the outrageous force
Of tyrant though beneficent; supreme
This feat remains, a memory shaped for Gods.

Nor canst thou wholly lose me from thy life;
Still I am with thee; still my hand keeps thine;
Now I restrain from too intemperate grief
Being a portion of the thoughts that claim
Thy service; now I urge with that good pain
Which wastes and feeds the spirit, a desire
Unending; now I lurk within thy will
As vigour; now am gleaming through the world
As beauty; and if greater thoughts must lay
Their solemn light on thee, outshining mine,
And in some far faint-gleaming hour of Hell
I stand unknown and muffled by the boat
Leaning an eager ear to catch some speech
Of thee, and if some comer tell aloud
How Orpheus who had loved Eurydice
Was summoned by the Gods to fill with joy
And clamour of celestial song the courts
Of bright Olympus,--I, with pang of pride
And pain dissolved in rapture, will return
Appeased, with sense of conquest stern and high.”

But while she spoke, upon a chestnut trunk
Fallen from cliffs of Thracian Rhodope
Sat Orpheus, for he deemed himself alone,
And sang. But bands of wild-eyed women roamed
The hills, whom he had passed with calm disdain.
And now the shrilling Berecynthian pipe
Sounded, blown horn, and frantic female cries:
He ceased from song and looked for the event.

BY THE SEA

I. THE ASSUMPTION

Why would the open sky not be denied
Possession of me, when I sat to-day
Rock-couched, and round my feet the soft slave lay,
My singing Sea, dark-bosom’d, dusky-eyed?
She breathed low mystery of song, she sighed,
And stirred herself, and set lithe limbs to play
In blandishing serpent-wreaths, and would betray
An anklet gleaming, or a swaying side.
Why could she not detain me? Why must I
Devote myself to the dread Heaven, adore
The spacious pureness, the large ardour? why
Sprang forth my heart as though all wanderings
Had end? To what last bliss did I upsoar
Beating on indefatigable wings?

II. THE ARTIST’S WAITING

Tender impatience quickening, quickening;
O heart within me that art grown a sea,
How vexed with longing all thy live waves be,
How broken with desire! A ceaseless wing
O’er every green sea-ridge goes fluttering,
And there are cries and long reluctancy,
Swift ardours, and the clash of waters free,
Fain for the coming of some perfect Thing.
Emerge white Wonder, be thou born a Queen!
Let shine the splendours of thy loveliness
From the brow’s radiance to the equal poise
Of calm, victorious feet; let thy serene
Command go forth; replenish with strong joys
The spaces and the sea-deeps measureless.

III. COUNSELLORS

Who are chief counsellors of me? Who know
My heart’s desire and every secret thing?
Three of one fellowship: the encompassing
Strong Sea, who mindful of Earth’s ancient woe
Still surges on with swift, undaunted flow
That no sad shore should lack his comforting;
And next the serene Sky, whether he ring
With flawless blue a wilderness, or show
Tranced in the Twilight’s arms his fair child-star;
Third of the three, eldest and lordliest,
Love, all whose wings are wide above my head,
Whose eyes are clearer heavens, whose lips have said
Low words more rare than the quired sea-songs are,--
O Love, high things and stern thou counsellest.

IV. EVENING

Light ebbs from off the Earth; the fields are strange,
Dusk, trackless, tenantless; now the mute sky
Resigns itself to Night and Memory,
And no wind will yon sunken clouds derange,
No glory enrapture them; from cot or grange
The rare voice ceases; one long-breathèd sigh,
And steeped in summer sleep the world must lie;
All things are acquiescing in the change.
Hush! while the vaulted hollow of the night
Deepens, what voice is this the sea sends forth,
Disconsolate iterance, a passionless moan?
Ah! now the Day is gone, and tyrannous Light,
And the calm presence of fruit-bearing Earth:
Cry, Sea! it is thy hour; thou art alone.

V. JOY

Spring-tides of Pleasure in the blood, keen thrill
Of eager nerves,--but ended as a dream;
Look! the wind quickens, and the long waves gleam
Shoreward, and all this deep noon hour will fill
Each lone sea-cave with mirth immeasurable,
Huge sport of Ocean’s brood; yet eve’s red sky
Fades o’er spent waters, weltering sullenly,
The dank piled weed, the sand-waste grey and still.
Sad Pleasure in the moon’s control! But Joy
Is stable; is discovered law; the birth
Of dreadful light; life’s one imperative way;
The rigour hid in song; flowers’ strict employ
Which turn to meet their sun; the roll of Earth
Swift and perpetual through the night and day.

VI. OCEAN

More than bare mountains ’neath a naked sky,
Or star-enchanted hollows of the night
When clouds are riven, or the most sacred light
Of summer dawns, art thou a mystery
And awe and terror and delight, O sea!
Our Earth is simple-hearted, sad to-day
Beneath the hush of snow, next morning gay
Because west-winds have promised to the lea
Violets and cuckoo-buds; and sweetly these
Live innocent lives, each flower in its green field,
Joying as children in sun, air, and sleep.
But thou art terrible, with the unrevealed
Burden of dim lamentful prophecies,
And thy lone life is passionate and deep.

VII. NEWS FOR LONDON

Whence may I glean a just return, my friend,
For tidings of your great world hither borne?
What garbs of new opinion men have worn
I wot not, nor what fame world-without-end
Sprouted last night, nor know I to contend
For Irving or the Italian; but forlorn
In this odd angle of the isle from morn
Till eve, nor sow, nor reap, nor get, nor spend.
Yet have I heard the sea-gulls scream for glee
Treading the drenched rock-ridges, and the gale
Hiss over tremulous heath-bells, while the bee
Driven sidelong quested low; and I have seen
The live sea-hollows, and moving mounds grey-green,
And watched the flying foam-bow flush and fail.

AMONG THE ROCKS

Never can we be strangers, you and I,
Nor quite disown our mysteries of kin,
Grey Sea-rocks, since I sat an hour to-day
Companion of the Ocean and of you.
I, sensitive soft flesh a thorn invades,
The light breath of a rose can win aside,
Flesh fashioned to be hourly tried and thrill’d,
Delighted, tortured, to betray whose ward
The unready heart is ruler, still surprised,
With emissary flushes swift and false,
And tremulous to touches of the stars.
You, spiny ridges of the land, rude backs,
Clawless and wingless, half-created things,
Monsters at ease before the sun and sea,
Untamed, unshrinking, unpersuadable,
My kindred.

For the wide-delivering womb
Which casts abroad a mammoth as a man,
And still conceals the new and better birth,
Bore me and you. Old parents of the Sphinx
What words primeval murmured in my ears
To-day between the lapping of the waves?
What recognitions flashed and disappeared?
What rare faint touches passed of sympathy
From you to me, from me to you? What sense
Of the ancestral things shadowed the heart,
Cloud-like, and with the pleasure of a cloud.
Therefore I know from henceforth that the shrill
Short crying of the sea-lark when his feet
Touch where the wave slips off the shining sand
Pierces you; and the wide and luminous air
Impregnate with sharp sea smells is to you
A passion and allurement; and the sun
At mid-day loads your sense with drowsy warmth,
And in the waver and echo of your caves,
You cherish memories of the billowy chaunt,
And ponder its dim prophecy.

And I,--
Lo here I strike upon the granite too,
Something is here austere and obdurate
As you are, something rugged and untamed.
A strength behind the will. I am not all
The shapely, agile creature named a man,
So artful, with the quick-conceiving brain,
Nerve-network, and the hand to grasp and hold,
Most dexterous of kinds that wage the strife
Of being through the years. I am not all
This creature with the various heart, alive
To curious joys, rare anguish, skilled in shames,
Prides, hatreds, loves, fears, frauds, the heart which turns
A sudden venomous asp, the heart which bleeds
The red, great drops of glad self-sacrifice.
Pierce below these and seek the primal layer!
Behind Apollo loom the Earth-born Ones,
Half-god, half-brute; behind this symmetry,
This versatility of heart and brain
A strength abides, sustaining thought and love,
Untamed, unshrinking, unpersuadable,
At ease before the powers of Earth and Heaven,
Equal to any, of no younger years,
Calm as the greatest, haughty as the best,
Of imprescriptible authority.

Down upon you I sink, and leave myself,
My vain, frail self, and find repose on you,
Prime Force, whether amassed through myriad years
From dear accretions of dead ancestry,
Or ever welling from the source of things
In undulation vast and unperceived,
Down upon you I sink and lose myself!

My child that shouts and races on the sand
Your cry restores me. Have I been with Pan,
Kissing the hoofs of his goat-majesty?
You come, no granite of the nether earth,
Bright sea-flower rather, shining foam that flies,
Yet sweet as blossom of our inland fields.

TO A YEAR

Fly, Year, not backward down blind gulfs of night,
Thick with the swarm of miscreated things:
Forth, flying year, through calms and broader light,
Clear-eyed, strong-bosom’d year, on strenuous wings;
Bearing a song more high-intoned, more holy
Than the wild Swan’s melodious melancholy,
More rapturous than the atom lark outflings.

I follow on slow foot and unsubdued:
Have I not heard thy cry across the wind?
Not seen thee, Slayer of the serpent brood,--
Error, and doubt, and death, and anguish blind?
I follow, I shall know thee by thy plumes
Flame-tipped, when on that morn of conquered tombs,
I praise amidst my years the doom assigned.

A SONG OF THE NEW DAY

The tender Sorrows of the twilight leave me,
And shall I want the fanning of smooth wings?
Shall I not miss sweet sorrows? Will it grieve me
To hear no cooing from soft dove-like things?

Let Evening hear them! O wide Dawn uprisen,
Know me all thine; and ye, whose level flight
Has pierced the drear hours and the cloudy prison,
Cry for the pathless spaces and the light!

SWALLOWS

Wide fields of air left luminous,
Though now the uplands comprehend
How the sun’s loss is ultimate:
The silence grows; but still to us
From yon air-winnowing breasts elate
The tiny shrieks of glee descend.

Deft wings, each moment is resigned
Some touch of day, some pulse of light,
While yet in poised, delicious curve,
Ecstatic doublings down the wind,
Light dash and dip and sidelong swerve,
You try each dainty trick of flight.

Will not your airy glee relent
At all? The aimless frolic cease?
Know ye no touch of quelling pain,
Nor joy’s more strict admonishment,
No tender awe at day-light’s wane,
Ye slaves of delicate caprice?

Hush, once again that cry intense!
High-venturing spirits have your will!
Urge the last freak, prolong your glee,
Keen voyagers, while still the immense
Sea-spaces haunt your memory,
With zests and pangs ineffable.

Not in the sunshine of old woods
Ye won your warrant to be gay
By duteous, sweet observances,
Who dared through darkening solitudes,
And ’mid the hiss of alien seas,
The larger ordinance obey.

MEMORIALS OF TRAVEL

I. COACHING

(_In Scotland_)

Where have I been this perfect summer day,
--Or _fortnight_ is it, since I rose from bed,
Devour’d that kippered fish, the oatmeal bread,
And mounted to this box? O bowl away
Swift stagers through the dusk, I will not say
“Enough,” nor care where I have been or be,
Nor know one name of hill, or lake, or lea,
Or moor, or glen! Were not the clouds at play
Nameless among the hills, and fair as dreams?
On such a day we must love things not words,
And memory take or leave them as they are.
On such a day! What unimagined streams
Are in the world, how many haunts of birds,
What fields and flowers,--and what an evening Star!

II. IN A MOUNTAIN PASS

(_In Scotland_)

To what wild blasts of tyrannous harmony
Uprose these rocky walls, mass threatening mass,
Dusk, shapeless shapes, around a desolate pass?
What deep heart of the ancient hills set free
The passion, the desire, the destiny
Of this lost stream? Yon clouds that break and form,
Light vanward squadrons of the joyous storm,
They gather hither from what untrack’d sea?
Primeval kindred! here the mind regains
Its vantage ground against the world; here thought
Wings up the silent waste of air on broad
Undaunted pinion; man’s imperial pains
Are ours, and visiting fears, and joy unsought,
Native resolve, and partnership with God.

III. THE CASTLE

(_In Scotland_)

The tenderest ripple touched and touched the shore;
The tenderest light was in the western sky;--
Its one soft phrase, closing reluctantly,
The sea articulated o’er and o’er
To comfort all tired things; and one might pore,
Till mere oblivion took the heart and eye,
On that slow-fading, amber radiancy
Past the long levels of the ocean-floor.
A turn,--the castle fronted me, four-square,
Holding its seaward crag, abrupt, intense
Against the west, an apparition bold
Of naked human will; I stood aware,
With sea and sky, of powers unowned of sense,
Presences awful, vast, and uncontrolled.

IV. Άισθητιχή φαντασία

(_In Ireland_)

The sound is in my ears of mountain streams!
I cannot close my lids but some grey rent
Of wildered rock, some water’s clear descent
In shattering crystal, pine-trees soft as dreams
Waving perpetually, the sudden gleams
Of remote sea, a dear surprise of flowers,
Some grace or wonder of to-day’s long hours
Straightway possesses the moved sense, which teems
With fantasy unbid. O fair, large day!
The unpractised sense brings heavings from a sea
Of life too broad, and yet the billows range,
The elusive footing glides. Come, Sleep, allay
The trouble with thy heaviest balms, and change
These pulsing visions to still Memory.

V. ON THE SEA-CLIFF

(_In Ireland_)

Ruins of a church with its miraculous well,
O’er which the Christ, a squat-limbed dwarf of stone,
Great-eyed, and huddled on his cross, has known
The sea-mists and the sunshine, stars that fell
And stars that rose, fierce winter’s chronicle,
And centuries of dead summers. From his throne
Fronting the dawn the elf has ruled alone,
And saved this region fair from pagan hell.
Turn! June’s great joy abroad; each bird, flower, stream
Loves life, loves love; wide ocean amorously
Spreads to the sun’s embrace; the dulse-weeds sway,
The glad gulls are afloat. Grey Christ to-day
Our ban on thee! Rise, let the white breasts gleam,
Unvanquished Venus of the northern sea!

VI. ASCETIC NATURE

(_In Ireland_)

Passion and song, and the adornèd hours
Of floral loveliness, hopes grown most sweet,
And generous patience in the ripening heat,
A mother’s bosom, a bride’s face of flowers
--Knows Nature aught so fair? Witness ye Powers
Which rule the virgin heart of this retreat
To rarer issues, ye who render meet
Earth, purged and pure, for gracious heavenly dowers!
The luminous pale lake, the pearl-grey sky,
The wave that gravely murmurs meek desires,
The abashed yet lit expectance of the whole,
--These and their beauty speak of earthly fires
Long quenched, clear aims, deliberate sanctity,--
O’er the white forehead lo! the aureole.

VII. RELICS

(_In Switzerland_)

What relic of the dear, dead yesterday
Shall my heart keep? The visionary light
Of dawn? Alas! it is a thing too bright,
God does not give such memories away.
Nor choose I one fair flower of those that sway
To the chill breathing of the waterfall
In rocky angles black with scattering spray,
Fair though no sunbeam lays its coronal
Of light on their pale brows; nor glacier-gleam
I choose, nor eve’s red glamour; ’twas at noon
Resting I found this speedwell, while a stream,
That knew the immemorial inland croon,
Sang in my ears, and lulled me to a dream
Of English meadows, and one perfect June.

VIII. ON THE PIER OF BOULOGNE

(_A Reminiscence of 1870_)

A venal singer to a thrumming note
Chanted the civic war-song, that red flower
Of melody seized in a sudden hour
By frenzied winds of change, and borne afloat
A live light in the storm; and now by rote
To a cold crowd, while vague and sad the tide
Loomed after sunset and the grey gulls cried,
The verses quavered from a hireling throat.
Wherefore should English eyes their right forbear,
Or droop for smitten France? let the tossed sou,
Before they turn, be quittance for the stare.
O Lady, who, clear-voiced, with impulse true
To lift that cry “_To Arms!_” alone would dare,
My heart received a golden alms from you!

IX. DOVER

(_In a Field_)

A joy has met me on this English ground
I looked not for. O gladness, fields still green!
Listen,--the going of a murmurous sound
Along the corn; there is not to be seen
In all the land a single pilèd sheaf
Or line of grain new-fallen, and not a tree
Has felt as yet within its lightest leaf
The year’s despair; nay, Summer saves for me
Her bright, late flowers. O my Summer-time
Named low as lost, I turn, and find you here--
Where else but in our blessed English clime
That lingers o’er the sweet days of the year,
Days of long dreaming under spacious skies
Ere melancholy winds of Autumn rise.

AN AUTUMN SONG

Long Autumn rain;
White mists which choke the vale, and blot the sides
Of the bewildered hills; in all the plain
No field agleam where the gold pageant was,
And silent o’er a tangle of drenched grass
The blackbird glides.

In the heart,--fire,
Fire and clear air and cries of water-springs,
And large, pure winds; all April’s quick desire,
All June’s possession; a most fearless Earth
Drinking great ardours; and the rapturous birth
Of wingèd things.

BURDENS

Are sorrows hard to bear,--the ruin
Of flowers, the rotting of red fruit,
A love’s decease, a life’s undoing,
And summer slain, and song-birds mute,
And skies of snow and bitter air?
These things, you deem, are hard to bear.

But ah, the burden, the delight
Of dreadful joys! Noon opening wide,
Golden and great; the gulfs of night,
Fair deaths, and rent veils cast aside,
Strong soul to strong soul rendered up,
And silence filling like a cup.

SONG

(From “’Tis Pity she’s a Queen.”--A.D. 1610.)

ACT IV. SCENE 2.

_The_ LADY MARGARET, _with_ SUSAN _and_ LUCY; LADY M. _at her embroidery frame, singing_.

Girls, when I am gone away,
On this bosom strew
Only flowers meek and pale,
And the yew.

Lay these hands down by my side,
Let my face be bare;
Bind a kerchief round the face,
Smooth my hair.

Let my bier be borne at dawn,
Summer grows so sweet,
Deep into the forest green
Where boughs meet.

Then pass away, and let me lie
One long, warm, sweet day
There alone with face upturn’d,
One sweet day.

While the morning light grows broad,
While noon sleepeth sound,
While the evening falls and faints,
While the world goes round.

_Susan._ Whence had you this song, lady?

_L. Mar._ Out of the air;
From no one an it be not from the wind
That goes at noonday in the sycamore trees.
--When said the tardy page he would return?

_Susan._ By twelve, upon this very hour.

_L. Mar._ Look now,
The sand falls down the glass with even pace,
The shadows lie like yesterday’s. Nothing
Is wrong with the world. You are a part of it,--
I stand within a magic circle charm’d
From reach of anything, shut in from you,
Leagues from my needle, and this frame I touch,
Waiting till doomsday come--
[_Knocking heard_] The messenger!
Quick, I will wait you here, and hold my heart
Ready for death, or too much ravishment.

[_Exeunt both Girls._]

How the little sand-hill slides and slides; how many
Red grains would drop while a man’s keen knife drawn
Across one’s heart let the red life out?

_Susan._ [_returning_] Lady!

_L. Mar._ I know it by your eyes. O do not fear
To tell all punctually: I am carved of stone.

BY THE WINDOW

Still deep into the West I gazed; the light
Clear, spiritual, tranquil as a bird
Wide-winged that soars on the smooth gale and sleeps,
Was it from sun far-set or moon unrisen?
Whether from moon, or sun, or angel’s face
It held my heart from motion, stayed my blood,
Betrayed each rising thought to quiet death
Along the blind charm’d way to nothingness,
Lull’d the last nerve that ached. It was a sky
Made for a man to waste his will upon,
To be received as wiser than all toil,
And much more fair. And what was strife of men?
And what was time?

Then came a certain thing.
Are intimations for the elected soul
Dubious, obscure, of unauthentic power
Since ghostly to the intellectual eye,
Shapeless to thinking? Nay, but are not we
Servile to words and an usurping brain,
Infidels of our own high mysteries,
Until the senses thicken and lose the world,
Until the imprisoned soul forgets to see,
And spreads blind fingers forth to reach the day,
Which once drank light, and fed on angels’ food?

It happened swiftly, came and straight was gone.
One standing on some aery balcony
And looking down upon a swarming crowd
Sees one man beckon to him with finger-tip
While eyes meet eyes; he turns and looks again--
The man is lost, and the crowd sways and swarms.
Shall such an one say “Thus ’tis proved a dream,
And no hand beckoned, no eyes met my own?”
Neither can I say this. There was a hint,
A thrill, a summons faint yet absolute,
Which ran across the West; the sky was touch’d,
And failed not to respond. Does a hand pass
Lightly across your hair? you feel it pass
Not half so heavy as a cobweb’s weight,
Although you never stir; so felt the sky
Not unaware of the Presence, so my soul
Scarce less aware. And if I cannot say
The meaning and monition, words are weak
Which will not paint the small wing of a moth,
Nor bear a subtile odour to the brain,
And much less serve the soul in her large needs.
I cannot tell the meaning, but a change
Was wrought in me; it was not the one man
Who come to the luminous window to gaze forth,
And who moved back into the darkened room
With awe upon his heart and tender hope;
From some deep well of life tears rose; the throng
Of dusty cares, hopes, pleasures, prides fell off,
And from a sacred solitude I gazed
Deep, deep into the liquid eyes of Life.

SUNSETS

Did your eyes watch the mystic sunset splendours
Through evenings of old summers, slow of parting,--
Wistful while loveliest gains and fair surrenders
Hallow’d the West,--till tremulous tears came starting?

Did your soul wing her way on noiseless pinion
Through lucid fields of air, and penetrated
With light and silence roam the wide dominion
Where Day and Dusk embrace,--serene, unmated?

And they are past the shining hours and tender,
And snows are fallen between, and winds are driven?
Nay, for I find across your face the splendour,
And in your wings the central winds of heaven.

They reach me, those lost sunsets. Undivining
Your own high mysteries you pause and ponder;
See, in my eyes the vanished light is shining,
Feel, through what spaces of clear heaven I wander!

OASIS

Let them go by--the heats, the doubts, the strife;
I can sit here and care not for them now,
Dreaming beside the glimmering wave of life
Once more,--I know not how.

There is a murmur in my heart, I hear
Faint, O so faint, some air I used to sing;
It stirs my sense; and odours dim and dear
The meadow-breezes bring.

Just this way did the quiet twilights fade
Over the fields and happy homes of men,
While one bird sang as now, piercing the shade,
Long since,--I know not when.

FOREIGN SPEECH

Ah, do not tell me what they mean,
The tremulous brook, the scarcely stirred
June leaves, the hum of things unseen,
This sovran bird.

Do they say things so deep, and rare,
And perfect? I can only tell
That they are happy, and can bear
Such ignorance well;

Feeding on all things said and sung
From hour to hour in this high wood
Articulate in a strange, sweet tongue
Not understood.

IN THE TWILIGHT

A noise of swarming thoughts,
A muster of dim cares, a foil’d intent,
With plots and plans, and counterplans and plots;
And thus along the city’s edges grey
Unmindful of the darkening autumn day
With a droop’d head I went.

My face rose,--through what spell?--
Not hoping anything from twilight dumb:
One star possessed her heaven. Oh! all grew well
Because of thee, and thy serene estate:
Silence ... I let thy beauty make me great;
What though the black night come.

THE INNER LIFE

I. A DISCIPLE

Master, they argued fast concerning Thee,
Proved what Thou art, denied what Thou art not,
Till brows were on the fret, and eyes grew hot,
And lip and chin were thrust out eagerly;
Then through the temple-door I slipped to free
My soul from secret ache in solitude,
And sought this brook, and by the brookside stood
The world’s Light, and the Light and Life of me.
It is enough, O Master, speak no word!
The stream speaks, and the endurance of the sky
Outpasses speech: I seek not to discern
Even what smiles for me Thy lips have stirred;
Only in Thy hand still let my hand lie,
And let the musing soul within me burn.

II. THEISTS

Who needs God most? That man whose pulses play
With fullest life-blood; he whose foot dare climb
To Joy’s high limit, solitude sublime
Under a sky whose splendour sure must slay
If Godless; he who owns the sovereign sway
Of that small inner voice and still, what time
His whole life urges toward one blissful crime,
And Hell confuses Heaven, and night, the day.
It is he whose faithfulness of love puts by
Time’s anodyne, and that gross palliative,
A Stoic pride, and bears all humanly;
He whose soul grows one long desire to give
Measureless gifts; ah! let _him_ quickly die
Unless he lift frail hands to God and live.

III. SEEKING GOD

I said “I will find God,” and forth I went
To seek Him in the clearness of the sky,
But over me stood unendurably
Only a pitiless, sapphire firmament
Ringing the world,--blank splendour; yet intent
Still to find God, “I will go and seek,” said I,
“His way upon the waters,” and drew nigh
An ocean marge weed-strewn and foam-besprent;
And the waves dashed on idle sand and stone,
And very vacant was the long, blue sea;
But in the evening as I sat alone,
My window open to the vanishing day,
Dear God! I could not choose but kneel and pray
And it sufficed that I was found of Thee.

IV. DARWINISM IN MORALS

High instincts, dim previsions, sacred fears,
--Whence issuing? Are they but the brain’s amassed
Tradition, shapings of a barbarous past,
Remoulded ever by the younger years,
Mixed with fresh clay, and kneaded with new tears?
No more? The dead chief’s ghost a shadow cast
Across the roving clan, and thence at last
Comes God, who in the soul His law uprears?
Is this the whole? Has not the Future powers
To match the Past,--attractions, pulsings, tides,
And voices for purged ears? Is all our light
The glow of ancient sunsets and lost hours?
Advance no banners up heaven’s eastern sides?
Trembles the margin with no portent bright?

V. AWAKENING

With brain o’erworn, with heart a summer clod,
With eye so practised in each form around,--
And all forms mean,--to glance above the ground
Irks it, each day of many days we plod,
Tongue-tied and deaf, along life’s common road.
But suddenly, we know not how, a sound
Of living streams, an odour, a flower crowned
With dew, a lark upspringing from the sod,
And we awake. O joy and deep amaze!
Beneath the everlasting hills we stand,
We hear the voices of the morning seas,
And earnest prophesyings in the land,
While from the open heaven leans forth at gaze
The encompassing great cloud of witnesses.

VI. FISHERS

We by no shining Galilean lake
Have toiled, but long and little fruitfully
In waves of a more old and bitter sea
Our nets we cast; large winds, that sleep and wake
Around the feet of Dawn and Sunset, make
Our spiritual inhuman company,
And formless shadows of water rise and flee
All night around us till the morning break.
Thus our lives wear--shall it be ever thus?
Some idle day, when least we look for grace,
Shall we see stand upon the shore indeed
The visible Master, and the Lord of us,
And leave our nets, nor question of His creed,
Following the Christ within a young man’s face?

VII. COMMUNION

Lord, I have knelt and tried to pray to-night,
But Thy love came upon me like a sleep,
And all desire died out; upon the deep
Of Thy mere love I lay, each thought in light
Dissolving like the sunset clouds, at rest
Each tremulous wish, and my strength weakness, sweet
As a sick boy with soon o’erwearied feet
Finds, yielding him unto his mother’s breast
To weep for weakness there. I could not pray,
But with closed eyes I felt Thy bosom’s love
Beating toward mine, and then I would not move
Till of itself the joy should pass away;
At last my heart found voice,--“Take me, O Lord,
And do with me according to Thy word.”

VIII. A SONNET FOR THE TIMES

What! weeping? Had ye your Christ yesterday,
Close wound in linen, made your own by tears,
Kisses, and pounds of myrrh, the sepulchre’s
Mere stone most venerable? And now ye say
“No man hath seen Him, He is borne away
We wot not where.” And so, with many a sigh,
Watching the linen clothes and napkin lie,
Ye choose about the grave’s sad mouth to stay.
Blind hearts! Why seek the living amongst the dead?
Better than carols for the babe new-born
The shining young men’s speech “He is not here;”
Why question where the feet lay, where the head?
Come forth; bright o’er the world breaks Easter morn,
He is arisen, Victor o’er grief and fear.

IX. EMMAUSWARD

Lord Christ, if Thou art with us and these eyes
Are holden, while we go sadly and say
“We hoped it had been He, and now to-day
Is the third day, and hope within us dies,”
Bear with us, O our Master, Thou art wise
And knowest our foolishness; we do not pray
“Declare Thyself, since weary grows the way
And faith’s new burden hard upon us lies.”
Nay, choose Thy time; but ah! whoe’er Thou art
Leave us not; where have we heard any voice
Like Thine? Our hearts burn in us as we go;
Stay with us; break our bread; so, for our part
Ere darkness falls haply we may rejoice,
Haply when day has been far spent may know.

X. A FAREWELL

Thou movest from us; we shall see Thy face
No more. Ah, look below these troubled eyes,
This woman’s heart in us that faints and dies,
Trust not our faltering lips, our sad amaze;
Glance some time downward from Thy golden place,
And know how we rejoice. It is meet, is wise;
High tasks are Thine, surrenders, victories,
Communings pure, mysterious works and ways.
Leave us: how should we keep Thee in these blown
Grey fields, or soil with earth a Master’s feet?
Nor deem us comfortless: have we not known
Thee once, for ever. Friend, the pain is sweet
Seeing Thy completeness to have grown complete,
Thy gift it is that we can walk alone.

XI. DELIVERANCE

I prayed to be delivered, O true God,
Not from the foes that compass us about,--
Them I might combat; not from any doubt
That wrings the soul; not from Thy bitter rod
Smiting the conscience; not from plagues abroad,
Nor my strong inward lusts; nor from the rout
Of worldly men, the scourge, the spit, the flout,
And the whole dolorous way the Master trod.
All these would rouse the life that lurks within,
Would save or slay; these things might be defied
Or strenuously endured; yea, pressed by sin
The soul is stung with sudden, visiting gleams;
Leave these, if Thou but scatter, Lord, I cried,
The counterfeiting shadows and vain dreams.

XII. PARADISE LOST

O would you read that Hebrew legend true
Look deep into the little children’s eyes,
Who walk with naked souls in Paradise,
And know not shame; who, with miraculous dew
To keep the garden ever fair and new,
Want not our sobbing rains in their blue skies.
Among the trees God moves, and o’er them rise
All night in deeper heavens great stars to view.
Ah, how we wept when through the gate we came!
What boots it to look back? The world is ours,
Come, we will fare, my brothers, boldly forth;
Let that dread Angel wave the sword of flame
Forever idly round relinquished bowers--
Leave Eden there; we will subdue the earth.

THE RESTING PLACE

How all things transitory, all things vain
Desert me! Whither am I sinking slow
On the prone wing, to what predestined home,
What peace beyond all peace, what ultimate joy?
Nay, cease from questioning, care not to know,
Let bliss dissolve each thought, all function cease,
Fold close the wing, let the soft-flowing light
Permeate, and merely once uplift drooped lids
To mark the world remote, the abandoned shore,
Fretted with much vain pleasure, futile pain,
Far, far.

The deepening peace! a dawn of essences
Awful and incommunicably dear!
Grace opening into grace, joy quenching joy!
Thy waves and billows have gone over me
Blissful and calm, and still the dreams drop off,
And true things grow more true, and larger orbs
The strong salvation which has seized my soul.

The stream of the attraction draws me on
Toward some centre; all will quickly end,
All be attained. The sweetness of repose
And this swift motion slay the consciousness
Of being, and bind up the will in sleep.
Silence and light accept my soul--I touch....
Is it death’s centre or the breast of God?

NEW HYMNS FOR SOLITUDE

I

I come to Thee not asking aught; I crave
No gift of Thine, no grace;
Yet where the suppliants enter let me have
Within Thy courts a place.

My hands, my heart contain no offering;
Thy name I would not bless
With lips untouched by altar-fire; I bring
Only my weariness.

These are the children, frequent in Thy home;
Grant, Lord, to each his share;
Then turn, and merely gaze on me, who come
To lay my spirit bare.

II

Yet one more step--no flight
The weary soul can bear--
Into a whiter light,
Into a hush more rare.

Take me, I am all Thine,
Thine now, not seeking Thee,--
Hid in the secret shrine,
Lost in the shoreless sea.

Grant to the prostrate soul
Prostration new and sweet,
Make weak the weak, control
Thy creature at Thy feet.