Chapter V

O Sons of Omar, what shall be the close
Seek not to know, for no man living knows:
But while within your hands the Wine is set
Drink ye--to Omar and the Dreaming Rose!

{134}

_To Edward Fitzgerald_

(MARCH 31ST, 1909)

'Tis a sad fate
To watch the world fighting,
All that is most fair
Ruthlessly blighting,
Blighting, ah! blighting.

When such a thought cometh
Let us not pine,
But gather old friends
Round the red wine--
Oh! pour the red wine!

And there we'll talk
And warm our wits
With Eastern fallacies
Out of old Fitz!
British old Fitz!

See him, half statesman--
Philosopher too--
Half ancient mariner
In baggy blue--
Such baggy blue!

{135}

Whimsical, wistful,
Haughty, forsooth:
Indolent always, yet
Ardent in truth,
But indolent, indolent!

There at the table
With us sits he,
Charming us subtly
To reverie,
Magic reverie.

"How sweet is summer's breath,
How sure and swift is death;
Nought wise on earth, save
What the wine whispereth,
Dreamily whispereth.

"At Naíshapúr beneath the sun,
Or here in misty Babylon,
Drink! for the rose leaves while you linger
Are falling, ever falling, one by one."

Ah! poet's soul, once more with us conspire
To grasp this sorry scheme of things entire,
Once more with us to-night, old Fitz, once more
Remould it nearer to the heart's desire!

{136}

_Yattendon_

Among the woods and tillage
That fringe the topmost downs,
All lonely lies the village,
Far off from seas and towns.
Yet when her own folk slumbered
I heard within her street
Murmur of men unnumbered
And march of myriad feet.

For all she lies so lonely,
Far off from towns and seas,
The village holds not only
The roofs beneath her trees:
While Life is sweet and tragic
And Death is veiled and dumb,
Hither, by singer's magic,
The pilgrim world must come.

{137}

_Devon_

Deep-wooded combes, clear-mounded hills of morn,
Red sunset tides against a red sea-wall,
High lonely barrows where the curlews call,
Far moors that echo to the ringing horn,--
Devon! thou spirit of all these beauties born,
All these are thine, but thou art more than all:
Speech can but tell thy name, praise can but fall
Beneath the cold white sea-mist of thy scorn.

Yet, yet, O noble land, forbid us not
Even now to join our faint memorial chime
To the fierce chant wherewith their hearts were hot
Who took the tide in thy Imperial prime;
Whose glory's thine till Glory sleeps forgot
With her ancestral phantoms, Pride and Time.

{138}

_Among the Tombs_

She is a lady fair and wise,
Her heart her counsel keeps,
And well she knows of time that flies
And tide that onward sweeps;
But still she sits with restless eyes
Where Memory sleeps--
Where Memory sleeps.

Ye that have heard the whispering dead
In every wind that creeps,
Or felt the stir that strains the lead
Beneath the mounded heaps,
Tread softly, ah! more softly tread
Where Memory sleeps--
Where Memory sleeps.

{139}

_Gold_

(AFTER GIOVANNI PASCOLI)

At bedtime, when the sunset fire was red
One cypress turned to gold beneath its touch.
"Sleep now, my little son," the mother said;
"In God's high garden all the trees are such."
Then did the child in his bright dream behold
Branches of gold, trees, forests all of gold.

{140}

_A Sower_

With sanguine looks
And rolling walk
Among the rooks
He loved to stalk,

While on the land
With gusty laugh
From a full hand
He scattered chaff.

Now that within
His spirit sleeps
A harvest thin
The sickle reaps;

But the dumb fields
Desire his tread,
And no earth yields
A wheat more red.

{141}

_The Mossrose_

Walking to-day in your garden, O gracious lady,
Little you thought as you turned in that alley remote and shady,
And gave me a rose and asked if I knew its savour--
The old-world scent of the mossrose, flower of a bygone favour--

Little you thought as you waited the word of appraisement,
Laughing at first and then amazed at my amazement,
That the rose you gave was a gift already cherished,
And the garden whence you plucked it a garden long perished.

But I--I saw that garden, with its one treasure
The tiny mossrose, tiny even by childhood's measure,
And the long morning shadow of the dusty laurel,
And a boy and a girl beneath it, flushed with a childish quarrel.

She wept for her one little bud: but he, outreaching
The hand of brotherly right, would take it for all her beseeching:

{142}

And she flung her arms about him, and gave like a sister,
And laughed at her own tears, and wept again when he kissed her.

So the rose is mine long since, and whenever I find it
And drink again the sharp sweet scent of the moss behind it,
I remember the tears of a child, and her love and her laughter,
And the morning shadows of youth and the night that fell thereafter.

{143}

_Ave, Soror_

I left behind the ways of care,
The crowded hurrying hours,
I breathed again the woodland air,
I plucked the woodland flowers:

Bluebells as yet but half awake,
Primroses pale and cool,
Anemones like stars that shake
In a green twilight pool--

On these still lay the enchanted shade,
The magic April sun;
With my own child a child I strayed
And thought the years were one.

As through the copse she went and came
My senses lost their truth;
I called her by the dear dead name
That sweetened all my youth.

{144}

_To a River in the South_

Call me no more, O gentle stream,
To wander through thy sunny dream,
No more to lean at twilight cool
Above thy weir and glimmering pool.

Surely I know thy hoary dawns,
The silver crisp on all thy lawns,
The softly swirling undersong
That rocks thy reeds the winter long.

Surely I know the joys that ring
Through the green deeps of leafy spring;
I know the elfin cups and domes
That are their small and secret homes.

Yet is the light for ever lost
That daily once thy meadows crossed,
The voice no more by thee is heard
That matched the song of stream and bird.

Call me no more!--thy waters roll
Here, in the world that is my soul,
And here, though Earth be drowned in night,
Old love shall dwell with old delight.

{145}

_On the Death of a Noble Lady_

Time, when thou shalt bring again
Pallas from the Trojan plain,
Portia from the Roman's hall,
Brynhild from the fiery wall,
Eleanor, whose fearless breath
Drew the venom'd fangs of Death,
And Philippa doubly brave
Or to conquer or to save--

When thou shalt on one bestow
All their grace and all their glow,
All their strength and all their state,
All their passion pure and great,
Some far age may honour then
Such another queen of men.

{146}

_Midway_

Turn back, my Soul, no longer set
Thy peace upon the years to come
Turn back, the land of thy regret
Holds nothing doubtful, nothing dumb.

There are the voices, there the scenes
That make thy life in living truth
A tale of heroes and of queens,
Fairer than all the hopes of youth.

{147}

_Ad Matrem Dolorosam_

Think not thy little fountain's rain
That in the sunlight rose and flashed,
From the bright sky has fallen again,
To cold and shadowy silence dashed.
The Joy that in her radiance leapt
From everlasting hath not slept.

The hand that to thy hand was dear,
The untroubled eyes that mirrored thine,
The voice that gave thy soul to hear
A whisper of the Love Divine--
What though the gold was mixed with dust?
The gold is thine and cannot rust.

Nor fear, because thy darling's heart
No longer beats with mortal life,
That she has missed the ennobling part
Of human growth and human strife.
Only she has the eternal peace
Wherein to reap the soul's increase.

{148}

_Vrais Amants_

(FOURTEENTH CENTURY)

"Time mocks thy opening music with a close;
What now he gives long since he gave away.
Thou deemst thy sun hath risen, but ere it rose
It was eclipsed, and dusk shall be thy day."

Yet has the Dawn gone up: in loveliest light
She walks high heaven beyond the shadow there:
Whom I too veiled from all men's envious sight
With inward eyes adore and silent prayer.

{149}

_The Sangreal_

Once, when beside me in that sacred place
I saw my lady lift her lovely head,
And saw the Chalice gleam above her face
And her dear lips with life immortal red,
Then, born again beyond the mist of years,
I knelt in Heaven, and drank the wine of tears.

{150}

_Sir Hugh the Palmer_