Chapter III: Part II: Later Poems (2)

Is cloven by the gleaming shafts of morn,
Ascending new with all his glittering train
To bring me peace, or strange tempestuous pain;
Or soft winds singing in the sacred grove
That keeps thy shrine, and where I talk with Love,
Watching the far-off sea whence hope is born.

VIII

LOVE’S HOPE

JOY, like the flashes of a fitful sun,
Falls on my storm-worn heart, and kindling, dies
In wandering gleams about the changeful skies,
Cloud-built with tempest towers, and wind-undone:
For winds make desolate the day begun
Wild on my path that climbs a bleak green hill,
Among the writhen thorns, oft traversed, chill
With the breath of March, until the ridge is won:

Wherefrom I think to gain some hopeful sign,
As range mine eyes the saddened landscape round,
That keeps my soul’s white house, whence I return,
With thoughts that may not utterly repine,
But hearing even in the strong wind’s sound
The shout of coming spring which makes me burn.

IX

LOVE’S DOUBT

DOUBT, Hope, and Fear, all day within my breast
Have clanged in cruel war where none prevail,
Though their fierce cries have rent the sacred veil,
When in Love’s sanctuary I sought to rest.

Since brazen morn awoke this wild alarm
So have they striven long with clashing swords
Of two edged thought—since fell the words
Upon my soul from herald lips of harm;

Whose message strange a fiery hand imprest
In charact’ry that burns my mazèd sight:
Yet loud with iron hands they tear and smite,
But through the cloud of strife I see Hope’s crest
Rise loftier, and his voice above the rest
Grows calm and clearer with the falling night.

X

LOVE’S GARLAND

YOUNG Love with rosy wings came through a mead,
Whereon before the feet of spring had gone,
Along a slender brook that wound and shone
By stems made bright with blooms of fruitful deed.
He gathered as he went of such fair seed
As Spring upon her grassy ways had sown,
And in his fingers wove a garland crown
That faded not, or drooped or died for need.

Full soon the stream had brought him to a space
Of orchard green, where maidens sweet were met
With Time’s frail gifts around his dial stone;
And, these among, thou sat’st in such sweet grace,
That, seeing thee, Love on thy dear head set
His magic wreath and crowned thee on my throne.

XI

LOVE’S ARROWS

I SAW young Love make trial of his bow,
In May’s green garden where he shot his dart,
Nor recked if any nigh beheld his art,
But other eyes did mark him as I know;
For my sweet lady sate anear his throw,
And I with her, and joinèd heart to heart,
So that we might not feel the bitter smart
Love leaveth there when time doth force us go.

We heard Love’s arrows falling in the grass,
Or watched them quiver in the targe below;
Yet few to us came nigh, nor might they pass
Beyond our feet, which trembled when they came,
Whose hearts were not the quarry for his aim,
That in Love’s chase fell stricken long ago.

XII

LOVE’S HARVEST

I STAND to gaze across the years’ long fields
That have the tinge of Autumn, and their gold
Gathered by careful hours on lea and wold;
Rich spoils of time that he to Love upyields
Who yet amid fair corn his sickle wields,
Though harvest’s done, and summer groweth old:
Well-storèd barns, and orchards he doth hold
Whose wealth against the steely winter shields.

Unto my feet the days, like full-eared sheaves,
Have fallen, one by one, time-bound and borne
To be the bread of Love through barren days;
E’en such dear heritage the sweet year leaves,
And life to live again Love’s night and morn
Whose light thou art, whose glory is their praise.

·PART·II·

·LATER·POEMS·

SWEET bird, what makes thee glad?
Beneath this sky so wan and sad,
And leafless poplars, thin and grey,
Bowed down before the wintry sway.

What tuneful thought of days gone by
Doth make thee sing? Or knowest thou why
Thy soul is lifted up, sweet bird?
Or dost thou hear Spring’s voice, unheard
Of earth that sleeps, nor, dreaming, minds
The herald blast of trumpet winds
That make old Winter’s fortress quail,
And force him cast his coat of mail.

What secret bower thy shape doth keep?
Close hidden by the buds that sleep;
Thy voice—the firstling bloom that blows—
Breaks joyful through the wintry boughs,
That bear thy song of promise, meet
For happy hours when lovers greet,
When every leaf-lorn tree shall bear
Flower, fruit, and song upon the air,
And summer’s choir is full, and gay
The soft winds on the sun’s feast-day.

Sweet bird, as thou dost sing, my soul
Doth partly catch the speechless whole
Of joyful pain that lifts the wings
Of thy sequestered music—things
Remembered half, and half forgot,
Of sight, or sound, or sense begot,
Confused in love’s ambrosial streams,
And hidden in the house of dreams;
As frail sweet scent of flowers that hold
Past time and days in some book’s fold,
Which, when the leaves are turned again,
Doth warm, like wine, the wintry brain.

O bird, thy heart doth sing in me,
I hear what thou dost hear—I see
Upon a high green land, untrod
Of men, upon the flower-wrought sod
The feet of Spring, and her bright throng
Break from the woods with shout and song;
Soft piping winds with pleasant cheer
Before her go, her path to clear,
Sweet maids come with her, and behind,
Light-footed as the lifting wind:
Some bear her canopy on high,
And warm gleams gild it from the sky;
Some strew with flowers the flower-strewn ground,
Some bind them garlands, some are bound,
And still, with all the happy rout,
Fleet little loves wind in and out;
Some hide in maiden’s fluttering weed,
And ply their pretty arts, nor heed,
While wilful gusts make sport, like them,
With mantle’s fold, and garment’s hem;
Or some, more bold, soft vengeance wreak
On lifting hair, and glowing cheek.

But, scarce the wood hath set them free,
Some forceful sprite in winter’s fee
To snatch Spring’s garland would make bold,
Whom shrill the shrinking maids do scold,
Until the sun, their champion bright,
Doth drive aback the wintry knight,
Whose wild assault being overthrown,
Far in the woodland makes he moan,
And gentle Spring with all her train
Doth hold high court on earth again.

ROCKED as in some fairy boat,
By swift fancy set afloat,
’Twixt the oceans, blue and green,
Of grass beneath, and sky serene,
Where the streams of dusk and day
Meet and mingle, far away,
On the universal tide,
Still with time and life to glide.

Boat, that, pendent ’mid the trees,
Swingeth moored, yet sails the seas,
Stem and stern from east to west,
Bound upon an unknown quest,
Past the marge of night and day,
Blanched or strewn with starry spray;
By the oar-strokes of the blood,
Glides the shallop of my mood,
On the windings of the flood,
Shadowed by the summer wood,
Dusk with dreams yon leaves that play
With the falling blooms of May.

Like the web the Fates do spin
Helpless man to cradle in—
Hung, with life, upon a thread,
Here I swing, and, o’er my head,
Maze of apples, boughs and leaves,
Meshed wherein, my thought enweaves
Tapestry, phantasmic, strange,
Shot with shifting dyes of change:
So my shallow bark and frail
Spreads a rich emblazoned sail,
Filled, as now the summer breeze
Fans my brain and stirs the trees,
Where, a hidden heart of fire,
Strives the moon in her desire
Still to pierce the leafy fret
Her celestial seat to get.

Cynthia’s self that silver shape,
Boskage dark, she doth escape,
Long her gleaming body hid
Forth from its embraces slid,
Doth naked, glorious, emerge
Upon the lucent starry verge.

Let me linger in the wood,
Hear the sound of pipings rude,
Watch the shapes of nymph and fawn,
Centaurs fleet across the lawn,
Satyrs brown, in rhythmic dance,
By the stream great Pan, perchance,
Hidden in the vocal reed—
All the happy antique breed.

I would turn again the book,
Yet again to steal a look,
Back to where Time’s firstling ran—
Arboreal ancestral man:
Wooing shy his dusky mate,
Wild-eyed, half articulate:
In his rude canoe, askance,
See him poise his flint-tipped lance,
Flashing in the ardent noon
O’er the sedgy broad lagoon,
When Thames reeds the river-horse
Crushed in his unconscious force.

Swinging on the pendent bough
Had he sweet content enow?
Basking in the primal sun
Recked he how his race should run?
How, for forest night of trees,
Cities spreading, dense as these,
Where the shade of gilded pride,
Starved and savage men, should hide
Human vampires, hawks and flies,
Gliding snakes and lustrous eyes,
Dainty beauty, plumaged fair,
Hollow masks for smiling care,
Hopeless toil that smileth not,
Misery, untold, forgot—
Where the throng of fashion flaunts,
Where, in dark unwholesome haunts,
Lurks a darker race, to prowl
Desert streets when night doth scowl,
Desert stoney streets, and bare,
’Neath a strange electric glare,
Fiery eyed to track them down,
Homeless on the heartless town.

Ah! could early man, or late,
Set his ways, or Nature’s, straight,
Who life’s stream doth careless pour,
Lets the cup brim o’er and o’er,
Who will drink, or, drinking, dream,
With the chosen skim the cream,
Struggle with the ravening swine,
For residue, or helpless whine,
Lazarus at Dives’ gate,
Dives at his feast of state,
Rising with a hungry heart,
As, one by one, life’s guests depart.

Could we chain those monsters up
That on human lives do sup—
Shameless lust of rule and gold,
Lawless greed grown overbold,
Vice and drink with palsied hand
Riding down the joyless land—
Then, if humanity could be
From these, and other tyrants, free
To win its bread—to win, I wot,
Vine, and fig, and breathing plot,
Joy in work, and joy in leisure,
Love and art to fill life’s measure,
Force and fraud might vainly rage
To see, new born, the golden age.

Sailing thus, as thought doth steer,
With the moon through cloud and clear,
Fancy flutt’ring at the prow,
Sirens singing soft and low,
From the opal shores and streams,
Where they dye the cloth of dreams—
From the present and the past
Have I touched the land at last!
Voyaging the world around
Yet anchored still to English ground.

June, 1884.

THE SIRENS THREE

DEDICATORY SONNET

TO

WILLIAM MORRIS

THE Mage of Naishapur in English tongue
Beside the northern sea, I, wandering, read,
With chaunt of breaking waves each verse was said,
Till, storm-possessed, my heart in answer sung;
And to the winds my ship of thoughts I flung,
And drifted wide upon the ocean dread
Of space and time, ere thought and life were bred,
Till Hope did cast the anchor, and I clung.

The Book of Omar saw I limned in gold,
And decked with vine and rose and pictured pause,
Enwrought by hands of one well skilled and bold
In art and poesy and Freedom’s cause—
Hope of humanity and equal laws—
To him and to this hope be mine enscrolled.

I

LOST on a sleepless sea, without avail
My soul’s ship drifted wide, with idle sail
And slow pulsating oars, that night’s blue gulf
Beat noiselessly to Time’s recurring tale.

II

The rolling hours like waves broke, one by one,
Upon the tide of thought time’s sands outrun,
And cloudy visions hovered o’er my bed,
Piled to the stars, full soon like cloud undone:

III

As, like the wan moon through her fleecy sea,
My spirit clove their rack unceasingly,
And struck at last upon an unknown ground,
More still than sleep, more strange than dreamlands be.

IV

The echoes of lost thoughts wild music made,
Like Sirens, heard above the winds that played,
Above the rhythmic waves’ tumultuous tone,
Upon the hollows of that coast decayed.

V

Yea, on the strand they stood, the Sirens three—
No More, and golden Now, and dark To be,
Whose vocal harps are love, and hope, and grief;
To these they sang, and waved their hands to me.

VI

Who thence, unto the shore, escaping, clung,
As from the dread insatiate ocean’s tongue
That lapped the barren sand, and evermore,
Above its vain recoil, the Sisters sung.

* * * * *

VII

Prone on that unknown land, outcast, forlorn,
My soul lay; watching for the eyes of morn;
As from a dying universe adrift,
A naked life—to what dim world new born?

VIII

All former things had passed, the sea’s salt tears
From Youths’ frail ship had washed false hopes and fears,
And relics, treasured once, bestrewed the sand,
Wrapped in the clinging weed the seamaid wears.

IX

The bodies of lost Faith and Love, outcast,
Spurned by the waves, and clinging to the mast,
Were flung upon the shore, mid drift and wreck,—
Time’s fragile shells, which frailer lives outlast.

X

As at the world’s end left, the last of men,
Or ere the first was sphered, beyond his ken,
Was I, mid tumbled kosmic fragments cast—
A babe at play within a mammoth’s den:

XI

Mid bones of power extinct, and its lost prey,
With shreds and shards of unknown primal day—
The formless Future, and the Past forgot,
The broken statue, and the sculptor’s clay.

XII

The blue-breast bird of space his fan outspread,
And shook the starry splendour o’er my head—
A wood of eyes that wonder at the world,
Glassed in the world’s eyes’ wonder, scanned and read:

XIII

Each burning orb that did the sky emblaze
Upon my spirit lone cast piercing gaze;
World beyond world enringed, and suns aflame
Shot from night’s spangled cloud their storm of rays.

XIV

As doth the glass to one bright point intense
Draw the sun’s fervour to our shrinking sense;
So, on my soul, the concentrated fire
Of countless suns that moment did condense.

XV

My brain, an instant’s Atlas, seemed to bear
The Universe immense, and all its care;
For thought’s frail arms intolerable weight,
Since Nature’s triumph still is Man’s despair.

XVI

Untilled, unknown, the trackless regions spread
Which Thought, belated wanderer, doth tread,
Where, like river flashing through the night,
The milky way its myriad star-foam shed.

XVII

Cast from what vital source—what teeming brain?
By blind persistent force—from fiery rain?
Suns, moons, and stars, transmuted, globed, and hung—
The dew of Space upon its blue campaign:

XVIII

Trod by the feet of Time, as he doth go,
A labourer night and morn to reap and sow—
Who counts the glittering drops—the spheres that fall,
Or marvels they should hold such weight of woe?

XIX

Each drop a desert, or a battle-ground
Of life in its arena ringed around,
Where without quarter wears the endless war,
Till Death the hunter slips his famished hound.

XX

Here, circling with the horses of the sun,
Man’s fateful race from day to day is run;
Bound in this narrow ring—his crown, his grave
Still as the world for each is lost or won.

* * * * *

XXI

Then, like a homeless one, my spirit turned
For shelter ’neath the roofless void, and—spurned
From the star-desert to the stony one—
Scanned the dark waste where yet no hearth fire burned:

XXII

But through the veil of night, around me there,
Rose towering shapes clothed in the voiceless air,
Like kings enthroned amid their powers’ decay—
Statue, and ruined shrine, and temple bare:

XXIII

Dolmen, and sphinx, and Greek or Gothic fane,
The shattered caskets of man’s winged brain,
Whose flight hath left them empty, desolate,
Sublime in ruin on the crumbling plain.

XXIV

The perished bodies frail that once did house
His restless soul, and heard his sacred vows
To his own likeness, dressed in speech or stone,
Ere he forswore them for some fairer spouse.

XXV

He sought for Truth, and cried, “Where dost thou dwell?”
Ten thousand tongues replied, but none could tell:
They held their peace, and then the stones did cry—
“Lo! Truth sits naked by the wayside well.”

XXVI

She sitteth naked since they drove her out
From Babel of the Creeds to wastes of Doubt;
There hath she wandered long in dens and caves,
Through Custom’s winter, and through Reason’s drought.

XXVII

They would have cloaked her as a shameful thing;
Force brought her chains, and Fraud a marriage ring,
But Truth, affrighted, fled the market place
Where lies were coined in gold, and Craft was king.

XXVIII

And still she flies from sacred fount, and school,
When man defiles, or doth his kind befool;
And still they wait, the halt, the lame, the blind,
Though Truth, the angel, troubleth not the pool.

XXIX

A wandering spirit in this street of tombs,
I sought her yet who still to travel dooms,
From hostel unto hostel o’er the waste,
Her votaries the fitful lamp illumes.

XXX

But ere the dawn stood trembling at night’s gate,
Dark as the night, I reached a portal great,
Wide to the homeless wind, defaced and bare,
While yet it spake of power, and antique state,

XXXI

Of pillared hall and chambers large and fair,
Which Thought and Art had carven and made rare,
As life by life was laid with stone on stone,
Or flowed through marble veins the beams to bear;

XXXII

And flowered aloft in capital and frieze,
As roof and wall high rose with years’ increase;
Withal did slow decay still gild and stain,
Or like a stealthy robber climbed to seize.

XXXIII

Strange lights from windows glared, and stranger sound
Of mingled mourners’ grief and revel round—
Sad discords from a world’s disorder wrung—
With music broke upon the desert bound.

XXXIV

A fountain in the forecourt sullen slept,
One wintry tree beside it, wind beswept,
And shorn of its last leaves, which strewed the stone,
Like one above the water, drooped and wept.

XXXV

And at the threshold, on the shattered stair,
In raiment sad one sate as cloaked in care;
There, too, her sister shape in vernal green,
The lintel old did hang with garlands fair.

XXXVI

“Who,” then I would have cried, “art thou that weep?
And why with mourning festal garlands heap?
Why thus, though kindred, are your hearts in twain!
O Sisters weird this magic house who keep?

XXXVII

“This magic house, so fair, so disarrayed,
What god, what demon first its foundings laid?
Who thus its treasure to Oblivion casts,
Still hungering at the gate but never stayed?”

XXXVIII

And I was answered ere my thought found tongue,
As pealing from the gate their voices rung,
Like wailing harp and voice together heard;
With ear intent upon their speech I hung.

XXXIX

“Let no man ask, but he who doth not shrink
To stand at gaze upon thought’s giddy brink,
Where breaks the endless sea, and ebbs and flows
The tides of life and death that Time doth drink.

XL

“Time’s very house is this, his daughters we,
Ruin and Renovation, thou dost see,
That sweep or garnish, and its chambers fit
For grief or joy, or whatso guests may be.

XLI

“Pillared and roofed it is with nights and days,
And windows gemmed in gold, or azure space,
Its table spread, with earth’s, for fast or feast,
Between Birth’s gate and Death’s where all find place.

XLII

“Close curtained both with mystery and pain,
O’erwrought with costly tears, and heart-hued stain,
And Love the windows dim hath painted o’er
With dreams of dear delight, that wax and wane

XLIII

“From morn to eve, as through the glowing glass
His vital sun transfigures, as they pass,
Those visionary joys, and hopes, and fears
That mask Life’s face—a dream itself, alas!”

XLIV

But ere they ceased a fairer one forth came,
With cup of welcome and with torch aflame,
In floating raiment soft, and radiant hair,
And thus she sang, each captive sense to claim:—

XLV

“Dream on, O soul, or sleep and take thy rest,
The feast is spread however late the guest;
Let passion drug the cup with secret fire,
Till torturing thought be slain on pleasure’s breast.

XLVI

“Where all are masked thy mask shall be thy face,
Call for the best life gives, and take thy place
At Time’s long hostel board; cast off thy care,
And rest you merry in dame Fortune’s grace.

XLVII

“Vex not thy soul until the reckoning day,
Though life be but the least thou hast to pay;
Stand not too late on pleasure’s foaming brink,
Nor yet, with sightless eld, outsit the play.

XLVIII

“Time is thine host, and, ere the day grows old,
To thee his story strange he shall unfold,
Writ in a half-obliterated scroll,
But pictured fair, and graven deep—behold!”

* * * * *

XLIX

As though a new Pandora raised the lid,
And let life’s mystery escape unbid,
Broke sudden on my sight a wonder show,
As through the portal dark I gazed, close hid:

L

E’en like as one who sits expectant, dumb,
At gaze before some world’s proscenium,
When rolls the curtain from the painted stage,
To see life’s play,—Past, Present, and To Come;

LI

The drama of the earth before me rolled,
The war of good and evil, new and old,
The fight for very life, for space, for air,
The sum and cost of Being, still untold.

LII

Since when Time’s brooding bird did patient sit
Upon her spherèd egg—the world, to wit,
Potent with life, in ocean, earth, and air,
Ere ever faun or flower did people it:

LIII

Since when from countless germs life’s tree did grow
From writhing worms about its roots below,
From dragon-shapes that clasp its fossil stem,
To bear love’s fruit, and human flowers arow.

LIV

Where Thought’s winged kind among its branches dwell,
Still fertilized by Beauty’s potent spell;
Cast and re-cast in Nature’s supple mould,
Through death and change, and birth’s transforming cell.

LV

’Twas pictured here—with boughs outspread thro’ space,
Blossomed with stars upon the sky’s swart face,
With globing worlds for fruit, that cool or glow
As night and day, like leaves their shadows chase.

LVI

Out of the dream of ages, sleeping fast,
Out of the dim and unrecorded past,
Out of the caverns of uncounted time,
In life’s dark house Man saw the sun at last.

LVII

Inhuman Man, late come unto the birth,
Wrapped in the swathing bands of mother Earth,
Long his descent, his pedigree obscure,
To his inheritance of strife and dearth.

LVIII

As from the ground the earth worm crawls to light,
Speechless and blind, from antenatal night
Man rose on earth, the bitter strife began—
Man rose on earth, and craft did conquer might:

LIX

Since cruel Nature, careless of her child,
Left him an outcast on the worldly wild,
Cradled in space, and serpent-swathed in time,
And rocked to sleep by death, or dream-beguiled.

LX

I saw him in his cradle at the first,
With beasts and savage passions, rudely nursed,
To snatch uncertain life from Nature’s hand,
Niggard or prodigal, through best and worst;

LXI

He blindly bore the burden of his day
With his dumb kindred of the primal clay,
Whence drew his blood brute instincts, fiery lusts,
That waste his substance still, and tear and slay.

LXII

A babbling child he sits upon Time’s sand,
To the mute sky he cries, he would command;
Heedless he plays with serpents and with fire,
With life—a toy in his unconscious hand.

LXIII

Yet hath he held it from that early day,
Though Death did ever plot to snatch away,
And snared his tottering steps with dangers thick,
Prowling in countless shapes beside his way.

LXIV

Sore was the strife, and little was life’s boon
Between the toiling sun and wasting moon,
With lurid pleasures fierce, and horrid rite,
Blind day outworn, the long long sleep won soon.

LXV

Still Nature, prodigal, did cast his seed
O’er frozen sea, or burning zone, to breed—
Where hand or foot could cling, or heart could beat—
Man’s kind on earth, since sprung to flower, or weed.

LXVI

The rod of Want, the school of bitter Need,
Taught him Life’s letters, still so hard to read:
Use gave him skill, and skill new sense to use,
He bent the bow, he bade the ploughshare speed.

LXVII

Bread for his body and his soul he sought,
Raiment to cloak him from the cold he bought
Of ruthless nature, toiling brain and hand;
Past all the gates of death his race he brought.

LXVIII

Lo! infant Thought and Art, Man’s children fair,
First tottering from the cave, his primal lair;
Babes in the world’s wood wandering, to and fro,
To touch man’s sordid heart, and lift his care.

LXIX

Since the first hunter graved his dirk and horn,
Or in the shepherd state was music born—
When Song lay dreaming in the whispering reed,
Ere she discoursed unto the golden morn.

LXX

Born of life’s travail, Virtues, sweet, benign,
Grew like fair daughters of a race divine—
The pillars of Man’s house, before whose rod
Evil and Good, as twisted snakes, untwine.

LXXI

But to his roof had fled pale palsied Fear,
The child of Death and Night, but fathered there,
And nursed by Ignorance beside the hearth
To cloud his house with all her mystic gear.

LXXII

Demon and fetish painted she to scare,
And veils against the light did weave and wear;
Yea, Art and Thought, man’s firstlings, fain would bind
From birth to serve her will, her yoke to bear.

LXXIII

So Man, held hand and foot, a slave behold
Between the soldier-king and priest of old;
By force and fraud bound fast as by two chains—
How long, O Man, how long shall they thee hold?

LXXIV

“How long?” again I cried,—but Silence kept
Her finger on the lips of Hope: still slept,
Like clouds upon the mountains, dreams untold,
And Freedom on the tomb of ages wept.

LXXV

Yet, like a watcher by a beacon fire,
Amid the lurid gloom and shadows dire,
Wrapped in the cloak of darkness, fold on fold,
I marked through flames portentous shapes aspire.

* * * * *

LXXVI

Slow streamed the progress vast of human kind,
Out of the primal dark I watched it wind,
Like a full river gleaming towards the sun,
Crested with light, but lost in mists behind.

LXXVII

I saw the towering crests of ancient state
Arise and pass, and bow themselves to fate:
Captors of men bound still to conquering Time,
And in their triumph drawn to death’s dark gate.

LXXVIII

Colossal Egypt on her car rolled by,
Dragged by her crowd of slaves, with lash and cry;
Who now, a slave herself, is bought and sold,
And buried in the sand her pride doth lie.

LXXIX

Athens, supreme, with burnished helm and spear,
In art and arms and wisdom shining clear,
To other hands hath passed the lamp of life,
And weep the muses o’er her sculptured bier.

LXXX

There, clothed as with a robe with power and pride,
Great Rome upon her triumph car did ride
Over the necks of nations and of men,
Unto whose broken wheel still souls are tied.

LXXXI

All these I saw, as on time’s painted page
The figure of man’s life from age to age
Was figured, like his life of years and hours,
And glassed his face—an infant or a mage.

LXXXII

In boyhood bright beneath the Grecian sun,
I saw him stand, intent his race to run—
To touch the golden goal of thought and art,
And daring all man since hath dared or done.

LXXXIII

The apple of his life to Beauty’s hand
Freely he gave, and she so dowered his land,
That still that fond world takes it for her glass,
And gazes, leaving knowledge and command.

LXXXIV

In youth a mystic shadow o’er him fell:
He touched the lover’s lute beneath the spell;
He fought, a knight-at-arms, for lady’s grace;
He prayed a monk austere in haunted cell;

LXXXV

Till Nature roused him from his dreams again,
And Reason broke the chains which bound him then;
New knowledge, power, and beauty filled life’s cup,
And rolled the round world to his manhood’s ken.

LXXXVI

Yet old before his time he sits, out-worn
With words and wars, upon the seat of scorn;
Weary of life’s vain round, love’s fruitless chase,
False fortune’s whirling wheel, fame’s empty horn.

LXXXVII

For here, in living shape and semblance, shone
The passions and the powers man’s soul hath won
Through all his ages, like the starry signs
Where through life’s year revolves the sleepless sun.

LXXXVIII

The pattern and the form of thoughts untold;
The book of being wrought in runes of gold;
The twisted net that holds all gain and loss
The birth-clothes cover, or the shroud doth fold.

LXXXIX

The moving tapestry of human date,
Where lives for threads are crossed in love or hate,
Between the narrow beams of dark and day—
Time’s shifting loom, the toil of threefold fate.

XC

At their eternal task the sisters dread,
Who spin and weave and shear the slender thread
With all its dyes, that doth sustain and fill
This tangled web from pole to pole outspread.

XCI

The arras that doth clothe the house of Time,
Stained with the hues of all man’s bliss and crime:—
The chequered pageant of the changing earth
Still through its folds doth ever sink and climb:

XCII

Along the street of days and nights where rolls
The world’s car onwards and its throng of souls,
Like captives in a conqueror’s triumph chained—
Compelled by fortune’s wheel that none controls.

XCIII

The glittering triumph of youth’s golden dreams,
And ardent manhood in the zenith, beams
Of love, and fame, and power that guides the car,
And slow-pulsed eld still warmed in their last gleams.

XCIV

Masqued with the masquers in that endless race
The hours go by at grief’s or passion’s pace,
And cloaked alike in poverty or pride,
Through all life’s masks death shows his ashen face.

XCV

The shadow clinging to the feet of life,
As unto day doth cleave his silent wife—
Sower and reaper in the self-same field—
Twin spirits folded in immortal strife.

XCVI

There good and ill, brothers and bitter foes,
Do strike the balance of man’s joys and woes;
And in the traffic of the world’s exchange
Oft ill as good, and good as evil goes:

XCVII

Two knights that battle for Truth’s painted targe,
With flashing spears upon time’s river marge,
Where, like the rushing waters, rise their steeds,
And crash together in tremendous charge.

XCVIII

Their broken harness lies upon time’s plain,
Their wars’ receding tide doth cast the slain,
As shifts the battle ground from age to age,
And earth its grim memorials retain.

XCIX

These things I marked, as in a moving show
Before mine eyes life passed thro’ gloom and glow—
The trappings and the garniture that decked
This house of shadows still from room to room.

* * * * *

C

Man was; man is; but who shall count the gain,
Or measure out the sum of all life’s pain?
So to the play my thought made interlude,
And still to fate’s sad music sang refrain.

CI

Man is, but who can count his being’s cost?
Who metes the water from the pitcher lost?
The squandered corn upon the sower’s path?
Cast in time’s scale hath good or ill the most?

CII

Each out of Babel answers for himself,
As justice he doth love, or gilded pelf:
Who in the school of ignorance should read
Truth’s tattered book on thriftless nature’s shelf?

CIII

Unlettered children, hopeless to the task,
And dumb before life’s riddles, still we ask;
But labour, sole, is answered—patient thought,
And science still doth nature make unmask.

CIV

Ah! what is life?—A coin but stamped and cast
Into time’s treasury, counted, weighed, and pass’d,
Staked in the fateful race for weal or woe,
And, gold or silver, changed for lead at last?

CV

While dread Necessity, great Nature’s nurse,
Who rules man’s way for better or for worse,
Still watching by death’s bed and birth’s doth sit
To pour life’s blessing or to brand its curse.

CVI

Between the flickering lamps of day and night,
Cloaked in her age-worn mantle care-bedight,
Behold her shape, inexorable, vast—
Blind arbitress o’er changeling wrong and right:

CVII

Who pain, and bliss, and passion, hope, despair,
Casts in life’s cup, she, cunning, mixes fair,
And gives, as to a babe, man’s helpless lips,
Drawing delicious poison unaware.

CVIII

Then what is life? Well might we ask again—
A spirit from the cup that fills the brain
With teeming images of love and power,
And high desires ’tis impotent to gain?

CIX

Protean life which man doth vain pursue
From youth’s green meads to age’s mountains blue—
The painted fly a breathless child doth chase—
Through all its changing shapes to change but true:

CX

This quivering bubble, dyed with every stain
Of splendour and of passion, why in vain—
Ah! why?—It sails the summer air—
An iridescent moment lost in rain?

* * * * *

CXI

But still the cup is passed swift as of yore,
As life each new come guest doth pledge and pour
The priceless wine into the fragile glass,
Once to the brim filled up, and filled no more.

CXII

Some drink with eager thirst; some waste their store,
Or drop by drop still watch it shrinking sore;
Some, ere the vital juice hath passed their lips,
The frail cup shatter on the marble floor.

CXIII

Yet high the feast-tide rolled, and those who fell
Few missed, nor empty long their place did dwell,
For great the press is at earth’s table round,
And still new streams that company doth swell.

CXIV

Ah! bitter was the strife, and hot the breath,
Of envy, hate, their smiling masks beneath,
And baleful fires I saw in beauties’ eyes,
And rosy ensigns veiled the cheek of death.

CXV

While grovelled for the crumbs a famished crew,
As starvèd hounds for what man careless threw,
On wastrel bread and refuse fain to feed,
Or none, as deadlier their struggle grew.

CXVI

For very life at all too dear a cost
As slaves these toiled, while those as counters tost
Their lives for gold, or gold for lives exchanged,
Indifferent, so they did win, who lost.

CXVII

For those the roses, and for these the rue,
In man’s unequal measures paid undue:
Some murmured loud, some patient bore their fate—
The poor were many, and the rich were few.

CXVIII

Most weary of the sordid throng I grew,
And thence a little space apart withdrew,
Weary of life, that it this thing should be,
Nor other lot for man that hope foreknew.

CXIX

So to the portal dark I turned again,
And there, as at the first, the Sisters twain—
She who the fruitless garland hung aloft,
She on the shattered stone that wept in vain.

CXX

But in the forecourt flashed the fountain’s stream,
The wintry tree beside its glittering beam
Bore now a cloud of blossom, red and pale,
As if bright spring had touched it in a dream.

* * * * *

CXXI

Alone I stood in that still house of Time,
All swept and bare it was as at the prime,
And but the sea-wind peopled it with sighs,
And, heard afar, the slow waves’ measured chime.

CXXII

I saw Time’s shape colossal rising stark
Against the endless waves, receding dark
Beneath a rising dawn that never rose
Upon the sea, where yet would Hope embark.

CXXIII

Yea! Hope arose and drew the painted veil
Of things that are, and furled it like a sail,
And on her gilded prow I stood at gaze
On golden sands beyond the morning pale.

CXXIV

And from the face of Earth were drawn away,
Like clinging mists that do obscure the day,
The shadows and the fears which have oppressed
Her children long beneath their baneful sway.

CXXV

As new created in her sculptured sphere,
I saw her rise again translucent, clear,
Robed in the kindling splendour of the sun,
Renascent from the sea of crystal air,

CXXVI

That limpid broke on her rejoicing shore,
Where life’s reviving stream welled evermore
From Nature’s fount, through teeming veins that bred
Man’s countless kin from one redundant core.

CXXVII

I saw the dragons slain of lust and greed,
Of gold and power, that waste to serve their need
Poor human lives; and till earth’s fruitful fields
With fire and sword, and bloody vengeance breed.

CXXVIII

No more the nations armed did lie and wait,
Like bandits fierce, to spoil and desolate
What each did hold most dear—no dogs of war
At tyrant’s beck, let loose to maim and bait.

CXXIX

No peoples blind by blinder leaders led
Into the pit of shame, or daily fed
Like swine on empty husks and sophistries,
And frozen custom giving stones for bread.

CXXX

No selfish castes in internecine strife
Fought like the beasts to win a worthless life;
No ruthless commerce cheapened hope and health,
Or held to slavish throats starvation’s knife.

CXXXI

No rights usurped, against the common good
Breathed out defiance, and the claims withstood
Of labour and of life, where all by labour lived:
No bonds were there but bonds of brotherhood.

CXXXII

No temple-gloom obscured the lucent skies,
Nor incense fume of faith’s dead sacrifice,
No baneful toil made cities desolate
With hellish smoke at morn and eve to rise.

CXXXIII

No morbid anchorite with famished creed
Would man persuade to sell his nature’s need
Of joy—no fevered dream of future fate
Would snatch life’s brimming cup, his human meed.

CXXXIV

Not there blind dogma flung the bitter fruit
Of discord, burning red, or hate uproot
The flower of innocence, or fraud beguiled,
Or force laid iron hands on man and brute.

CXXXV

I saw regenerate Man, as stainless, free—
A child again on mother Nature’s knee;
His wistful eyes did scan the starry spheres,
His hand outstretched to life’s new-flowering tree.

CXXXVI

The Ages kneeling at his feet did bear
The treasure of their thoughts in caskets rare—
The fire-tried gold of science, and the lore
Of wisdom, bought with costly toil and care.

CXXXVII

The thoughts each moment from the quivering brain
That spring like flames, or, born with labour pain,
Embodied there I saw—quick thronging spirits fair
From whose inwoven wings light fell like summer rain.

CXXXVIII

And each in hand did bear the emblems bright
Wherein do art and poesy delight,
And mysteries of science, hid in time,
Her wands of power and globes of knowledge-light

CXXXIX

For, more than men, lives Man, through death alive;
Slow moves the progress vast, still cry and strive
New hopes, new thoughts for utterance and for act,
And Use, and Strength, and Beauty yet survive.

CXL

Yea, beauty’s image graven on the mind
Beats with the pulse of life, in life enshrined;
Irradiant she moves in love’s own flame,
And joy with her, and the sweet graces kind.

CXLI

Like Venus flashing from the lucent sea,
Or, from the earth, the flower Persephone;
She that was buried, lo! is born again,
And time her resurrection brings to be.

CXLII

Daughter of earth yet is not mortal she,
Though time hath shook the blossoms from her tree,
Her spring returns, her summer and her fruit,
And Art by her hath Immortality.

* * * * *

CXLIII

I saw, I heard no more, for sleep, like rain
Fell soft at last upon my restless brain;
For Sleep in all the pageant made the last,
And with her poppies swept mine eyes again:

CXLIV

Yea, far upon her wings then I was borne
All dreamlessly till, like a dream, the morn
Broke on my sense and sight, and swift and loud,
Day, like a hunter, blew his golden horn.

THE sullen winter nearly spent,
Queen Flora to her garden went
To call the flowers from their long sleep,
The year’s glad festivals to keep:
And one by one each making bold
Their silken vesture to unfold,
And peeping forth to meet the sun,
The long procession is begun:—

The snowdrops, first upon the scene,
White-crested braved King Frost’s demesne:

The little Crocus reaches up
To catch a sunbeam in his cup:

The Daffodil his trumpet blows,
And after spring a-hunting goes:

Anemones rode out the gale,
Frail wind-flowers fluttered, red and pale:

The Violet and the Primrose dame,
With modest mien but hearts a-flame:

Green kirtled from the brooklet’s fold,
The rustic maid Marsh Marigold:

The “Lady smocks all silver white”
The milkmaids of the meadows bright,

Where shining Buttercups abound
Among the Cowslips on the ground.

Here, Lords and Ladies of the wood,
With shaking spear and riding hood:

Black knight-at-arms, the white-plumed Thorn;
In pomp the Crown Imperial borne.

While Tulips lift the banner red,
Or fill their cups with fire instead:

Sweet Hyacinths their bells did ring,
To swell the music of the spring.

With blazoned pennons from each spear
The Iris and the Flag appear:

Sweet masking May, in white or red,
Her snowy cloud of blossom spread:

And Chaucer’s Daisy, small and sweet—
“Si douce est la Margarete.”

The little Lilies of the Vale,
White ladies delicate and pale.

Great Peonies in crimson pride,
And budding ones in green that hide:

Fair Columbines that drew the car
Of Venus from her distant star:

And Love’s own flower, the blushing Rose,
The Queen of all the garden close:

And Roses from the hedgerow wild,
Behind their thorns that faintly smiled:

And from the cressy brook’s green side,
“Forget-me-Not,” a small voice cried.

Here stately Lilies pale and proud,
In vesture pure as summer cloud;

Or, burning like an orange flame,
With torches borne aloft they came.

The Monk that wears the Hood of blue,
The Belles of Canterbury, too:

Wide Oxeyes in the meads that gaze
On scarlet Poppy heads ablaze:

Ere Evening Primrose lights her lamp,
A beacon to the garden camp:

When Lilies of the Day are done,
And sunk the golden westering sun:

Fresh Pinks cast incense on the air,
In fluttering garments fringed and rare.

Their cousin from the corn in blue;
Corn Marigold of golden hue.

The fond Convolvulus still clings,
The Honeysuckle spreads his wings:

The Hollyhock his standard high,
Rears proudly to the autumn sky:

The blazing Sunflower, black and bold,
Burns yet to win the sunset’s gold,

That, reddening on the Triton’s spear
Foretells the waning of the year:

When Lilies, turned to Tigers, blaze
Amid the garden’s tangled maze;

Where still in triumph, stiff with gold,
The rich Chrysanthemums unfold;

Ere doth the floral pageant close
With one last flower—a Christmas Rose.

FROM sea to sea our steamer glides,
The Adriatic laves her sides,
Her engines, deep pulsating, beat,
A throbbing heart of fire and heat;
Its freight of human hearts to bear
With good and ill as time doth wear.
Still changeful as the changing seas
Beneath the wayward winds’ increase,
Or like the bird that eastward flies,
Our thoughts fare backward with our eyes
Which still the blue Ægean holds;
Round Grecian isles its cincture folds,
Where on Sunium falls the light,
And carves anew the columns white;
Where the gulf of Nauplia fills
The sculptured sides of Argos’ hills;
And through their gates thrown back do show
Fair gardens rich and trees arow,
Where yet in waking dreams one sees
The Apples of Hesperides,
With but the gleaming scales between
Of water in the sunsets’ sheen.

Past the twinkling lights that show,
Like stars to mock celestial glow,
And light us back to antique ground—
To Tiryn’s buried ruins found,
And Agamemnon’s house of old,
With treasures of Mykenæ’s gold,
Where stands the lion-guarded gate,
To keep the city’s shattered state,
Among the lonely hills forgot
Of ages long, as it were not.
Hill and dale dissolving glide,
As the winged wheels swiftly slide,
By Nemæan crags that still
The legendary echoes fill.
Or by Corinth’s fortressed steep,
And shattered temple, still that keep
The record of her ancient fame,
Her glory past into a name.

What oracle from Delphi hear?
What message from Apollo bear?
Speaks no more the god of light?
Doth he no word to men indite?
Yea, day by day his arrows’ flight
Behold! Dividing dark and bright,
Till they strike Athena’s fanes—
Still upon the rock she reigns,
Though, alas! Her house of state,
Empty is, and desolate:
Fair still her shrine of marble shines,
Whenas the sun-like moon defines
With opal lights and shadows blue
That well nigh build the temple new,
Which day by day o’erlays with gold
As in the sun’s bright flame of old.
Many a morn and eve have we
Watched him rise and set at sea,
His foaming steeds with tossing crests
Turn fire the watery way they breast,
Where dolphins leaping drive the spray
Before them in their wanton play.
What if the ancient gods no more
Are seen of men on sea or shore?
What if a sterner creed and cold
Did drive them from the Temple’s fold?
Or pride of rule, or curse of gold,
With wasting care that makes youth old,
Do blind men’s eyes to all save gain,
And beauty pleads with them in vain?
Though greed would all the earth degrade
And see the world a market made,
And drive the peasant from his soil,
And lay the yoke of hopeless toil
Upon the millions seeking bread,
To art and love and beauty dead;
Not all has gone while these have hold
In some true hearts not bought and sold.

Though fallen, Aphrodité’s shrines
Still through the opal wave she shines,
Or, veiled in light doth sail the blue
Where breaks the foam in iris hue;
And still from dangerous rocks is heard
The siren’s song Odysseus feared,
Far wandering from his sea-girt home
In Ithaca across the foam.
The same stars shine above his head
As watch us on our rocking bed;
As turned his thoughts to child and wife,
And homestead dear, and pleasant life;
So, tossing on the houseless seas
Sweet thoughts of home our hearts do please.

·RONDEAUS·
·RONDELS·
&
TRIOLET·
]

RONDEAU—BEYOND THE VERGE

BEYOND the verge of night dost sigh
To watch the glow of reddening sky,
While sleep the worldlings wrapt in grey
Of mist and dreams that round them play
In semblance of reality?

Thought’s craggy cliff is steep to try,
That walls the future, yet Hope’s eye
Doth catch the breaking beacon ray
Beyond the verge.

Now gleam and glance in gold array
Bright vanes on towers that meet half-way
Like spears and torches held on high,
And flashing as the wind sweeps by—
The herald’s fleet of that new day
Beyond the verge.

RONDEAU—THE OLD AND NEW

THE Old and New together meet,
Around the world, across the street,
As neighbours, side by side, that grew;
As friends, or foes, as false or true,
Whose tale the heedless hours repeat.

Two stems entwined to part and greet,
From one root springing, bitter-sweet
With flower and fruitage, seed to strew,
The Old and New.

Since, serpent-twined, their knowledge knew
The heart of man, between the two,
With clinging hands and winged feet
He stands the sport of Time’s deceit,
The parti-coloured shield in view—
The Old and New.

RONDEAU—ACROSS THE FIELDS

ACROSS the fields like swallows fly
Sweet thoughts and sad of days gone by,
From Life’s broad highway turned away,
Like children thought and memory play,
Nor heed Time’s scythe though grass be high.

Beneath the blue and shoreless sky,
Time is but told when seedlings dry
By love’s light breath are blown like spray
Across the fields.

Now comes the scent of fallen hay,
And flowers bestrew the foot-worn clay,
While summer breathes a passing sigh,
As westward rolls the day’s gold eye,
And Time with Labour ends his day
Across the fields.

RONDEAU—IN LOVE’S DISPORT

IN love’s disport, gay bubbles blown,
On summer’s winds, light-freighted, flown;—
A child intent upon delight
The painted spheres would keep in sight—
Dissolved too soon in worlds unknown.

Lo! from the furnace mouth hath grown
Fair shapes, as frail, with jewelled zone
Clear globes which fate might read aright
In love’s disport.

O frail as fair! Though in the white
Of flameful heat with force to fight,
Art thou by careless hands cast down
Or killed—when frozen hearts disown
The children born of love of light
In love’s disport.

RONDEAU—WHAT MAKES THE WORLD

WHAT makes the world for you and I?
A space of lawn a strip of sky,
The bread and wine of fellowship,
The cup of life for love to sip,
A glass of dreams in Hope’s blue eye.

So let the days and hours still fly,
Let Fortune flout, and Fame deny,
With feathered heel shall fancy trip—
What makes the world?

The wealth that never in the grip
Of blighting greed shall heedless slip—
When bought and sold is liberty:
With worth of life and love gone by,
What makes the world?

RONDEAU—SEED-TIME

THE field is wide, broadcast the seed
Of human hope and human need,
As, to and fro, from end to end,
The furrows of the world ye wend
Its legioned hungry mouths to feed.

Though lowering o’er the landscape bend
The brows of winter, rains descend,
And tempest sowings whirlwinds breed,
The field is wide.

Sowing, ye shall reap indeed
Golden grain, or grisly weed,
Or dragon’s teeth, that in the end,
Perchance, in golden ears depend,
Sunward, as our path doth lead,
The field is wide.

RONDEAU—A SEAT FOR THREE

WRITTEN ON THE PANELS OF A SETTLE

A SEAT for three, where host and guest
May side by side pass toast or jest;
And be their number two or three
With elbow-room and liberty,
What need to wander east or west?

A book for thought, a nook for rest,
And meet for fasting or for fest,
In fair and equal parts to be
A seat for three.

Then give you pleasant company,
For youth or eld a shady tree;
A roof for council or sequest,
A corner in a homely nest,
Free, equal, and fraternally,
A seat for three.

RONDEL—WHEN TIME UPON THE WING

WHEN Time, upon the wing,
A swallow heedless flies,
Love-birds forget to sing
Beneath the lucent skies:

For now belated spring
With her last blossom hies,
When time, upon the wing,
A swallow heedless flies.

What summer hope shall bring
To wistful dreaming eyes?
What fateful forecast fling
Before life’s last surprise
When Time upon the wing,
A swallow heedless flies?

RONDEL—THIS BOOK OF HOURS

THIS Book of Hours Love wrought
With burnished letters gold,
Each page with art and thought
And colours manifold.

His calendar he taught
To youths and virgins cold—
This Book of Hours Love wrought
With letters burnished gold.

Love’s priceless book is bought
With sighs and tears untold
Of votaries who sought
His countenance of old—
This Book of Hours Love wrought
With letters burnished gold.

TRIOLET

IN the light, in the shade,
This is Time and Life’s measure;
With a heart unafraid,
In the light, in the shade,
Hope is born and not made,
And the heart finds its treasure
In the light, in the shade—
This is Time and Life’s measure.

AT SHELLEY’S GRAVE

WRITTEN IN THE PROTESTANT CEMETERY, ROME, APRIL 11, 1872

TREAD softly! Here the heart of Shelley lies:
His grave a garden ’neath the cypress wood,
Stirred with the tongues his spirit understood,
And spake in deathless song that vivifies
Men’s souls made heavy with the sad world’s cries,
Still where the darkness hides the dragon brood
Of evil, and while yet innocent blood
Is shed, and truth and falsehood change their dyes.

Thy voice is heard above the silent tomb,
And shall be heard until the end of days,
While Freedom lives, and whatsoever things
Are good and lovely—still thy spirit sings,
And by thy grave to-day fresh violets bloom,
But on thy head imperishable bays.

THE VOICE OF SPRING

I HEARD the voice of Spring—I saw her look
Out of the naked wood, and, on the green,
Traced the frail pattern of her steps unseen,
Toward Winter’s house which he this day forsook:
There she hath turned the leaves of Time’s sad book,
Seeking the songs, well-nigh forgotten clean
By faltering birds in Winter’s dark demesne,
O’erborne by bitter winds that none may brook.

Art thou so near! And we still all unmeet
To give thee welcome? Due with service clear
From dull world’s slavery, and sordid taint,
The soil and rust of cities, spirits faint—
O fill us with new life, and give us cheer,
Whom life’s best gifts—Art, Love, and Freedom greet.

A DAY IN EARLY SPRING

THOU art the bride of Light, most glorious morn!
Issuing to meet thy lord—thy crystal gate
Flung wide by flame-winged hours—where he doth wait
Till from thy face the æthereal veil be torn:
Clothed in white splendour and thy train upborne
By silken handed airs in fluttering state,
With piping minstrels, joyful in thy fate,
And still, before thee heard, Spring’s herald horn.

Thy silver feet have touched the sparkling grass,
Where flowers are stars of light from heaven’s blue dome
Dropt in the noiseless night to pave thy floor:
So, like a splendid vision, thou dost pass
Between the pillars of the sun’s bright home,
Drawn in Time’s pageant to return no more.

A NIGHT IN MAY