Chapter II

Yet, Oxford, it is better thou should’st know
That eyes which love thee in thy culture see
The withering curse of long sterility.
Rooted in England, thou hast ceased to grow
Together with her growth. Thy waters flow
Not with her broadening current to the sea,
But murmuring their delicious melody
They wander forth and wist not where they go.
And thus thy fine-edged spirit, which in high
Disdain hath never paltered with the pelf
Of modern rapine, doth too often fly
To endless crochets, wayward as an elf,
Self-humouring and posturing and shy,
And broods apart and lives unto itself.[2]

HESEPE, _8th June_

[2] It is hoped that it may not be thought too much of a liberty in an outsider to criticize anything so esoteric as the Oxford culture; but if so I should reply that it is just this esoteric quality which I wish to criticize. Admiration for Oxford and love of England alike compel me to deplore the fact that so typical a _product_ of our national life should be so little _representative_.

III

None than thyself more royally to-day
Hath given to England in her hour of need.
In every field where England’s children bleed
Thine own have there more richly bled than they.
And Oxford still incarnadines the clay
To such a sanctity as doth o’erplead
The voice of censure, silenced by the deed
Of the great heart that laid them where they lay.
’Tis their’s, that murmur fluttering from the marge
Of thither Acheron, where their cares they ply
In deathless death: “O Mother mine, enlarge
Thy life to England’s. Thou hast learned to die.
But while thy life thou dost so grandly give,
One thing thou lackest, Oxford: learn to live!”

HESEPE, _8th June_

IV

There is one source alone which can supply
New life and impulse. ’Tis a voice that rolls
Half inarticulate in English souls,
From field and mine and factory, where they ply
The single talent Fate did not deny,
Their labour. Now they hear upon the shoals
Of a sad life that there are other goals
To man’s existence than they yet descry;
And, scarcely yet discerned, they deeply feel
A presence over them, a haunting sense
Of music in the world, whose echoes steal
Unto them from the spheres, where in the immense
Circle of night and day the planets keep
Measure and watch, while mortals toil and weep.

HESEPE, _15th June_

V

Thine be it to direct their steps aright
Unto that bourne which doth not cease to haunt.
They cry for it, not knowing what they want,
Or what for man is best--the use of sight;
Some inkling of the precious power of light,
To glorify a mean existence gaunt,
And check the bitter self-inflicted taunt
That nothing worthy calls them home at night.
And thou can’st set them questing, make them feel
The nearness of true knowledge, where it lies
In common things with which they daily deal,
Yet ending in the Splendour of the skies;
Or teach them in shunned volumes to detect
The simplicity of letters unsuspect.

HESEPE, _16th June_

VI

Yet--for the kindly Mother may not quit
Her cloistered sanctuary, where from the height
Of scholarship’s remoteness day and night
She strains truth’s fabric--it is those who sit
A season at her feet, and learn to fit
Their spirits to her own, who must requite
These lofty cares, and carry out the light,
And serve it round, and tend its burning, lit.
But thine, O Kindly Mother, first to prove
Thy ministers, and having chosen, tune,
Bringing thy spirit o’er them, till they move
Like one at thy behest--as to the moon,
Passing soft influence from the quiet skies,
The oceans with their weight of waters rise.

HESEPE, _16th June_

VII

One thing must be thine instant, anxious care,
Which on thine honour thou dar’st not refuse.
Long time our people now the habit lose
Of speech consecutive (which man should wear
Upon him like a garment, fit and fair)
And through some faulting of the brain abuse
Thought’s flowing vesture of a thousand hues,
Oft shorn to shreds, all fluttering in the air.
I mark and grieve; for in this lost control
We trace the weakness of these breathless times,
When man no longer keeps his nature whole,
Nor governs his spirit; and it chimes
With the unruly in us, deadliest threat
Our English liberty hath fronted yet.

HESEPE, _17th June_

VIII

It is not for art’s sake this precious dower
Of speech must be renewed, but for the sake
Of life within. The expression doth not break
Silence in vain, but with reflexive power
To vitalize its source, and parting shower
New riches on the donor. Thus we take
Life’s counterthrust upon our souls, and shake
The vessel, lest by standing Being sour.
All life’s a language; but ’tis not enough
To launch forth with it wildly into space,
Adding one atom to the blinding drain,
A pitiable froth-bell in the trough
Of each new cause, wherein the striving race
Tries issue with stern time--perchance in vain.

HESEPE, _20th June_

HOME THOUGHTS ONCE MORE

I

A week of nights and days once more brings round
The Sabbath tide; and once again the heart
Sets yearningly to homewards. Do they part
At the church door to-day, as when the stound
Of disillusioned fancy last unbound
Memory’s deep wound, and in the bitter smart
The vision vanished? Ah, the shadows start
To life again across the haunted ground;
The kindly farewells said, the sauntering walk
Home through the sun-baked streets, by twos and twos,
The friendly flow of pleasant secular talk,
And personalities and trivial news.
And the long winding prospect of the day,
The feast of children yet shall wile away.

HESEPE, _26-27th May_

II

’Tis July, and a sunny stillness broods
On our magnificent England. Misty skies
Break into blue, and ripening harvests rise
Over her bosom. Her majestic woods
Ripple and sway before the varying moods
Of the west wind. The roses sacrifice
In every garden to the sun. There lies
Deep peace o’er all: no sound profane intrudes.
Far in the north the solemn mountains keep
A sanctuary amongst the shades that dwell
In the deep gloom of haunted Highland glens,
Where silence awes, and where for ever sleep
In lochs unfathomed and inscrutable
The shadows of the everlasting Bens.

HESEPE, _2nd July_

III

There is another England, that which feeds
Our sinews where the champing engines chide
Beneath the settled darkness that doth hide
Earth’s stricken face from Rotherham to Leeds.
Deep in that gloom the blinding furnace bleeds
A molten treasure: England is supplied;
A million hammers roar along the Clyde;
The transport of a million men proceeds.
And all this horror of the work of man,
Effacing God, I magnify and bless--
The way that leads out leading also through,
While God goes round to compass His great plan,
And out of ashes and of hideousness
By curse of toil Creation blooms anew.

HESEPE, _3rd July_

INTERLUDE

I

My hundredth sonnet! Here I pause to brood
A little by myself upon the theme
Ere once again with the meandering stream
Of my own thoughts I move. And it were good
To give thanks for the labour that hath stood
Between my soul and madness, like a gleam
Of sunlight in the darkness of the dream
Which passes over me, else scarce withstood.
Wonderful is it how the heart o’erwrought
Unloads in song, life’s passionate rebound
’Gainst agonies whose barb alone hath brought
This bird of sorrows fluttering to the ground,
And with these wild and wandering flowers of thought
The portion of a prisoner metely crowned.

HESEPE, _23rd June_

II

I ponder on the form, and truth to tell,
’Twere scarcely to be deemed a sonnet chain
Which did not in its forged length contain
Some turn contemplative, where for a spell
The smith might lay his hammer by, to dwell
Upon the pattern, lest the octet strain
The content, or the sextet court in vain
A bigger thought than it can compass well.
And oft when to the varying interplay
Of partnered sounds I strive thought’s flower to train
Upon this trellis, the perplexing way
By lucky chance of rime lies sudden plain,
And I cry out with Agathon: τέχνη
τύχην ἔστερξε καὶ τύχη τέχνην.

HESEPE, _23rd June_

III

Yet the sport wind that doubling oft blows home
Some welcome unforeseen felicity,
Is but, within the dreams of poesie,
Life’s average accident, which all who roam
The spacious earth, or try the beckoning foam
Of some unvisited soul-haunting sea,
May count on as their portion--even as we
Who chance a star or two in this weird gloam.
Hence as in all high toil which must be traced
In long-drawn sequence, linking part to part,
Not chance nor inspiration can fulfil
The welded whole, nor vanquish that distaste
Which ever comes with pause; but sovereign Art
Herself must bow to man’s more sovereign Will.

HESEPE, _24th June_

IV

So forward still, might but my strength avail
Out of the brooding darkness of my plight,
Each day to bring one glimmering shaft of light,
Each night to add some fragment to the tale,
That so I sleep. Else o’er my dreams prevail
These sorrows, or within me hour-long smite
The hammers of the brain, and turn the night
Into a thing to make man’s reason fail.
--A little further; for the thoughts still rise
Over me like a soughing wind, that blows
From where the surges boom along the graile
Of the world’s misery under lowering skies,
--A little further and my task I close,
Lest twilight overtake me and I stale.

HESEPE, _25th June_

ENGLAND